Promoting resilience. Changing concepts of parenting and child care

Abstract

The most powerful influence on our capacity to manage life's hurdles is the quality of care we received in childhood, especially the earliest years. Other times and cultures have valued different strengths, so that resilience is not a fixed quality. In the modern world, our greatest fortune is the capacity to know our own minds and understand those of others. This is resilience which is truly flexible; the best condition both for personal mental health and for life in a pluralist and changing society. As the history of attitudes to children demonstrates, we are only at the beginning of a child-centred culture. Resilience based on secure attachment is essentially generous and open-minded, and is of little value in an unjust or oppressive society.