A journalist recently asked me to name the No. 1 problem facing today's family. I think she expected me to address education, the economy or some other "hot" topic. To her surprise, I said, "A confusion of roles." In today's parenting universe, married women with children think of themselves first and foremost as mothers, and married men with children think of themselves as fathers. This is confusion. If you are married with children, you are first and foremost a wife or a husband. In your wedding vows, you did not say, "I take you to be my (husband, wife) until children do us part." Those vows, generations old, read the way they do for a reason.

I've been telling recent audiences that parenting has become bad for the mental health of women. Today's all-too typical mother believes that whether her child experiences success or failure in whatever realm is completely up to her. If she is sufficiently attentive to her child's needs and sufficiently proactive in his life, he will succeed. If not, he will have problems. The natural consequence is anxiety, self-doubt and guilt.

Symptomatic of this ubiquitous state of bad mental health is mother-to-mother conversation, which will invariably be all about children: what they're doing for their children, their children's latest magnificent accomplishments, and so on. That today's mothers cannot seem to think of anything else to talk about is sad. My mother once told me that when mothers got together in the 1950s, they talked about everything but their children.

"We talked about interesting things," was the way she put it.

The more attention you pay a child, the less attention the child will pay to you. The 1950s mother went about her child rearing with an almost casual attitude. It was "all in a day's work," as opposed to being all of her day's work. She exuded a sense of confidence in her authority; therefore, her child recognized her authority. She established a clear boundary between herself and her child that today's mother feels prohibited from doing. Thus, today's mother often feels she is under all-day assault from her children.

In any relationship, a well-defined boundary is necessary to respect. For example, men may "like" women who do not establish clear boundaries, but they have no respect for them. In this regard, it is no mystery why so many of today's kids seem to have no respect for their mothers or any other adult.

If I ask someone to explain why a high level of parent involvement is good, the typical response is along these lines: "Well, I mean, they need to know you care about them, right?" I knew my mother cared about me, but she wasn't involved with me. She was involved with other adults, and when she remarried she was primarily involved with her husband, my stepfather. I always knew that I could depend on her, but there was enough of a boundary in the relationship.

This state of affairs is healthy for both parent and child.

Most of the discipline problems today's parents experience have their genesis in this nouveau and very dysfunctional family model. These discipline problems are not going to be corrected by manipulating reward and punishment. They will correct themselves when the dysfunction is corrected. The problem: It's difficult to accept that what one does is dysfunctional when everyone does it.

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