SFL 160 Family Processes Midterm

Why we study the family:

To understand the complexities of family systems

To help unhealthy families and support healthy families

To understand the human life course (family of origin to family of procreation)

Family system:

Individual's rules, boundaries, routines and norms that are associated with a self defined group of individuals.

Family process:

Functions and relationships between the individual members of the family unit. The actual specific way you do things.

Cohabitation trends:

Originally common among students in ivy league schools, then shifted to be a sort of practice testing ground, a next step towards marriage. Now it is a normative relationship stage, something that everyone does.

Divorce trends:

1. No-fault divorce "irreconcilable differences"

2. Decrease in divorce in recent years but due to increased cohabitation instead of marriage

Marital trends:

1. Individualized Marriage

2. Child bearing disconnected from marriage

3. Youth still think marriage is important, but also don't necessarily think marriage is more fulfilling than other lifestyles

Individualized marriage:

marriage based on the pursuit of individual goals and happiness

Pure truth:

Spiritual knowledge, a direct line of truth from the ultimate source of all knowledge.

Diluted truth:

secular knowledge from other sources, sometimes poorly interpreted, with limited knowledge

Relative truth:

truth that comes from personal experiences and acquired information

Bias:

1. Our knowledge, the results are wrong due to the information we use or create to obtain it

2. Often based on pre-existing preferences

3. Justification

4. When we think it applies to everyone else except for us

Construct:

1. How we conceptualize something that can't be measured directly (Love, happiness, conflict)

2. Something we want to study, but not quantifiable

3. Basically everything in social science is a construct

Variable:

Something that varies and is measureable

Independent Variable:

What predicts our DV.

Dependent variable:

What we want to know about

Researcher bias:

individuals who do studying are changing results (intentionally or unintentionally)

Sample/selection bias:

the people/families we learn from will limit our findings in some way

Family systems theory:

1. "The Process Theory"

2. Each individual in a family acts and is acted upon by all other members of the family

3. Most Central theory in the study of family science

4. Says the best way to study the family was to look at the family as a whole; not just study the individuals within the family

5. Boundaries, subsystems, structures, equilibrium

Family Life Course Theory:

1. "The Big Picture Theory"

2. Two perspectives: Life course and developmental

3. Transitions are key focal points of family life

4. Interconnected trajectories, roles, transitions, connections, diversity/variability

5. Settings→ historical, cultural, generational

Developmental perspective:

Individuals and families undergo normative and measurable change over time

Life course perspective:

to understand individuals and families we have to look at how they change across time and generations

Symbolic Interaction Theory:

1. "The Abstract Theory"

2. Symbolic relevance and shared meanings

3. Symbols, perception, roles, interaction pragmatic actor- imaginatively rehearse

4. Families and the individuals within them create symbolic relevance to their lives.

5. How we interpret and give meaning to our lives and relationships determines our behavior and actions as a family

6. Families, as a unit, create shared meanings around symbols through interacting with them

Symbols:

something that represents or stands for thoughts, feelings, and ideas

How symbols influence families:

Symbols hold shared meaning and help families to establish connections. If you understand the meaning of a symbol, you are in on the meaning that is worthless to an outsider.

3 main contexts family life course theory suggests:

1. Historical

2. Cultural

3. Generational

Cultural settings effects:

strong effect on behavior

Status Quo effect:

when we make our transitions in conjunction with norms to fit in

Reactionary effect:

when we make transitions in opposition to norms to set ourselves apart

Generational placement:

1. How you are labeled in a family generationally

2. Shifts across the life course

With generational shifts comes:

1. Changing roles

2. Changing expectations

3. Changing resources

Interactions role with symbolic theory:

Our meanings are constantly being reassessed and changed based on our interactions and experiences with other

Interaction creates

meaning; meaning is not pre-existing

Paradigm:

collection of thinking , beliefs and values, that characterize a group or community

Family paradigm:

collective way a family views the world based on shared beliefs and values

First order process:

visible to anyone who observes the family

Second order process:

themes and beliefs that tie family processes together

Assimilation:

incorporating differing viewpoints or ideas into our existing paradigms and ideologies

Accommodation:

changing or reconstruction of worldviews based on new information

Open families:

Values communication and negotiation

Willing to change and adapt

Values both the group and individual (mutuality)

Open families potential problems:

trying to please everyone

Over emphasis on process can lead to lack of consensus

Family involvement expected to be intense

Pulling away from family can be interpreted as abandonment

Closed families:

Beliefs that are steady and stable over time

Tradition and loyalty

Family priority over individuals

Closed families potential problems:

low tolerance for opposition leads to controlling parents, clear hierarchy

Overly rigid

"Like a jail"

Random families:

Value creativity and novelty

Individuality over family

Very permeable boundaries

Random families potential problems:

failure to provide boundaries

Synchronous families:

Emphasis on shared values

Communication is implicit

Family members must be skilled at reading subtle signs

Limited interaction

Synchronous families potential problems:

If individual can't read signs - problems will persist

Tend to be conflict avoidant

Folkways:

Rules about less serious behavior

Mores:

rules about serious issues or behavior

Metarules:

Rules about rules

Where do rules come from?

family goals and paradigms

How do families create rules out of paradigms?

Merging and blending of previous rules to fit the new family system

Ritual:

a repeated event that is typically done the same way each time.

Family ritual:

a repeating family event that occurs in the same manner each time that takes on special meaning.

Continuity differences with rituals and routines:

Rituals: behavior repeats through the generations

Routines: behavior repeated over time and can be observed but differ across generations

Commitment differences with rituals and routines:

Rituals: we reflect on the event and place special feelings and emotions on it

Routines: little thought after the event is done.

Communication differences with rituals and routines:

Rituals: communication regarding the event is centered on symbols and meaning

Routines: communication regarding the event is centered on tasks

Big differences with rituals and routines:

Routines lack the symbolic relevance to families

Rituals stabilize family life

Routines structure family life

Rituals are used by families to define them and set them apart from other families

Boundaries:

part of managing rituals is making sure they are strengthening the right boundaries

who is in and who is out of the family system

Overritualization:

too much info (too much stuff) in the rituals

Underritualization:

having few or no rituals

Dismemberment:

pushing people away and making them feel excluded

Contention:

the ritual becomes a time of fighting and distancing

Occurs because of overritualization

Fragmentation:

the ritual is re-invented every year - no one really knows what to expect

Trivialization:

remaking and commercializing the ritual

3 processes of rule creation:

1. Rule discovery

2. Rule negotiation

3. Rule creation

Rule discovery:

finding out what rules each partner has previously used or valued

Driven by paradigms/ideology

Driven by open communication

Rule negotiation:

discussing rule priorities based on these previous experiences.

Linked to paradigm formation/merging - Priorities come from our values/beliefs

Rule creation:

the merging and blending of previous rules to fit the new family system

most families use variations of traditional rules

1960 - 1980:

The end of the "traditional" family

2000's - on:

The advent of "emerging adulthood"

Two trends in child bearing:

Child bearing disconnected from marriage

Individualized society

What do we use our relative truth for?

interpret and evaluate the pure and diluted truth we obtain.

inferential statistics:

making guesses about a "population" from the numbers in our sample.

Causation:

to determine one thing causes another

Correlation:

to co-relate two things together

Theory helps us:

arrange those constructs into meaningful patterns

Theories are:

1. Best guesses, not fact

2. Constantly changing

3. Need constant testing

Subsystems:

individuals, dyads, groups within the family system.

Structures:

the underlying patterns of interactions families have.

Equilibrium:

the idea that family systems are changing and transitioning but ultimately seek to maintain a balance between all their tasks.

Interconnected trajectories:

if each individual in a family has their own life trajectory, then those trajectories in a family system will influence each other in reciprocal ways.

Connections:

families and individuals are connected to different things (people, places, culture, time, community) which all influence change.

Second order processes:

direct first order processes

2nd order processes:

change over time as new information and experiences are obtained

develop along with 1st order processes in families

Rules tend to

act in conjunction with each other instead of in isolation

Rule sequences have the potential to be:

either healthy (promote family goals and equilibrium) or unhealthy.

Rules must be:

developmentally appropriate

not be disabling

Discovery:

newlyweds must discover which rituals are important to their partners

Negotiation:

families must decide which elements of family traditions to continue and which to create on their own