Creating Candidates for Cults

Cults do not destroy families as much as stuck-togetherness attitudes in families create candidates for cults. When parents focus on societal influence it actually serves to increase their anxiety even though it helps them avoid personal responsibility. On the other hand, parents who accept the fact that their children are less likely to be influenced by other systems to the extent that they are comfortable in their own, while they might find the idea more painful at first, are given an a means of approaching the problem that is quite within their power, and it can, in turn, contribute to their own self-respect.

Edwin Friedman, Generation to Generation