The Familial Context of Creativity: Patterns of Nurturance in Families of Creative Children

This article presents the results of a longitudinal research study undertaken to understand the familial context of creative children. The objective was to identify commonalities and specifics in patterns of nurturance present in the home environments of creative children. The participants, identified using intensity sampling, comprised four children in the age group three to 16 years at the time of selection, who had received public recognition for their creative pursuits; their families, and each child’s guru/coach. Qualitative semi-structured interviews and naturalistic observations were used to understand the dynamic nature of the relationships within the family setting that led to the discovery of the child’s creativity and its subsequent nurturance. Detailed case profiles were developed over a three year period. The case profiles reflected commonalities in the basic processes of nurturance. All the families were cohesive, with the members sharing a commonality of purposes. Parents actively fostered their children’s creativity by allocating resources—money, time and effort; introducing the child to the domain and the field; being closely involved in the learning process; and expressing praise. The uniqueness of the cases lay in the specifics – in the quality of cultural capital available to the families, in the parents’ experiences as children which were the motivational source for parenting. The key feature in nurturance was the synchronicity of purpose created by strong parental motivation to nurture their child’s creativity and the strong internal motivation of the child to persevere in the creative domain.