Opening of the 2025 Lecture Series – Commemoration of the International Day of Families

Written by: Alzira Célia, Probo Chaves

On May 17 Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP), Argentina launched the 2025 Conference Series in celebration of the International Day of Families, established by the United Nations. The event, chaired by Rosetta Conti, gathered 25 in-person participants and 20 virtual attendees. It began with a regional activity report presented by Roswita Dueck de Giuliano, President of WFWP for Latin America.

The keynote address, titled “The Family as a Social Fractal: Between the Intimate and the Universal,” was delivered by Lic. Alzira Probo Chaves. Her presentation explored the family as both a structural and symbolic unit essential to fostering a culture of peace. She emphasized the family’s decisive role as the primary environment for emotional and social formation, where values such as empathy, forgiveness, and justice are first learned and lived. Citing Pope Francis’s 2015 reflection—“There is no perfect family […] without the practice of forgiveness, the family becomes ill”—she underscored forgiveness as central to emotional and spiritual well-being.

From this foundation, Chaves highlighted the family as a natural setting for the development of empathy and emotional growth, grounded in responsible and loving parenting. Forgiveness, in this context, is not only a moral imperative but also a psychological necessity for individual and collective health.

To support her thesis, Chaves drew from a transdisciplinary framework incorporating insights from modern science, affective psychology, and fractal theory. She noted that the dominant scientific paradigm since the 17th century, marked by the Cartesian split between mind and body, had long marginalized emotion as a valid form of knowledge. However, the epistemological shift at the end of the 20th century brought renewed recognition of emotional intelligence as vital to personal development and societal well-being. Referencing Daniel Goleman’s 1995 work, she pointed out that empathy, self-regulation, and intrinsic motivation are core competencies—equal to or greater than IQ—in determining human success.

Chaves also introduced the concept of fractals, developed by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, as a metaphor for understanding family dynamics. Fractals describe self-similar structures that repeat across different scales, evident in patterns found in nature such as snowflakes, tree branches, blood vessels, and coastlines. While these forms replicate a common pattern, each remains unique.

In this light, the family can be viewed as a social fractal—a recurring yet individually distinct structure—reproduced across different cultural and generational contexts. Just as no two snowflakes are alike, no two families are the same. Yet they share a common structural foundation: relationships rooted in belonging, care, value transmission, identity formation, and generational continuity, emerging from the foundational triangle of father-mother-child. This diversity within structural similarity is what gives each family its unique beauty.

As part of the program, a participatory workshop was held with in-person attendees. Each participant received a family tree template and was invited to identify and share which ancestor had shown them the most love. This reflective exercise deepened the collective understanding of how foundational relationships of care and belonging shape our future connections. It also offered a visual and emotional appreciation of the fractal structure within family systems.

Dr. María Gabriela Tomasini, a participant, reflected: “The lecture concluded with a powerful proposal: protecting and fostering value-based education within the human family is the most efficient, natural, and accessible strategy for achieving world peace. This fractal approach shows that by strengthening families, we create the conditions for harmonious interdependence, global co-prosperity, and the happiness of the great human family.”

“Families are emotional and relational cores that can catalyze broader social transformation. Integrating emotion and thought—from the intimate to the universal—is essential to building a more just and peaceful world,” concluded Lic. Alzira Probo. “In this regard, it is vital to recognize and celebrate UN-designated observances such as the International Day of Families (May 15) and the Global Day of Parents (June 1), which affirm the pivotal role of families in sustainable development and social cohesion.”