Theories of Family

If there are very few things more complicated than a family. While we some people may offer sincere advice about how they think a family should be run or what worked for them, even experts in the field understand that we can’t boil down how family members influence and interact with one another to a couple sentences of advice. That being said, many have studied the family in depth and have come up with fundamental explanations for why families at the way that they do, and I am going to talk about four of those which are most prominent.

While each of these theories can hardly explain the complexities of all family interactions, they are very helpful in understanding some of the basic reasons a given family is the way that it is. The first few theories I want to mention just briefly because I wanted to talk more in-depth about the last one.

Exchange Theory, in essence, assumes that all of our relationships with others are based on how it benefits us, and we are only satisfied in relationships if we feel like we are getting at least as much out of it as we are putting into it.

Symbolic Interaction just means that actions are symbolic of emotions, and the same actions can mean very different things if the situations differ. For some families a hug might be a simple greeting, while in others it could happen less often and represent a deeper affection.

Systems Theory is a bit more complicated, but basically explains the behavior of the family as a network of family roles and implicit or explicit rules. I talked a bit about how important the family culture is last week, I didn’t really know I was talking a lot about the systems theory, as that is really what this theory is all about.

I was a fairly well-behaved child growing up, but that didn’t stop me from having occasional power struggles with my parents as I pushed the boundaries of what I could get away with. Conflict Theory states that interactions between family members are primarily driven by subconscious desires for ‘power’ and the subsequent conflicts that arise from clashes in these desires. I mention power in quotation marks because we can interoperate power in a bunch of different ways, and in the context of conflict theory, it just means a person’s ability to get what they want.

Kids do this a lot by trying to manipulate parents into giving them what they want, usually attention. It is also easy to see in couples with deteriorating relationships as they focus on who seems to have the upper hand in the relationship. Unfortunately, it happens when parents feel like they must always have the last word or have the one-up when punishing a child.

While this theory seems to be very focused on the negative, it is actually very useful in trying to solve conflict. When we expect people to naturally strive for power, we understand that they aren’t evil and aren’t really out to get us. In family situations, if we can look for the reason why someone is acting hostile towards us, we can get past the petty reasons for arguing, and address the deeper issue.

For example, if a middle school aged child disrespects his parents, instead of retaliating by punishing him for acting that way, they could look at the why. Maybe he is being bullied in school and needs to take out his frustration about his lack of control over his life, or maybe he is feeling lonely and is subconsciously trying to get his parents to notice him more. In either of those cases, simply punishing the child would have caused more harm than good and wouldn’t have solved the problem in the short term or long term.

For a long time I have always hated conflict, but I really enjoyed learning about how it is such a central part in all of our lives, and when we really understand it, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.