The answer lay right under my nose

The answer lay right under my nose; I simply hadn't looked carefully enough at how my own family works. In our family governance system, we have a family assembly consisting of my parents, my siblings and their spouses and significant others, and the eleven grandchildren and their spouses. We meet annually as an assembly to do the work of the legislative branch. During the year, between meetings, we have a family council acting as the executive branch, which administers the family foundation, a family limited partnership, and whatever other work the assembly assigns to it. On those infrequent occasions (and we as a family are working very hard to keep them infrequent) when a dispute arises among family members, these matters naturally flow up for decision to my parents, and to such other members of the sibling generation as my parents choose to invite to participate with them in resolving the matter. This informal system has served us well during the transition in leadership from my parents' generation to mine and has provided us with a judicial branch of family governance, although at first we didn't recognize it as such.

— from Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting)

Also belongs to

Related