Adults and kids in any family have local and developmental wholistic needs. To nurture means "to intentionally and effectively fill a living thing's needs."  Families of any type vary in how nurturing they are, over time. Young kids can't fill most of their needs healthily without wise, loving adult help. By social custom, parental desire, and legal responsibility, we expect family adults to (a) want to  learn what their dependent kids need, and (b) choose to fill them and their own needs well enough, within their limits.
    Our media and legal system describe adults who significantly ignore their children's physical, psychological, mental and spiritual (wholistic) needs as neglectful. Legal statutes define sanctions and penalties for neg-lectful caregivers. Paradoxically, they  provide no test for caregiving-compe-tence before marriage and/or child conception.

        Because adults are expected to want to nurture themselves, there are no sanctions for self neglect - which is rampant in our culture. Psychological and legal divorce is a strong indicator of a low-nurturance family and shame-based, self-neglectful adults. That implies most kids of (re)divorce may suffer some degree of wholistic neglect, which promotes false-self wound-ing and choosing  wounded partners as adults. Restated - wholistic neglect tends to  pass down the generations until aware adults intentionally break the cycle. Family Project 1 in this nonprofit site offers a way to do that, and Projects 6 and 10 are about building an effective nurturing team.

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