Parents are the first to experience the challenge of unending questions, as children begin to explore the world around them. Therefore, beginning with the parents, young adults need to first have an affirmative support system to encourage free exploration and the eventual discovery of mentors. In her research, John-Steiner found that creative adults raised more creative individuals. She states:

1. The intensity with which artists experience and remember their early years is frequently linked to the help and encouragement they received from their parents and other adults who were engaged in taking care of them. … They fostered their children’s talents both by example and tuition. The enrichment artists receive throughout their childhood under these circumstances can contribute to their life-long openness to experience, to the intensity of their vision, and to their ability to test the boundaries of the known and the familiar.
   

The base of the foundation begins at home — ideally a place where a child can create and foster memories through play, reading, development of relationships and learned skills through generational transfer. Kotre poses the question, “Is it possible that stories we are told about ourselves eventually become memories of our own?” Answering yes, Kotre points out, “especially if we accept the moral of the story.” The same thing happens as we are told stories about objects around the house – the story of being rocked in a chair by your mother the same as her mother and grandmother rocked also rocked their newborns. Cskiszentmihalyi finds the various memories that are associated with objects and what is often shared with the family. These stories become collective memories of the family; and are the markers on which family meaning is made. As Kotre describes “They are the glue that binds a child to a family… It makes me one of them.” Although many of these stories are not actual memories of the child – they were not present or even alive when they occurred – “they reveal a deeper truth: how much he values belonging to his family.” According to Cskiszentmihalyi, shared stories result in a family that shares collective goals, and even collective memories, both that encourage the development of each other’s identity and development of self.

Prior to his father’s death, Joseph Cornell grew up in the ideal family situation, with special memories of Christmas celebrations with his grandparents. After moving to Long Island and taking on a leadership role in the family after their death, Cornell continued to remain close with his siblings. His sister Betty described a Bunny Society that the siblings had created. And several of his shadow boxes included his brother Robert’s drawings of rabbits.

Csikszentmihalyi states, “(t)he importance of the home derives from the fact that it provides a space for action and interaction in which one can develop and maintain, and change and identify. In its privacy one can cultivate one’s goals without fear of ostracism or ridicule.”

Oldenburg and his brother created freely in the safety of their home. Neubern was the result of two young boys working uninterrupted to create a fantasy world, which held the key to Oldenburg’s lifelong career as an artist.