Chapter 6: The Core of Family Life

First-Order Process

  • “specific and concrete ways of behaving and organizing family life.”

    • Largely behavioral and readily observable

  • Boundary making is a first-order process - manifest as requests, demands, and other types of feedback and communication.

  • Family roles: tells which family members engage in which responsibilities and activities

Second Order Processes

  • Second-Order Process: “Deeper inner patterns and beliefs that the collective family group holds.”

  • More abstract concepts that are less concrete and more philosophical

  • The entire family generally holds beliefs, attitudes, etc.

  • Schemas are mental representations of how things are organized, shaped, and linked.

  • Specific Example: Social schemas tell us how to act in a specific social situation

    • Schemas about attending class: avoid distracting conversations, raise a hand if you have a question, be formal when addressing the instructor

  • Schemas gain more complexity as we age.

    • Ex. a child knows that a cat has four legs and has a tail. When a child goes to the zoo and sees a lion for the first time, they will likely call it a cat.

  • The older we get, the more complex and abstract our schemas get

  • Ask a 5-year-old what a family is, then think about your definition

    • Yours will be far more complex and abstract (ex., people you choose, emotional, physical, and cognitive components, things families do together), while the five-year-olds will be very concrete and based on their mother, father, and siblings, most likely.

  • Families also have schemas (schemata is the plural form)

    • Examples:

      • The world is a dangerous or unsafe place

        • Think back to anticipatory socialization - this behavior extends from a family schema.

      • Loyalty is the most important thing

      • You need to be independent

      • Everything that happens in the family stays in the family

  • Family schemas are influenced, in part, by larger sociocultural factors

    • Race/ethnicity/cultural heritage, religion, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, etc

First And Second Order Change: Content Vs. Process

  • Change at the level of the first-order often involves working to change behavior (ex., communication techniques, routines, mindfulness practices, etc.)

    • Many therapeutic disciplines have a component of working on first-order processes; clients often describe their challenges from a first-order perspective.e

  • First-order change can be beneficial and can disrupt family homeostasis, BUT it runs the risk of reverting to old patterns.

  • Family system-oriented therapies often hope to change second-order processes.

Family Paradigms

  • Paradigm: Deeply held (sometimes not explicitly recognized) ideology that shapes how a group sees and interacts with the world (a shared group of schemata)

  • Family Paradigms: are the shared, enduring, fundamental, and general assumptions or beliefs to which family members subscribe about the nature and meaning of life, what is important, and how to cope with the world they live in

  • Change within an individual: schema/schemata shift, while paradigm shifts reflect the entire family changing its orientation.n

  • Family paradigms are rarely explicit or conscious - we may talk about behaviors but not the paradigm itself.lf

    • Example: parent scolds child for telling a friend that his/her dad was drunk and got a DUI. The child is reprimanded for the behavior, but not explicitly told about the paradigm. The family paradigm is not talking about family issues outside the family.

Assimilation & Accommodation (Or Rejection)

  • Assimilation: We adopt ideological differences into our pre-existing schema

  • Accommodation: Implies that we reorder our internal schema to make room for a new idea

  • Example: Morgan loves Batman and DC; they believe Marvel works are derivative and simplistic.

  • Morgan begins dating Alex, and they hit it off very well

  • Morgan learns that Alex loves Spiderman, and thinks that DC comics are angsty and overwrought

  • Morgan has three basic possibilities

    1. Rejects Alex’s worldview - continues beliefs about DC and Marvel

    2. Assimilate Alex’s worldview - make room for Spiderman as an exception to the rule about Marvel

    3. Accommodate Alex’s worldview - Make room for all superhero franchise content to be seen as awesome

Paradigm Development

  • Pre-paradigm - a couple has pre-existing schemata when they begin a relationship.p

  • Paradigm Emergence - a paradigm (shared schemata) begins emerging through assimilation and accommodation.

  • Paradigm Establishment - a generally stable paradigm sinks in and often recedes from active awareness (think back to homeostasis)

  • Paradigm Shift - education, experiences, crises, and other positive-feedback mechanisms may cause joint schemata (paradigms) to shift.

  • Paradigm Re-emergence - new or modified paradigms emerge and are then established (cycle can continue)

Types of Family Paradigms

  • Closed families - tradition, stability, rigid external boundaries, decision-making tends to be highly hierarchical.

  • Random Families - openness, chaos, diffuse external boundaries, decision-making tends to be unpredictable.e

  • Open Families - communication, peace, willingness to change, flexible external boundaries, decision making tends to be led by the parental unit, with dialogue

  • Synchronous Families - thinking/believing alike to avoid conflict, decision making tends to be reached through consentience

  • Exaggeration Principle