The Power of Family Culture in Shaping Identity and Resilience with Nancy Shapiro Rapport

What if the way your family functions wasn’t something you had to figure out as you go… but something you could actually design?

In this episode, I sit down with Nancy Shapiro Rapport, co-founder of Our Family Culture, to explore what it really means to parent with intention and how to create a family culture that reflects your deepest values. Because the truth is, every family has a culture but most of us are living in one by default, not by design.

For post-traumatic parents, this can feel especially overwhelming. If you didn’t grow up with a clear model of healthy family life, how are you supposed to build one for your own children?

Nancy shares how her decades of experience as a school counselor (and her work with thousands of families) led her to one powerful realization: Children don’t just grow up in a home. They grow up inside a culture.

Together, we break down how to define your values, align with your parenting partner, and translate abstract ideals into everyday behaviors your children can actually live and learn.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What “family culture” actually means (and why every family already has one)
• How your family becomes your child’s “emotional home base”
• The challenge of aligning values with a parenting partner
• Why you can’t prioritize every value at once (and how to choose what matters most)
• How unresolved experiences from your own childhood shape your parenting instincts
• How small, consistent actions shape long-term identity and resilience

About the Guest:

Nancy Shapiro Rapport is a former middle school counselor with over three decades of experience working with children and families. She is the co-founder of Our Family Culture, an app and framework designed to help parents intentionally build family values and translate them into everyday practices. Her work focuses on helping families move from reactive parenting to thoughtful, values-driven connection. To learn more about Nancy and her work, you can visit her website here.

Connect with me:

Want to learn more? Connect with me! You can find me on Instagram @dr.koslowitzpsychology and check out my new book Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle and Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be