Communication Post-Divorce Flashcards
What are some of the stressors related to divorce?
Decline in income, loneliness, role burden, parenting across households, loss of social networks, parental conflict, and moving to a new neighborhood
Discuss the role that communication plays in a family’s ability to cope with stress.
Communication plays a critical role in family members’ ability to cope with various divorce-related stressors. It is an antecedent and a consequence of coping, but it is also a primary way in which family members cope with one another and generate meaning from their experiences.
Describe the difference between certainty-oriented individuals and uncertainty-oriented individuals.
Certainty-oriented persons are more comfortable when there is a great deal of clarity and little uncertainty; uncertainty-oriented individuals are more comfortable with uncertainty and are motivated to learn from new situations and acquire information to manage it.
Research has shown that certainty-oriented persons are more likely than uncertainty-oriented persons to have greater difficulty coping with uncertainty and avoid situations that are unpredictable.
What does Bandura’s social learning theory say about children and modeling?
It suggests that children learn to model many of their communication patterns by observing the adults around them.
What does it mean for couples to renegotiate their privacy regulation rules?
Parents must construct rules for what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate communication with each other. In particular, they must determine what information should be kept private or disclosed with one another and their children.
What are intergenerational boundaries and what happens when they are violated?
Intergeneration boundaries are boundaries that help us define who the parents and children are. A violation of intergenerational boundaries often occurs when parents turn to their children as confidants, by sharing too much private information about their sadness, financial or personal worries, relationship problems, or criticisms about their former spouse. One potential outcome that is typically described in the literature is role reversals or parentification whereby children assume a “peer-like” relationship with their parent and are given too much of a parental role in the family hierarchy.
What is a stress contagion effect?
When parents are unable to contain their stress, it can “spill over” onto their children.
What are some ways that children respond to parental conflict?
Children seem to respond to such loyalty conflicts, and inter parental conflict more generally, with avoidance and escape behaviors:
1) go into their room
2) play video games
3) turn up the volume on their television
4) read a book to escape
5) refusing to discuss the matter
6) changing the topic
7) providing evasive responses
8) simply not bringing up the topic for discussion
What are some of the elements of co-parental alliance?
They include…
1) communicating respect for the other parent
2) being able to control anger
3) maintaining constructive information exchange and problem solving about the children when confronted with stressors
4) and creating ways to share responsibility for everyday childrearing tasks, parenting, and movement between households.
Why is it important to maintain family rituals for children especially in times of crisis?
Rituals can be especially important for families that are undergoing crises, because they promote stability while simultaneously encouraging adaptation and growth.
How can communal coping help with families in crisis?
Communal coping involves more than one family member’s simply providing help to another. Research on communal coping, or the active, jointly shared coping mechanisms that groups of people use together to confront adversity, could provide further insight into the interactive nature of coping in families and corresponding health benefits.
