FAMILY MIRRORS

A highly personal exploration of how children mold parents and parents mold children, and how together they continually re-create the family. Fishel wrote about her relationship with her sister (Sisters, 1979) as a starting point for examining such relationships in general. Now she uses a similar technique—employing her experiences with her two young sons plus interviews with and questionnaires from parents to talk about how families are formed and re-formed and how the individuals within them change when a child is born. As mothers ``mirror'' facial expressions to babes in arms, so do children mirror to parents their own pasts. Fishel categorizes four types of parents—the ``Traditionalist,'' the ``Rebel,'' the ``Compensator,'' and the ``Synthesizer''—by how they deal with the past. She devotes separate chapters to three critical issues—separation, anger, and self-esteem—and to strategies for breaking painful or ineffectual patterns. Full of appealing personal anecdotes, the book is informed by family- systems theory and by a rather eclectic, often uncritical reading list plus interviews with professionals (including sister Anne, now a clinical psychologist). The informal style is comfortable but occasionally leads to some mushy, overly romantic thinking. A good book for parents who want sympathetic company and some direction on the road to self-discovery. Introducing each chapter are poems on parenting from various writers; they alone make the book worthwhile.