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This article was downloaded by: [University Of Maryland] On: 17 October 2014, At: 23:02 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Feminist Family Therapy Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wfft20 Interview with Pauline Boss, PhD Christi McGeorge PhD a a Department of Child Development & Family Science , North Dakota State University , 277B EML Hall, Fargo, ND, 58105, USA Published online: 07 Sep 2008. To cite this article: Christi McGeorge PhD (2007) Interview with Pauline Boss, PhD, Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 18:4, 77-87, DOI: 10.1300/J086v18n04_04 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J086v18n04_04 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

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Page 1: Interview with Pauline Boss, PhD

This article was downloaded by: [University Of Maryland]On: 17 October 2014, At: 23:02Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Feminist Family TherapyPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wfft20

Interview with Pauline Boss, PhDChristi McGeorge PhD aa Department of Child Development & Family Science , North DakotaState University , 277B EML Hall, Fargo, ND, 58105, USAPublished online: 07 Sep 2008.

To cite this article: Christi McGeorge PhD (2007) Interview with Pauline Boss, PhD, Journal of FeministFamily Therapy, 18:4, 77-87, DOI: 10.1300/J086v18n04_04

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J086v18n04_04

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Interview with Pauline Boss, PhD

INTERVIEW

Ashley M. Harvey, Interviews Editor

Interview with Pauline Boss, PhD

by Christi McGeorge

Dr. Pauline Boss is a renowned Family Therapy and Family StudiesResearcher and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family SocialScience at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. She joined the facultyat the University of Minnesota in 1984 and retired from full-time statusin May 2005. She completed her doctoral training in 1975 at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin-Madison in Child Development and Family Stud-ies. In addition to her teaching responsibility at the University ofMinnesota in the Marriage and Family Therapy Doctoral program,Dr. Boss was also a Visiting Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medi-cal School during the 1995-1996 school year.

Throughout her academic career, Dr. Boss’s research focused onfamily stress and coping, ambiguous loss, family caregiving, and immi-grant families. She has maintained a productive and active researchcareer, which has led to numerous journal and book publications. Mostrecently she has published a number of books that present her nearly 30years of research on family stress and coping, and ambiguous loss. In

Christi McGeorge, PhD, is Assistant Professor, Department of Child Development &Family Science, North Dakota State University, 277B EML Hall, Fargo, ND 58105.

Pauline Boss, PhD, is Professor Emeritus, 290 McNeal Hall, 1985 Buford Avenue,Department of Family Social Science, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108.

Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, Vol. 18(4) 2006Available online at http://jfft.haworthpress.com

© 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J086v18n04_04 77

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addition to being highly productive with her research, Dr. Boss has alsoheld a number of national leadership positions, including the president-ship of the National Council of Family Relations (NCFR), and the presi-dentship of the Groves Conference on the Family. She has received manyhonors such as being named a Fellow in three professional organizations(i.e., American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, NCFR,and American Psychological Association), the Humanitarian Award forSEIU Local 32 BJ, and the Ernest Burgess Award. Dr. Boss was selectedfor this interview because she is one of the early academic women whoplayed a role in shaping the family therapy field. Dr. Boss’ most recentbook is Ambiguous Loss.

Dr. Christi McGeorge conducted the interview and had the honor ofhaving Dr. Boss as her major professor. Dr. McGeorge is an AssistantProfessor in the Couple and Family Therapy Program at North DakotaState University. Her research interests include feminist women’s his-tory, gender socialization, clinical training, single mothers, and disman-tling heterosexism.

This interview took place on November 18, 2005 at the 2005 NationalCouncil on Family Relations Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

CM: I would like to start by asking you how you came to enter thefield of family therapy.

PB: I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin and wasintending to major in family studies in order to teach family life educa-tion. I took an elective course from Carl Whitaker in psychiatry. It in-volved family therapy sessions. He wanted me to sit in on them with thepsychiatric residents, I said, “I didn’t come here to learn family ther-apy.” And he said, “Well, this is how you learn about families” and thatwas the end of the discussion. I was with him for a year at least and Inow see in retrospect what he meant. “In order to learn about familiesyou have to be with them.” Family therapy was a wonderful way todo that.

CM: How would you describe the family therapy field when you be-gan your training?

PB: Well, as I recall there were no codes of ethics. This would havebeen 1973, so things were done that you wouldn’t do today. It was thetime when there were gurus. I happened to be privileged to study withCarl Whitaker but visitors would come regularly like Virginia Satir,

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Murray Bowen, and Salvador Minuchin. So I got to hear from the pio-neers firsthand actually.

CM: This is a big question I know, but I’m wondering, what are someof the significant changes you have seen in the family therapy field sinceyou entered the field in the 70s?

PB: Well, early on the issue of diversity wasn’t discussed. It justwasn’t. It wasn’t in most professors’ minds at that point. I’m talkingabout gender, race, and sexual orientation and all those various kinds ofdiversity that are on the table now. Thank heavens we talk about it now.It just wasn’t there before. As a female graduate student at that time (Iwas a returning homemaker by the way) and in my late thirties it was adifficult challenge because there was a great deal of sexual harassmentgoing on. There was a lot of competition for getting ahead that was notbased on scholarship and so it was just hard (coming from homemakingin a small town and being a young mother). It was a world that took meawhile to figure out and understand. I think that’s why a lot of womenreally, a lot of my friends, suffered from what we today call sexual ha-rassment and they quit graduate school and didn’t finish. I wonder howmany women from that era were lost and how the field suffered becausetheir contributions were lost too.

CM: What do you think allowed you to persevere?

PB: My age I think. I was older so I think my age defined me. I wasvery interested in learning. I mean I was passionately interested inscholarship and I had two mentors who I think really recognized that inme. One was Reuben Hill. He loved women in an appropriate way; herespected women in a way that would nurture scholarship. Boy, hereally did that and he encouraged you to go on and to be challenged andtested. You were never worried in his presence. The other was CarlWhitaker. I consider Reuben Hill my left brain mentor and Carl Whitakermy right brain mentor. Carl Whitaker was the same. He had manydaughters and he was crazy about his wife. There were no women backthen who were psychiatric residents, but there were two of us invited tojoin Whitaker’s seminar; myself from child development and anotherwoman from social work. We always knew that as students we weresecond because at 5:00 he would say, “I’m going home to Muriel andthe kids,” and he really was crazy about them, which provided us withfreedom to study and to learn. He never spoke a lot as a teacher, but hecould provoke your mind. He was a postmodernist before we used thatterm. I credit him for much of my reasoning ability. While Reuben Hill

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and Carl Whitaker were my mentors for theoretical thinking, JanePiliavin was my research mentor at that time. Over the years I have doneresearch differently than how she taught me, but I am grateful for howshe taught me quantitative methodology. It was only after I earned ten-ure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that I came out of the closetas a symbolic interactionist. Today, this has morphed into the socialconstructionism of Kenneth Gergen.

CM: How were you introduced to feminism?

PB: I was introduced to feminism by Betty Friedan’s book, The Fem-inine Mystique. I was living in a small town in Southern Wisconsin. Ihad taken time to have children and was a full-time homemaker. I hadbeen a full-time mother for several years, but you know, you can onlydecorate and re-decorate the house so much. My friend in that samesmall town said, “How many patch work quilts can I make? I’m goingcrazy.” So, both of us rejoined the outside world after we read Friedan’sbook. That book was life altering for many women in my generation andI am forever grateful to Betty Friedan for that. After reading it I wentback to teaching and began my master’s program and eventually thedoctoral program.

CM: How have you seen feminism influence or shape the family ther-apy field?

PB: Well, the feminists really re-shaped the family therapy field. Ithink of two classic writings from 1978 that I heard firsthand asspeeches at the second meeting of the Women’s Project in Family Ther-apy. One was by Rachel Hare-Mustin (1978), which was later publishedin Family Process and the other was by Virginia Goldner, which wasnot published until 1985. Those two women wrote classic pieces thatchanged the field and began our thinking about diversity and contextualdifferences in equality. In 1984 I participated in what was called the firstStonehenge Conference in Connecticut, which was organized I think byMonica McGoldrick, Carol Anderson, and Forma Walsh and a fewother scholars. I remember Harriet Lerner and I were the only two fromthe Midwest. Most were from the East Coast and few were from theWest Coast. We met; there were just women. We began by having a ses-sion expressing our frustration at the family therapy field. We talkedabout never seeing a female editor or a reviewer for journal. We talkedabout never having women as speakers at a conference. Fortunatelysomebody there, perhaps Marianne Walters or Olga Silverstein said,“Ok, this is enough whining, now. We have to plan what to do.” And so

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we spent the whole next day planning what to do to make things betterfor women in the field of family therapy. So the next day we plannedwho among us we would nominate to become editors for the journals,we planned who would run for president of the family therapy organiza-tion, AFTA. We planned who would run for program chair. Frankly westrategized! Oh, and then we planned something else: we planned thatthose of us who wrote articles would start citing females as well asmales, which we did. We also planned to rewrite text books in familytherapy. I need to tell you that all of the things we planned happened.Textbooks were rewritten by Monica McGoldrick, Janine Roberts,Evan Imber Black, Froma Walsh, Celia Falicov, Harriet Lerner, PeggyPapp, Olga Silverstein, Betty Carter, and Marianne Walters, among oth-ers. The women’s project with Marianne Walters, Peggy Papp, OlgaSilverstein, and Betty Carter changed everything! They not only wrotethe book, The Invisible Web, but led many training workshops in theUnited States and around the world. I was present at many of them. I re-member they were scheduled to present on a Sunday morning at someconference. You’d think nobody would have come. (There was a lot ofsubterfuge going on to “settle the women down” and it didn’t work.)But many came to listen nonetheless. These women changed the entirefield and the rest of us did exactly what we had promised we woulddo–re-write the text books, cite each other more, and include diversity,not just of gender (male and female) but all kinds of diversity so thatthere was more equality for all.

CM: How do you see feminism having influenced the researchyou do?

PB: The research I do is about family health-family functioning asopposed to family dysfunction. My approach is very different from thestructural functionist or the pro-marriage people. The pro-family andpro-marriage people in the traditional sense see family health differ-ently. Of course, I believe in stable human connections, but I don’t be-lieve in just one way to get there. I also don’t believe in stability at allcosts as it can support abuse, violence, incest, and misuse of power. I’mat a different level of conceptualization. Marriage is not automatically asolution to healthy functioning. That’s too simplistic. I talk about thequality of the human relationship physically and psychologically–thatis, the relational structure as it exists in one’s mind, not just legally or bi-ologically. I call this the “psychological family.”

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Ambiguous loss and boundary ambiguity are concepts that can applyto any kind of human union, whether or not there is a marriage license.In other words, the level at which I conceptualize and assist familieswith trauma and loss is less judgmental and more inclusive. That wasthe feedback given in New York City after 9/11 when we were facedwith so much family diversity, more than I have ever seen in my life.There were, in the same room, people from seventy different ethnicitiesand twenty-two different religions. The ultimate test I think of a modelor theory is whether it could include anyone even if that person didn’tgrow up or believe the way we did. The theory of ambiguous loss couldinclude everyone, regardless of their religion or their way of beingtogether. More of us in family studies should work at a higher level ofextraction and be less focused on, “Are you married or not; or, are youmarried in the way I think you should be married; and, are you havingthe kind of family that is what I think is ‘the normal’ family.”

CM: How did you become interested in the family health, ambiguousloss, family stress, and resiliency theories?

PB: My first NCFR (National Council of Family Relations) paperpresentation was in 1973 and it was on a family stress concept that Igrew to notice while studying with Carl Whitaker, and the other psychi-atric residents, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We were doingfamily therapy with families where the child was in trouble. What I sawwas, reluctant fathers, fathers who at that time saw the children as“mother’s work.” “Why am I here, the kids are my wife’s business?”And so I came up with the concept of “father absence in intact families.”That was the topic of my first NCFR paper in 1973. Some people fromthe military were in the audience and said, “We have a data set foryou–the wives of the missing-in-action soldiers.” The people from themilitary didn’t have a theory to interpret their data so that is what I didmy doctorate on. Their consultant at the Center for Prisoner of WarStudies in San Diego was Reuben Hill. So Reuben Hill became a con-sultant on my dissertation even though he never was my teacher. As aresult of that linkage he consulted on my dissertation and it was a natu-ral for him and me to continue our discussion for years after aboutfamily stress theory.

CM: How did the construct and theory of ambiguous loss and bound-ary ambiguity evolve?

PB: Originally, the work was developed with families of soldiersmissing in the war, and the other side of the coin, where the mind was

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Page 8: Interview with Pauline Boss, PhD

missing with an NIA (National Institute of Aging) grant regarding Alz-heimer’s disease. The biggest challenge since then has come from 9/11and then in Kosovo with the International Committee and the Red Cross(ICRC) working with families of the missing. When you’re in the mistof such crisis from ambiguous loss as in New York and Kosovo, it reallypushes your thinking. The synthesis of that new thinking is in my newbook, Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambigu-ous Loss published this year. That’s where I really pushed hard to an-swer, “What have I learned?” The 2006 book essentially moves thetheoretical work on ambiguous loss and boundary ambiguity forwardfor both researchers and clinicians. More of course, needs to be done,but I leave that now for the next generation of scholars. (See forthcom-ing special issue of Family Relations (2007) on “Ambiguous Loss andBoundary Ambiguity.”)

CM: How would you describe where you are currently in terms of de-veloping the ambiguous loss framework?

PB: Essentially the 2006 book focuses on “What do you do about it?”The first book, Ambiguous Loss, Harvard University Press (1999) ad-dresses the question “what is ambiguous loss and why does it matter?”It was meant to familiarize the general readership, not just professionalsand researchers, with the concept and how it worked. That book wasand still is very popular and is translated in to many languages nowaround the world. The 2006 book addresses: “So what do we do aboutambiguous loss to make individuals, couples, and families better? Howcan they regain resiliency despite the ongoing ambiguity of a loved onesimperfect absence or presence?” It is written in the social constructionmode and Professor Kenneth Gergen has given the book a good en-dorsement. He notes my central point that ambiguous loss is a relationaldisorder–and not an individual pathology. I’m very honored by his en-dorsement. Essentially I give six guidelines for living well despiteambiguous loss. Again, this is a higher level of abstraction so regardlessof whether you are working with a heterosexual married couple, anuclear family, an extended family, or a gay couple with children, thesesix guidelines fit: the first is “Finding Meaning.” “What does the ambig-uous loss mean to you?” The second guideline is “Developing Tempo-rary Mastery.” Most of us come from a mastery oriented culture wherewe insist on clear answers. With a missing loved one, we must temperthat need for certainty because we might not have an answer. The thirdguideline is “Reconstructing Identity.” After an ambiguous loss, indi-

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vidual and family identity shift. How do you change your role and whoyou are in relation to the missing person?

The fourth guideline is “Normalizing Ambivalence.” Individuals andfamilies who experience ambiguous loss are automatically ambivalent,because of the lack of clarity about their relationship. Psychiatric am-bivalence results from the sociological context. The fifth guideline is“Revising Attachment.” When you love someone, if she or he becomesambiguously lost, you can’t detach. Instead, you have to revise the at-tachment to include both presence and absence. The sixth and lastguideline is “Discovering Hope.” How can you have hope for the futurewhen there is not closure?

To write the 2006 book, it took a lot of field work, and reading fromdifferent fields–sociology, psychology, family therapy, etc. It becameclear that the ambiguous loss model minimized hierarchy. The hard les-son was that researchers and therapists had to deal with their intolerancefor ambiguity before they could understand how to apply this model toease the distress of others. Self-reflection became essential.

CM: Having read your work and listened to you today, it’s clear thatmany feminist principles are interwoven into the heart of your work.I’m curious how you would describe your own women’s rights work.

PB: I had a strong mother. A Swiss mother. She made sure I had agreat education and she always promoted strength in women. Her com-mitment to being a strong woman just never was a doubt. I also had aSwiss father. He must have been an anomaly as he valued higher educa-tion for his daughters as well as sons. When the principle called him inand told him that I should go to college, he actually went to the bank toborrow money to make this possible. Now at that time in the 1950s,most families educated their sons, not their daughters. So I was lucky tohave parents who did not see a difference between educating a boy andeducating a girl. So I just went forward with that initial seed of equalityplanted deep in my thinking–women are as worthy as men.

I don’t know that I ever sat down and studied feminism. I shouldhave. I made some errors. I remember in a University of Wisconsinclass with Professor Jane Piliavin we went around the table saying howeach of us got there. I was married at the time (to my first husband) and Isaid, “My husband said I could go to graduate school as long as his lifedidn’t change.” I commuted 60 miles a day, had supper on the table bysix, and didn’t realize the lack of feminism in that statement. But on theother hand that’s how it began for me. It was considered a progressivehusband at that time who said, “You can go to graduate school.” Today,

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of course, there’s a very different attitude toward all that. So feminism isa view I gradually learned. I grew into it. My early sense that males andfemales were equal helped to speed the process of acting, finally, to pro-tect myself and my children. I tell that story in my book that will bepublished in 2007.

I am sad, however, that I am (at 71) still not seeing equal pay for menand women. I thought by now we’d have that. I am also sad that there isno equal rights amendment in this country. I’m sad that so many womennow believe feminists are no longer needed. My generation is gettingold, so it requires new and fresh energy from your generation to safe-guard equal rights. I’m sad that for many college students feminism is abad word. Feminism for me means equality between the genders. If wehave to explain what it means, then we should, but we shouldn’t be si-lenced into not using the word. There are many different kinds of femi-nism and I’m thankful for every single kind. I wasn’t the feminist whotook to the streets and climbed over the walls of a factory; I wasn’t thefeminist who in the early days integrated the bars of New York City. Isuspect I’m a second stage feminist who works inside the system andworks very very hard to gain equality and fairness for women andgirls–and now for all kinds of diversity. Gloria Steinem said, “Put yourpearls on and infiltrate.” I did! That was my approach in fighting forsexual harassment codes in the university, to get equal opportunity forwomen and people of color in admissions, and for people with differentsexual orientations to have equal rights as professors and students. So Iworked inside the system. I think we may be moving backwards now.Women are losing ground now and not even paying attention.

CM: In what ways have you seen us moving backwards?

PB: I see it in the political pressure to retreat to the home. Everywoman should have a choice of how she wants to live her life and carefor her children, but there seems to be pressure and subtle policies thatmake it harder for women to be employed outside the home. The lack ofgood and affordable day care is a stealth move to keep women in thehome; the lack of equal pay for equal work is another stealth move tokeep women at home. And the support for both men and women oflesser means to go to college has been rolled back, making men lessmarriageable and able to help support families, and women less able togo it alone. This double bind policy in the midst of the marriage promo-tion is one that many don’t seem to notice. Also, poverty levels centerprimarily on women and children and poverty is increasing. As we’vegone backwards, I’m hoping a new generation of feminists will stand up

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and say, “This is as far as it goes. This has to change. We’re going todemonstrate we aren’t going to stay at home or go shopping, we’re go-ing to became active–run for office, give a speech, and write a letter tothe editor.” I believe we absolutely need more women in government–and in the highest levels of leadership. If we can’t run for office, weshould support the feminists who can. Gender equality is necessary in atruly democratic society.

CM: I couldn’t agree more that there is a need for action. In my un-dergraduate classes I talk about feminism and feminist principles innearly every class I teach and some of the students just have such an im-mediate, negative reaction.

PB: And these same students who don’t like us to use the word femi-nism, if you ask them, “Do you believe in equal opportunity,” they say,“Of course!” If equality is what we have to talk about, then that’s whatwe have to talk about! It may be a communication issue. We may haveto send our message differently but however we say it, a rose is still arose by any other name. However we state it, the facts would indicateour rights are decreasing, not increasing. I haven’t even talked about theright of birth control, the right to terminate a pregnancy should we wantto, the right of choice, and the many different private aspects of one’sfamily life.

CM: I appreciate your reclaiming of the word feminism. I think it’sa word that was taken from us. And I think it’s in the process of beingreclaimed.

PB: I don’t think I can put this idea of reclaiming into words, but it’slike reclaiming the word liberal. I now tell people “I’m a liberal–and apatriot.” I am a liberal–and I fly the flag. I’m so angry that people aretrying to take patriotism away from me. I grew up in an immigrant fam-ily, and we flew the American flag proudly. But we were progressiveand liberal thinkers. Who made liberal a dirty word? And who madefeminism a dirty word? We can’t give into the demonizing–nor shouldwe demonize others.

CM: You ask some important questions and I think it is time for bothliberal and feminist to be reclaimed as proud labels and proud identities,and not be seen as words that are associated with shame. As you look atyour long and productive career, what would you like your legacy to be?

PB: I hope my legacy is the introduction of ambiguous loss andboundary ambiguity to the academic community as well as to the public

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at large. Over three decades of work suggest a new way to assess fami-lies and couple relationships (who is in and who is out) with more focuson the perceived and psychological than on the legal and physical struc-ture. Every human being needs someone to attach to, somewhere to callhome, where the door is open, and where there is nurturance and safety.But I see this need very differently from those who believe absolutelythat there is only one way to be a family. My work forced me to thinkmore globally and this new reality, which now challenges us all, re-quires more inclusiveness about what family and home mean. My leg-acy, I hope, will be that I have cast doubt on the certainty of one kind ofnormalcy for family life.

CM: That is a powerful and important legacy. I also feel you providean important example for female academics for how to thrive in the aca-demic world. For all those women starting out in academia and in thefield of family therapy, what would you want them to know, what wouldyou want to tell us?

PB: I would tell you to travel the world. You’ve got to get out of yourhometown and travel your country and the world, because that will beyour main education about the human family and its vast diversity. Getto know people everywhere, and see and enjoy the differences. Thedifferences among the global family are great but they’re fun and won-derful to see. Learning about them is powerful and changes who we are.We become more tolerant of ambiguity–and more intolerant of cer-tainty. So experience the world. Of course, keep educating yourself, butI think the experiential is more powerful in increasing our tolerance fordifference.

ACCEPTED: 05/28/06

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