LIVE STREAMING SESSION

(Sponsored by Utah State University Department of Human Development and Family Studies)

Session Presider: Katia Paz Goldfarb, Ph.D., 2019 NCFR Program Chair

Stephanie Coontz, M.A., Professor Emerita, Evergreen State College; Director of Research and Public Education, Council on Contemporary Families

Every society rewards some personal characteristics, values, and behaviors and penalizes others. What constitutes “efficacious” or “successful” behavior in interpersonal relationships and family life does not have some universal ideal form. It depends on what a particular society or sub-group rewards. In determining what is an effective, healthy, or intelligent behavior, social context and the specific situation at a particular time and place is everything. What is a strength in one setting may be a weakness in another.

The last few decades have seen a shift from a deficit model of family diversity to an adaptive one, emphasizing the strengths of alternative family forms and values, and the adaptive coping of individuals who do not or cannot organize their life trajectories along a route that some have called “the success sequence.” But while behaviors that are adaptive in stressful environments may permit people to sustain themselves or even thrive in that context, the same behaviors may hamper their ability to succeed in other environments. Conversely, behaviors that help people prosper in predictable environments may be maladaptive when social conditions change. Alternatively, such behaviors may perpetuate social arrangements that disadvantage other groups or even threaten the “successful” people’s own long-term well-being. 

Captioning at this session sponsored by the University of Minnesota, Department of Family Social Science

Pre-Address Agenda:

• Welcome: Katia Paz Goldfarb, Ph.D., Montclair State University, 2019 NCFR Program Chair
• Welcome to Texas and recognize the Ft. Worth region as territory originally inhabited by different indigenous people especially the Comanche, presented by Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas Tribal Council Chairwoman Cecilia Flores. Tribal Council Vice-Chairman Rick Sylestine will provide the invocation in the Alabama Indian language accompanied by Debrina Sylestine to sign the invocation in American Indian sign language.
• Welcome from the 2019 Conference Host: Wendy Middlemiss, Ph.D., University of North Texas, Department of Educational Psychology, Human Development and Family Science Programs
• Welcome from the NCFR President: Anisa M. Zvonkovic, Ph.D., East Carolina University, 2017-2019 NCFR President
• Introduction of Board, Editors, and NCFR Executive Director: Anisa M. Zvonkovic, Ph.D.
• Introduction of 2018 NCFR Fellows, Katia Paz Goldfarb, Ph.D., Montclair State University and Jennifer L. Hardesty, Ph.D., CFLE, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign; Introduced by Anisa M. Zvonkovic, Ph.D.
• Welcome From the Plenary Sponsor, Shawn D. Whiteman, Ph.D., Utah State University Department of Human Development and Family Studies
• Introduction of Speaker: Katia Paz Goldfarb, Ph.D., 2019 NCFR Program Chair

OBJECTIVES:

-- To learn historical and cross-cultural examples of behaviors, emotions, and cognition that we now consider essential to healthy functioning and strong relationships but that would have been dysfunctional in other places and time periods.

-- To identify “self-evidently” positive behaviors and traits that we endorse today – optimism, forgiveness, “soft startups” – that can backfire in some contexts, and many negative interactions that can produce exceptional sources of strength.

-- To understand the contextual nature of intelligence and problem-solving. 

-- To critique “the success sequence.”