The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family's positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.

After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: Develop a strong family narrative.

Moses became Americas true founding father because he evangelized action; he justified risk. He gave ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty.

When it comes to gender, marriage, family, work, and religion - we once thought of them as being fixed, but they're incredibly fluid. The same is true for love. Love was not something that was originally built between two equal partners in a relationship. It's something that's been hard-earned over time.

Our instinct as parents is to order our kids around — it's easier, and frankly, we're usually right. [But] reverse the waterfall as much as possible. Enlist the children in their own upbringing.

Children who plan their own goals, set weekly schedules, evaluate their own work build up their frontal cortex and take more control over their lives.

It's like they say in the Internet world — if you're doing the same thing today you were doing six months ago, you're doing the wrong thing. Parents can learn a lot from that.