Final Exam Review

Question 1

What are the five family maintenance strategies?

Answer 1

1. Positivity
2. Openness
3. Assurances
4. Social Networks
5. Sharing Tasks

Question 2

What are the functions of family stories?

Answer 2

• to remember
• to create belonging and reaffirm family identity
• to educate current members and socialize new ones
• to aid changes
• to provide stability by connecting generations
• to entertain

Question 3

Define couple rituals

Answer 3

• expressions of affection, code words for secrets, and repetitive daily/weekly expereinces.
• these rituals function to develop relational culture and may include:
  
  • enjoyable activities (e.g. playing golf together)
  • togetherness (e.g. after dinner walks)
  • escape episodes (e.g. “date night)

Question 4

What are negative rituals?

Answer 4

• obsessively engaging in work rituals to gain distance and avoid relational contact.
• partner abuse.
• routinely picking fights and then engaging in destructive behavior (e.g. sexual binging) in self-righteous anger.

Question 5

Define deception.

Answer 5

involves communicating or withholding information knowingly and intentionally for the purpose of creating a false belief.

Question 6

What are the three couple storytelling styles?

Answer 6

1. Connected:
   
   1. tell stories “as if they are jointly owned by both partners.”
2. Functional Separate:
   
   1. couples demonstrate respect, validation, and support while engaging in individual storytelling of unshared experiences.
3. Dysfunctional Separate:
   
   1. couples exhibit contradiction, disagreement, and poor listening as each tells their stories.

Question 7

Define and identify relational currencies.

Answer 7

• communication behaviors that carry meaning about the affection or caring dimension of human relationships.
• as partners share currencies, they will form arguments about their meanings and either strengthen or limit their relationship worldview.
• certain currencies make a direct statement (e.g. flowers = “I’m sorry”).
  
  • Positive verbal statements
  • Sex
  • Gifts
  • Money
  • Food
  • Favors
  • Listening
  • Facial expressions
  • Touch

Question 8

Define confirming and disconfirming communication.

Answer 8

• Confirming:
  
  • implies acknowledgment and may be used to gain power when one tries to get another to identify with him/her, or when one tries to give rewards in order to gain power.
• Disconfirming:
  
  • the “silent treatment” represents this type of communication.

Question 9

Define self-disclosure.

Answer 9

serves as a major means of gaining intimacy within a relationship, but it can also be used as a power strategy when one attempts to control the other through the “information power” gained through self-disclosure.

Question 10

Define rejecting.

Answer 10

messages tie directly to punishment messages and are often used as control in family power plays.

Question 11

Define dominance.

Answer 11

relates to dyadic, relational behavior. Domineeringness comes from an individual’s behavior.

Question 12

What are Fitzpatrick’s three couple typles?

Answer 12

1. Independent:
   
   1. accept uncertainty and change. They represent the most autonomous of the types, but do share and negotiate autonomy.
2. Separate:
   
   1. differ from independent in greater conflict avoidance, more differentiated space needs, fairly regular schedules. They experience little sense of togetherness or autonomy.
3. Traditional:
   
   1. uphold a fairly conventional belief system and resist change or uncertainty. Leads to a strong degree of interdependence.

Question 13

What are the five family role functions?

Answer 13

1. Providing for:
   
   1. basic resources
   2. nurturance and emotional support
   3. adult sexual needs and gender socialization
   4. kinship maintenance and family management
   5. individual development

Question 14

What are Hochschild’s three types of working couples?

Answer 14

1. Traditional:
   
   1. women work but see themselves primarily as mother, homemaker, and community members. Husbands expect them to take care of the home too.
2. Transitional:
   
   1. see husband’s identity as the provider. Husbands don’t mind that their wives work, but want them to take care of most home responsibilities too.
3. Egalitarian:
   
   1. both partners jointly share home responsibilities as well as take advantage of career opportunities. Power is to be shared.

Question 15

What are Fitzpatrick and Ritchie’s four communication patterns?

Answer 15

1. Consensual:
   
   1. high in both conversation and conformity strategies. Communication is characterized by a pressure for agreement, though children are encouraged to speak freely.
2. Pluralistic:
   
   1. high in conversation orientation and low in conformity. Open communication and emotional supportiveness.
3. Protective:
   
   1. low in conversation and high on conformity dimensions. Stress upholding family ruels and avoiding conflict.
4. Laissez-faire:
   
   1. low on both conversation and conformity.

Question 16

What are role expectations?

Answer 16

society provides models and norms for how certain family roles should be assumed. Daily life within a community also serves as a source.

Question 17

What is role enactment/performance?

Answer 17

the actual interactive behavior that defines how the role is enacted (e.g. working-mother taking child to daycare, stay-at-home-dad going on fieldtrips).

Question 18

What is role negotiation?

Answer 18

as individuals confront their roles, they expereince a process whereby, in conjunction with others, they structure reality and give meaning to their lives.

once a role is assumed, the process of role enactment usually involves negotiation with those in related roles.

Question 19

What are the five couple authority types?

Answer 19

1. Spouses:
   
   1. marital power reflects the extent to which one spouse loves and needs the other. The spouse with the strongest feelings may put themselves in a less powerful position because the person with less interest can more easily control the one more involved.
   2. the souse with the greater range of authority area has the higher relative authority.
2. Wife-dominant/Husband-dominant:
   
   1. dominance by one spouse permeates all areas of family power: the use of resources/bases, power processes, and power outcomes.
3. Syncratic:
   
   1. a relationship characterized by much shared authority and joint decision making.
4. Autonomic:
   
   1. the coupld divides authority (e.g. wife may make decisions regarding family vacations, the purchase of a new home, and children’s education while the husband may make decisions regarding the purchase of anything with a motor on it).
5. Children & power:
   
   1. parents are expected to control and be responsible for their children’s behavior. The law also places power in the parents’ hands.
   2. Yet, children struggle to establish their position in the family, to gain certain resources, and/or to establish identity.

Question 20

What are the three types of decision making?

Answer 20

1. Consensus:
   
   1. the most democratic process and involves discussion until agreement is reached.
2. Accomodation:
   
   1. occurs when some family members consent to a decision not because they totally agree, but because they believe that further discussion will be unproductive. This often requires a great deal of trading.
3. De facto:
   
   1. decisions are made when the discussion reaches an impasse and one member decides to go ahead and make a decision for the family.

Question 21

What are the five power bases?

Answer 21

1. Normative:
   
   1. family’s values and cultural/societal definitions of where the authority lies (e.g. the mother has power managing the day-to-day activities of children, only the father workers and/or deals with financial issues).
2. Economic:
   
   1. monetary control exerted by the breadwinner. In some families, a breadwinning father may refer to the household income as “my money”).
3. Affective:
   
   1. reflect who in the family nutures others (e.g. a mother may withhold her normal affection to a son who breaks curfew).
4. Personal:
   
   1. each family member’s personality, physical appearance, and role competence (e.g. Sarah makes a “cute face” to get what she wants from her grandparents, things she knows her parents wouldn’t allow).
5. Cognitive:
   
   1. insight family members have, or the sense of their power influences their own actions and affects others (e.g. some children learn at a young age what strategies to use when trying to get what they want from different family members).

Question 22

Define the one-up and one-down power positions.

Answer 22

• One-Up:
  
  • one family member attempts to exercise more power control over one or more other members.
• One-Down:
  
  • members accepts from the one-up member the control implied in the messages.

Question 23

What are the four influence strategies?

Answer 23

1. Bargaining:
   
   1. offering to pay for some of the item, offering to do something to get the item, reasoning with arguments, or making negotiations.
2. Persuasion:
   
   1. giving opinion, asking repetitively, begging, or whining.
3. Emotional:
   
   1. showing anger, pouting, “sweet talking,” or making parents feel guilty.
4. Request:
   
   1. directly asking, expressing a need/want, or demanding.

Question 24

Define commitment

Answer 24

implies intense singular energy directed toward sustaining a relationship.

Question 25

What are the Stages of Family Life?

Answer 25

• Leaving home
• Joining of families through marriage
• Familes with young children
• Families with adolescents
• Launching children
• Families in later life

Question 26

Name the Horizontal Stressors.

Answer 26

• Development
• Unpredictable
• Historical events

Question 27

Name the Vertical Stressors.

Answer 27

• Larger Society: racism, sexism, classism, ageism, poverty.
• Community: disappearance of community, more work, less leisure, no time for friends.
• Extended Family: family emotional patterns, triangle, secrets, legacies.
• Immediate Family: violence, addictions, depression, lack of spirituality, etc.
• Individual: genetic makeup, abilities, disabilities.

Question 28

Define resilience.

Answer 28

refers to a family’s ability to “do well in the face of adversity.”

Question 29

Name the seven characteristics of functional families.

Answer 29

1. Interactions are patterned and meaningful.
2. There is more compassion and less cruelty.
3. Persons are not scapegoats.
4. Members exhibit appropriate self restraint.
5. Boundaries are clear.
6. Life includes joy.
7. Humor misconceptions are minimal.

Question 30

Name the four characteristics of untroubled/nurturing families.

Answer 30

1. Self worth is high.
2. Communicatino is direct, clear, specific, and honest.
3. Rules are flexible, human, appropriate, and subject to change.
4. The linking to society is open and hopeful.

Question 31

Name the characteristics of optimal family functioning.

Answer 31

• Strong sense of trust; members rarely take oppositional attitudes and avoid blaming each other.
• Enjoyment; optimal families are spontaneous, witty, and humorous.
• Lack of preoccupation with themselves; don’t overanalyze or take life too seriously.
• Maintenance of conventional boundaries reflecting strong parental coalition and clear sense of hierarchy.