Family Futures

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Parenting around the world:

same task, same effort, different solutions

Marina Robben, President, International Federation for Family Development

dvancing

ocial

ntegration

and

ntergenerational

olidarity

he picture on this page was taken during a meeting

of Family Enrichment leaders some years ago.

Michele had just arrived from Sweden with his

wife Joanna and his young son. Evelyn, from Kenya,

was surprised to see how blond the little boy was. She

approached the family and started smiling as the child

smiled too. It is a great image of how families from such

different backgrounds come together through Family

Enrichment courses, and demonstrates how much parents

have to share and learn from each other.

Back in the 1960s, a group of parents from Spain foresaw

that parents in coming decades would benefit from sharing

experiences. They felt that the best way to do this would not

be by organizing the usual sort of talks and speeches full of

preconceived ideas and ideal solutions. Instead, based on

the experience that some of them had working as profes-

sors in business schools, they designed the first Family

Enrichment programmes using the ‘case method’: a way

to promote open discussion about real situations without

imposing our own ideas or dismissing other people’s.

The famous Harvard Business School professor Chris

Christensen has described the case method as “the art of

managing uncertainty” – a process in which an expert

serves as “planner, host, moderator, devil’s advocate, fellow-

student and judge,” all in search of solutions to real-world

problems and challenges. These experts are not teachers,

but leaders, and in this way, their role perfectly matches the

meaning of the Latin verb ‘educare’: to lead forth. A good

discussion leader does not seek just to cover material in the

classroom, but instead to guide students towards the discov-

ery of critical insights and the uncovering of broader lessons

through thoughtful questioning, listening and responding.

That is why the leader must be well-prepared, both to cover

the content associated with each class session, and to guide

the participant-centred learning experience. The role of this

Michele from Sweden and Evelyn from Kenya show how families from different backgrounds can share experiences through Family Enrichment courses

Image: IFFD