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The Power of Partnership

In this episode, I reflect on my determined three-year-old taught me about power, partnership, and shared dignity.

My middle son was one of my greatest teachers about power—though I didn’t know it at the time. At three years old, he was determined, spirited, and very clear about having things his way. I can still hear his small, emphatic voice declaring, “You’re not the boss of me!”

We had a rough start finding our way with each other. Whatever I was doing in those early days wasn’t working. It took a Parent Effectiveness Training course for me to discover a different response. Instead of meeting his defiance with more control, I began to say, “And you’re not the boss of me either—so we need to figure out how to work together.”

Something shifted. When he felt listened to and respected, the power struggles softened, and we stepped out of the tug-of-war. Today, he writes me the most beautiful cards on birthdays and Mother’s Day. He tells me he always felt unconditionally loved and supported—even when we were stumbling through those early years. He says the way we learned to work together shaped how he parented his own sons. That fierce little boy became one of my greatest teachers about partnership. I didn’t yet have language for what we were learning—but years later, I would find it.

My oldest son, by contrast, was easier in temperament. We didn’t clash in the same way, but he too has often told me he always felt deeply loved and supported. And by the time my youngest came along—the baby, years behind his brothers—I was a different kind of mother—a mother who had learned to listen.

My blueprint for parenting was shaped long before I ever became a mother. It was formed in the family home I grew up in and carried quietly into my marriage. It was simply the air we were breathing. Spanking was normal. I probably received a swat from my dad almost daily for speaking up. I learned, quickly, that silence kept the peace.

Learning to stay quiet may have kept me out of trouble as a child, but it did not serve me well in my marriage. When your voice has been trained to soften itself, partnership can be difficult to recognize—even more difficult to ask for.

In many homes, authority was unquestioned and discipline was swift. It was a given that power—especially financial power—resided largely in male hands. Even my own mother, divorced in 1963, found it difficult to obtain credit in her own name. I was married in 1966 and didn’t even question the structure. It wasn’t until 1974 that federal law prohibited discrimination in credit based on sex or marital status.

I did what I believed a good wife was supposed to do. I tried to live inside a model that didn’t quite fit me—just as my son had resisted the models that didn’t fit him. I stayed home with my boys when I could. When we needed extra income, I worked—pinch-hitting rather than building something of my own.

I followed the expectations that had shaped me. And yet, somewhere deep inside, I longed for something more mutual. The idea of needing permission—even agreement—to pursue school or personal growth stirred something restless in me. It wasn’t rebellion. It was a longing to stand beside, not behind.

My marriage lasted twenty-seven years. We separated twice and reconciled. When it finally ended, I realized something I hadn’t fully seen before. I hadn’t been living in partnership. I had been living in a model that assumed imbalance. We were products of a time and place. It was the norm—a structure we inherited, and we didn’t even have a name for it.

In 1987, during the middle years of my marriage, I encountered the work of Riane Eisler, now eighty-eight and still writing, teaching, and speaking around the world. She describes two fundamental ways societies organize themselves: domination and partnership. Domination is power over. Partnership is power with.

As we mark Women’s History Month, I find myself especially grateful for voices like hers—women who have helped us name what many of us have lived but struggled to articulate.

But Eisler’s work goes far beyond those simple definitions. At eighty-eight, she continues to articulate a vision that transcends old political categories and invites us to mature beyond rigid hierarchies.

She does not argue for reversing domination. She calls for transforming it. She reframes peace not merely as the absence of war, but as something rooted in our earliest relationships—between parent and child, between women and men. She argues that if children first learn that force, fear, and rigid control are normal, those patterns echo outward into larger systems. But if they learn respect, empathy, and shared power, those patterns echo outward as well.

What moves me most about Eisler’s vision is her systemic lens. She connects family life to economics, spirituality, education, human rights, and even environmental sustainability. She challenges the old assumption that domination is simply “human nature.” Her work in cultural evolution and neuroscience suggests that we are not prisoners of selfish genes or original sin—that caring and empathy are just as deeply rooted in our humanity.

Through books like The Chalice and the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations, she has invited us to rethink what we value. She asks us to consider that the real wealth of a society is not merely financial output, but the well-being of people and the health of our natural world. She invites us to recognize that caregiving, dignity, and mutual respect are not sentimental ideals—they are structural foundations.

As I read her work, I realized I had already seen the difference in my own kitchen. I had tried domination with my son. It failed. Partnership worked—and the fruit of that shift didn’t just calm a toddler. It shaped a man. That is the pattern Eisler describes—what we practice in our most intimate relationships becomes the template for our larger systems.

Domination demands compliance. Partnership invites participation. Domination relies on fear or control. Partnership builds influence through respect.

When I look at our larger social structures—families, workplaces, communities—I can’t help but wonder what might shift if we leaned more intentionally toward partnership. Not as weakness. Not as idealism. But as maturity. History reminds us how recently imbalance was written into law and custom. It is sobering to remember how normalized it once was for power to rest in one set of hands. But history also tells another story: models can change. What was once assumed can be reimagined.

I don’t pretend to understand the full complexity of our national moment. But I do know this: partnership has created more strength in my life than domination ever did. It has built trust where control built fear. It has fostered growth where power struggles created distance. And it begins in small places—in a kitchen with a determined three-year-old, in a marriage where we begin to name what we truly long for, in conversations where voices are invited rather than silenced.

Partnership doesn’t erase difference. It doesn’t eliminate conflict. But it changes the posture we bring to it. It asks us to listen, to share power, to value mutual dignity over control.

If that shift can transform a family, I can’t help but hope it might ripple outward. Perhaps the real strength of a society is not measured by who holds the most power, but by how power is held.