Family Dynamics

Families fulfill several vital functions, including ensuring the survival of children to maturity, providing the means for children to acquire skills needed to be economically productive, and teaching children the basic values of the culture (R. A. LeVine, 1988). How well a family fulfills these basic child-rearing functions obviously depends on a great many factors. Not the least of these is family dynamics, that is, how the family operates as a whole. In subsequent sections, we discuss the ways in which individual family members contribute to a child’s development. However, it is important to frame these discussions with a clear appreciation of the overall impact of family dynamics. Families are complex social units whose members are all interdependent and reciprocally influence one another.

Consider the diverse ways in which family members affect one another in the following scenario. A man loses his job because of company cutbacks, and the ensuing stress causes him to become very irritable with his wife and children. His wife, in turn, has to work extra hours to make ends meet, and her increasing fatigue makes her less patient with the children. The mother’s increased workload also means that the couple’s 8-year-old daughter is expected to do more of the household chores. This makes the daughter angry because her 6-year-old brother is not required to help her out. Soon the daughter becomes hostile to both her parents and her brother. Not surprisingly, the brother starts to fight with his sister, further upsetting the parents. Over time, tension and conflict among all family members increase, adding to the stress created by the family’s economic situation.

As researchers have increasingly focused on the complexity of family dynamics, a number of factors have become clear (Parke & Buriel, 1998). First, as illustrated by the foregoing example, all family members influence one another, both directly and indirectly, through their behaviors. Second, family functioning is influenced by the social support that parents receive from kin, friends, neighbors, and social institutions such as schools and churches (C.-Y. Lee, Lee, & August, 2011; Leidy, Guerra, & Toro, 2010; McConnell, Breitkreuz, & Savage, 2011) and is undermined by economic stresses (Riina & McHale, 2012). Thus, the sociocultural context is important for understanding family dynamics and their possible effects on children. Finally, family dynamics must be looked at developmentally. As children grow older, the nature of parent–child interactions changes. For example, as you saw in Chapter 5, when infants become independently mobile, parents start to discipline them more to keep them out of harm’s way, and this can lead to tension and anger between parent and child (J. J. Campos, Kermoian, & Zumbahlen, 1992). Similarly, as children experience increasing independence in adolescence, there sometimes is an increase in conflict between them and their parents over what is acceptable behavior (Laursen, Coy, & Collins, 1998). (See Box 12.1.)

Family dynamics may also be altered by changes in parents (for example, in their beliefs about child rearing), in the marital relationship (for example, how well the parents are getting along), or in the relationships of other family members (for example, in the level of conflict between siblings). Alterations in the family structure due to births, deaths, divorce, remarriage, or other factors can also influence interactions among family members and may affect family routines and norms, as well as children’s emotional well-being (Bachman, Coley, & Carrano, 2012; Dush, Kotila, & Schoppe-Sullivan, 2011; Lam, McHale, & Crouter, 2012). In many cases, the effects of such shifts in family dynamics tend to be gradual and continuous. However, a single event such as a traumatic divorce or the death of a parent may cause a fairly dramatic change in a child’s behavior and emotional adjustment.

Box 12.1: a closer look: PARENT–CHILD RELATIONSHIPS IN ADOLESCENCE

A common stereotype about adolescence is that, inevitably, conflict between parents and their children escalates dramatically and that parents and their adolescent children typically become alienated from one another. However, a good deal of research has shown that this simply is not true in most families (Fuligni, 1998; Laursen & Collins, 1994).

As children advance through adolescence, they do, obviously, become more willing to disagree openly with their parents and feel that their parents should have less authority over them in personal matters (Fuligni, 1998; Youniss & Smollar, 1985). However, for the most part, disagreements between parents and adolescents, though fairly frequent and often intense in early and middle adolescence (Laursen et al., 2008), are usually over mundane topics such as chores and attire. Moreover, the increase in mild conflict and bickering between adolescents and their parents in early adolescence is typically followed by the establishment of a relationship that is less contentious and volatile, and more egalitarian (Steinberg, 1990; Steinberg & Morris, 2001; van Doorn et al., 2011).

Most adolescents and their parents do not experience high levels of conflict.

MONIKA GRAFF/THE IMAGE WORKS

In a minority of families, however, parent–child conflict in adolescence runs hotter and deeper, often involving issues such as sex, drugs, and choice of friends (Arnett, 1999; Papini & Sebby, 1988). Higher levels of conflict seem especially likely when a child attains puberty earlier than his or her peers do (Collins & Steinberg, 2006; J. P. Hill, 1988; Steinberg, 1987, 1988). This may be because early maturation widens the gap between how much autonomy adolescents themselves think they deserve and how much autonomy their parents are willing to grant them. In addition, unlike their better-regulated peers, children who are unregulated and prone to negative emotions are likely to have particularly heated conflicts with their parents in adolescence about issues such as doing chores and respecting and getting along with other family members (N. Eisenberg et al., 2008). Such conflicts between adolescents and their mothers are associated with delinquency and externalizing problems in youths (N. Eisenberg et al., 2008; Sentse & Laird, 2010; van Doorn et al., 2008).

Although most parents and their adolescents are not alienated, feelings of closeness and support between them often de-cline, especially from the beginning of puberty through mid-adolescence (Fuligni, 1998; Shanahan et al., 2007; Steinberg, 1988). This decline is especially likely if the mother–child relationship is fairly negative just prior to adolescence (Laursen, DeLay, & Adams, 2010). In addition, adolescents spend less time with their parents and more time with peers than do younger children (Dubas & Gerris, 2002; Larson & Richards, 1991). Thus, the decline in feelings of closeness seems due in part to the desire by adolescents to be more autonomous and to an increase in their activities outside the home. Nonetheless, although peers are important confidants for adolescents (see Chapter 13), parents remain a primary source of support.

In thinking about family dynamics, it is also important to keep in mind that the biological characteristics (e.g., temperament) of both children and parents, as well as parental behaviors, contribute to the nature of family interactions (Denissen, van Aken, & Dubas, 2009; Ganiban et al., 2011; Rasbash et al., 2011). For example, mothers’ negativity toward their children and the degree of parenting control they use appear to be affected partly by children’s heredity (including, perhaps, their tendency to experience and express negative emotion), whereas the degree to which mothers are close and affectionate with their children appears to be partly due to the mothers’ own genetic inheritance (Narusyte et al., 2008; Neiderhiser et al., 2004).

With this larger framework of family dynamics in mind, we now turn to the role that parents play in the socialization of their children.