Theories of Family Flashcards
1
Q
Symbolic Interaction Theory
A
- Focuses on meanings, perceptions, communication, and the social foundation of individuals’ self-concept and identity.
- Assumes that people collaborate to process information and strive to
understand the world and their role in it. - People make sense of the world through meanings assigned to things in social interactions.
- Meaningfulness requires shared understandings or the confirmation of personal beliefs by significant others.
- Individuals seek confirmation from others that their beliefs and actions align with expectations, norms, and are acceptable.
- Particularly useful in family scenarios to describe how people interpret their actions or the actions of others.
- Attribution Theory is compatible with SIT
- Example: To understand “problems” within families, it involves learning how the family members involved define the situations, identify their origins, and recognize their consequences.
- The theory does not detail how a particular symbol gains preference over another or how a specific mode of interaction becomes favored.
2
Q
Family Development Theory
A
- Explores how families evolve over time, typically from marriage to the eventual dissolution through death or divorce.
- Key concepts include stages, transitions, timing norms, and sequencing norms.
- Transitions between stages involve expected changes in family structure and operation, which can potentially be disruptive, such as marriage dissolution due to divorce or death.
- Developmentalists argue that to understand families, one must take into account the stage of development they are in and their past experiences.
- Describes when families experience changes and how they adapt to those changes over time.
- Example: The extent to which the transitions to parenthood is stressful is influenced by such factors as the degree to which it is plannes and the economic resources that the prospective parents bring to the situation.
- Understanding the development of families is complicated because each family goes through different stages, and there are no set social norms for certain transitions.
3
Q
Structural-Functional Theory
A
- Examines prevalent social patterns in families, like reasons for marriage and family size limitations, by emphasizing functionality and telos (purposefulness).
- Utilizes the concept of telos, or purposefulness, to explain common patterns, suggesting that widespread practices serve a useful purpose or function.
- Argues that social norms emerge to promote specific practices, with the decline in frequency when a practice ceases to be functional.
- Most useful when explaining very common phenomena, as the theory centers on understanding the functionality of prevalent social patterns in families.
- Example: Laws against polygamy or same-sex marriage may be explained on the basis of the widesprad belief that neither practice optimally leads to the reproduction and socialization of young children.
- Falls short in addressing changes in functionality, such as determining the threshold at which nonmarital cohabitation becomes recognized as functional.
4
Q
Family Systems Theory
A
- Focuses on how families organize themselves to navigate internal and external challenges.
- Views a family as analogous to an organism or machine, featuring subsystems, interconnected parts, and a semi-permeable boundary with the environment.
- Families input various resources, process them internally, and then send the results back into the environment.
- Connections between family system parts involve feedback loops, contributing to the family’s tendency towards equilibrium or balance.
- Example: Families with closed boundaries may be brittle or inflexible in the face of changing external circumstances. They are also relatively impervious to interventions designed to help them adapt to environmental changes.
- Offers a description of how family dynamics function rather than providing an explanation for why these dynamics operate.
5
Q
Social Exchange Theory
A
- Combines utilitarian economic principles with cognitive behavioral and social psychology perspectives, conceptualizing family members as units exchanging goods, services, status, and love to fulfill individual needs.
- Relationships are deemed stable when exchanges are perceived as fair, incorporating cultural norms, expectations, attraction, and interdependence.
- Acknowledges that cultural norms and expectations filter into relationships, shaping roles and contributions of partners.
- Essential concepts include rewards, costs, resources, needs, power, comparison level, reciprocity, fairness, norms, and relationship satisfaction.
- Assumes social relationships are interdependent, and individuals use rational thought for cost-benefit analyses to maximize individual gain, reflecting an individualistic or hedonistic worldview.
- Applied in studying mate selection, impact of women entering the workforce on couples, spouse abuse, divorce, and extramarital affairs.
- Example: Partner A will cook a gourmet meal if Partner B will take their child to the park.
- It is reductionistic and struggles to adequately account for concepts such as trust, commitment, and altruistic behavior within families.
6
Q
Social Conflict Theory
A
- Examines how interpersonal disputes within families emerge and are resolved, either constructively or destructively.
- Assumes that disagreements are inherent in social life and focuses on explaining how conflict is managed rather than achieving harmony.
- Outcomes are influenced by factors such as the relative resources of participants and the presence of rules governing dispute resolution.
- Example: Conflict tactics intended to dimish the self-worth of the opponent rarely leads to constructive outcomes.
- Less effective in addressing families with minimal conflicts, as it primarily focuses on understanding how conflict is managed rather than situations with low conflict.
7
Q
Attachment Theory
A
- Centers on the psychological development of children and the intergenerational transmission of relational styles in close relationships.
- Core concepts encompass internal working models of self and “other,” attachment style, and intergenerational transmission.
- Posits that a parent’s attachment style predicts how they relate to their child, leading to the transmission of attachment styles across generations.
- Example: : If the parental caregiver responds appropriately to the child, the child learns a positive self-concept (she is worthy and competent) and that relationships are positive and safe. Ultimately the child develops a secure attachment style.
- Deficiencies in parenting can lead to the child acquiring one of four types of insecure attachment styles.
- The child’s internal working model of close relationships becomes a template for future relationships throughout their lifespan, akin to the schema concept in cognitive theory.
- Key assumptions include a primary caregiver, bidirectionality of development, decreasing plasticity of the working model with age, cognitive processing of parental behaviors by the child, and varying interpretations based on culture, social class, sex, and age.
- Insufficient attention to influences from other family members, the overall family environment, genetic predispositions, and contextual factors like neighborhood in a child’s development.
8
Q
Ecological Theory of Development
A
- Addresses attachment theory limitations by examining child development in diverse environments.
- Emphasizes macro-level constructs, considering proximal and distal environments.
- Places the child within various contexts, from family (microsystem) to society (macrosystem), focusing on relationships between these environments (mesosystems).
- Integrates the concept of the chronosystem, recognizing the impact of time on individuals within the family.
- Applies ecological theory to family dynamics, acknowledging the dynamic nature of time (chronosystem)..
- Example: In an immigrant child’s family, where family time is prioritized over individual achievement, the child faces conflict in the school microsystem. The teacher, aligned with the dominant-culture American macrosystem emphasizing individual achievement, scolds the child for incomplete homework, creating a conflict of values and negatively impacting the child’s development.
- Falls short in explaining the functioning of families within the home setting.
- Also, does not provide a detailed explanation of how children and other family members handle conflicts behaviorally, cognitively, or emotionally within and between systems.
9
Q
Social-Cognitive-Behavioural Family Theory
A
- Originates from the behavioral psychology paradigm, emphasizing family processes rather than structure.
- Concepts include behavior, stimulus, response, reinforcement, punishment, observational learning, cognitive mediation, cognitions (attributions, schemas), modeling, role model, and environment.
- Assumptions include behavior learning, rational actions for needs, seeking rewards, avoiding punishment, and family members influencing each other.
- Useful in understanding how a family member’s behavior has evolved and in changing behavior patterns for one or more family members.
- Example: A 3-year-old is not speaking yet, because he observes that every time his adolescent brother tries to speak with their alcoholic father, their father yells, “Nobody asked you. “ Through observational or vicarious learning, the child learns to anticipate punishment if he speaks, so he avoids punishment by not speaking. These brothers are learning a negative schema for “father.”
- Downplays genetic and biological factors, such as temperament.
- Also, does not account for altruistic and sacrificing behavior, which is common in family dynamics.
10
Q
Feminist Family Theory
A
- Rooted in critical theory, cultural studies, philosophy, and sociology, it emerged from the women’s movement in the 1970s.
- Deconstructs family structures and challenges assumptions based on demographic characteristics, emphasizing equal power and value of labor between males and females.
- Brings salient topics for women, such as housework, and processes maintaining family patriarchy into discourse and research on families.
- Concepts include patriarchy, hierarchy, power, sex roles, gender, family labor, and social construction and deconstruction.
- Assumes that family roles are socially constructed, rejecting any inherent correctness or truth in traditional sex roles.
- Useful in fostering conscious awareness of family roles, freeing individuals to construct fairer roles for all family members.
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Example: It is well documented
that women perform the vast majority of childcare and elder care in families, which usually interferes with their earning power. In heterosexual couples this loss of income reduces a wife’s decision-making power. - Highlights inequality in family dynamics and advocates for fairer arrangements.
- Does not provide guidance on making interpersonal changes within the family.
- Applied feminist thought helps both female and male clients deconstruct family roles and processes, enhancing understanding and facilitating improvements in their lives.
11
Q
Sociobiological Theory
A
- Explores how biology (nature) interacts with the social environment (nurture) to shape observable behaviors.
- While emphasizing principles of evolution and genetic predispositions, it does not assert that biology determines destiny.
- Valuable for explaining diverse family variables, such as mate preferences, fertility rates, and parenting strategies.
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Example: Neglect of stepchildren is more prevalent than neglect
of biological children, who carry the parent’s genes. - Falls short in accounting for altruistic behaviors that lack apparent survival value.
12
Q
Theoretical Eclecticism
A
- Various theoretical traditions interact in multiple ways.
- Some theories have historically influenced others.
- Scholars sometimes eclectically draw upon insights from two or more traditions
to attempt a more comprehensive picture.
