About This Project

     The purpose of this blog, my master’s project, is to empower emerging adults to positively enhance their relationships with their parents during the transition to adulthood. Based on my reading of the research and my own experiences, I think family rituals can help with this transition. Family rituals are special events or activities families repeat over and over again. They have the potential to strengthen family relationships and may be especially significant to emerging adults and their families because rituals that used to be important to the family when the emerging adult was a child may no longer hold any meaning for family members. Emerging adults can help their families identify and evaluate current rituals, modify old rituals or add new rituals to meet their changing needs. Family rituals give family members stability and a feeling of belonging that may be lacking in families during emerging adulthood.

      I want to encourage emerging adults to initiate family rituals within their families in order to enhance family strengths, specifically within the parent-child relationship. I will ask readers to initiate family rituals with their families and to provide feedback about their experiences. I will recommend a new family ritual with some possible alternatives each week, focusing on building one of the six characteristics of strong families as described by DeFrain and Stinnett (2007).