Your Family

Everyone is influenced by their family backgrounds. Think about the following topics and how they affected you while growing up. What aspects of your background do you want to repeat and what aspects do you want to leave behind? Conversations about these issues have a new importance when you have a baby.

Each of these can influence your plans and hopes for the family you are forming and your behaviour in achieving these. Babies benefit if their parents can discuss differences respectfully and make adjustments so that a unique new family can grow.

Learning from your answers

These are some of the most difficult things for a couple to discuss, but give and take is part of forming a strong new family. You will want to keep some things from your families of origin, change others, and then together, you will develop some new ways that suit your own family.

In general, it is unhelpful to make critical comparisons between the generations like, "my mother managed to bring up children and it was not a problem to her!"

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Things you say and do

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Going it alone