Strength based parenting: A new avenue of practise and research in positive psychology

Abstract

In his 1998 Presidential address to the American Psychological Association, launching the held of positive psychology, Professor Martin Seligman stated, "Ideally, psychology should be able to help document what kind of families' result in the healthiest children" (Seligman M, Am Psychol 54:559-562, 1999, p. 560). The theme of positive families was again put forward in Seligman's foundational paper on positive psychology co-authored with Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 2000 where they called for a scientific understanding of what creates thriving families (Seligman M, Csikszentmihalyi M, Am Psychol 55:5-14, 2000). Yet two recent reviews of positive psychology by Donaldson et al. (J Posit..