NCFR has a Book Club twice a year. In the fall of 2010, we read Robert Milardo's book, Forgotten Kin: Aunts and Uncles. One of the Book Club participants has a story to tell about it, and I have permission to tell it here. A few identifying factors will be changed for privacy, but the essential story remains. Our participant--let's call her Mary--read the book and soon applied the content with wonderful results.
by Robert M. Milardo, Ph.D., Professor of Family Relations, University of Maine
I did not intend to write a book about aunts and uncles or their nieces and nephews, at least not initially. I began with a simple interest in uncovering instances of men in caregiving roles, other than fathers. My own uncles were positive influences in my life, and I simply wondered if uncles were important in the lives of others.
