Studiegids voor artikelsamenvattingen bij Gezinspedagogiek aan de Universiteit Leiden

Which aspects of system theory underlie the McMaster model of family functioning?

• Parts of the family are related to each other.
• One part of the family cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of the system.
• Family functioning is more than just the sum of the parts.
• Transactional patterns of the family system are involved in shaping the behavior of family members.
• A family’s structure and organization are important in determining the behavior of family members.

Which types of tasks do families deal with in carrying out functions?

• Basic tasks are instrumental in nature (fundamental issues such as food provision and shelter).
• Developmental tasks encompass family issues that arise with the natural processes of growth. Two sets are identified: individual developmental stages (infancy, childhood, adolescence, etc.) and family stages (marriage, pregnancy, etc.).
• Hazardous tasks include the crises that arise in association with illness, loss of income, accidents, etc.

Which dimensions are investigated by the McMaster model of family functioning?

The McMaster model of family functioning defines dimensions, but also recognizes that there may be overlap and interaction between them. The dimensions are:

• Problem solving refers to the family’s ability to resolve problems to a level that maintains effective family functioning.
• Family roles look at the repetitive patterns of behavior by which individuals fulfill family functions.
• Communication refers to how the family exchanges information.
• Affective responsiveness is the ability to respond to a range of stimuli with appropriate quality and quantity of feelings.
• Affective involvement focuses on how much and in what way family members show an interest and invest themselves in each other.
• Behavior control looks at the pattern the family adopts for handling behavior in three specific situations (they will be further explained below).

How does the McMaster model of family functioning define a ¨family problem¨?

A family problem is seen as an issue that threatens the integrity and functional capacity of the family. Some families have ongoing difficulties that don’t threaten the integrity or function of the family. Those difficulties are not considered family problems. Problems are divided into instrumental and affective problems. Instrumental problems are the mechanical problems of everyday life (e.g. financing, housing). Affective problems are related to feelings. Affective problems can be seen on their own, whereas instrumental problems are almost always coupled with affective problems.

What does the McMaster model of family functioning predict with regards to family problems and family functioning?

Families who have difficulty in resolving both instrumental and affective problems function least effectively. Families who resolve both instrumental and affective problems function most effectively.

What are the clinical stages that families in treatment go through when using the McMaster model of family functioning?

The model offers a sequence of stages that can be followed in treatment:

1. Identification of the problem (What is the problem? Is the family identifying the problem correctly or are they displacing the real problem?).
2. Communication of the problem to appropriate resources within or outside of the family.
3. Development of alternative action plans (How do the alternative action plans vary with the nature of the problem?).
4. Decision regarding a suitable action (Is the family making a decision? Are they displacing? Are they considering the alternative action plans?).
5. The family has decided on a suitable course of action. This could be not doing anything at all, acting in a limited way, or carrying out all the aspects of the action.
6. Monitoring that action which is taken.
7. Evaluation of the success of the action (Are the family members content with the results? What did they learn?).

Which four communication styles are identified by the McMaster model of family functioning?

Communication is assessed along two continua, namely clear versus masked continuum (the clarity with which the content of the information is exchanged) and direct versus indirect continuum (does the message go to the person for whom it is intended). Based on these two continua, four styles of communication can be distinguished:

• Clear and direct communication
• Clear and indirect communication
• Masked and direct communication
• Masked and indirect communication

The model states that the more masked and indirect the overall family communication pattern is, the more ineffective the family’s functioning is.

Which are the different family functions according to the McMaster model of family functioning?

The model breaks the functions down into necessary family functions and other family functions. Necessary family functions are those that the family will have to address repeatedly if they are to function well and can be made up of instrumental, affective or mixed types. Other family functions are those that are not necessary for effective family functioning, but just come up in family’s lives.

Which necessary family functions are identified by the McMaster model of family functioning?

The model identifies five necessary family functions:

• Provision of resources
• Nurturance and support
• Sexual gratification of marital partners
• Life skills development
• Systems management and maintenance

What is role allocation?

Role allocation incorporates the concepts of the assignment of responsibilities for family functions, whether such allocations are appropriate, whether the allocation process is carried out explicitly or implicitly, by open free discussion or by dictum. It looks at if the allocated responsibilities are appropriately spread and shared among the family members, or whether a family member is being overburdened.

What is role accountability?

Role accountability refers to the process of a family member being made accountable for the responsibilities which he has been allocated. This accountability reinforces the commitment to and the effectiveness of the role being done.

What is affective responsiveness?

Affective responsiveness refers to the ability to respond to a range of stimuli with appropriate quality and quantity of feelings. The responses are divided into welfare feelings and emergency feelings. Welfare feelings are responses such as love, happiness and joy. Emergency feelings are responses such as fear, sadness, anger and depression. Effective family functioning is characterized by a wide range of responses and these families are more capable of giving appropriate responses in terms of quantity and quality.

What is affective involvement?

Affective involvement is the degree to which the family shows interest in and values the activities and interests of family members. There is a continuum of possible involvement: lack of involvement, involvement devoid of feelings, narcissistic involvement, empathic involvement, over-involvement, symbiotic involvement.

What is behavior control?

Behavior control looks at the patterns the family adopts for handling behavior in three specific situations:

• Physically dangerous situations.
• Situations involving the meeting and expressing of psychobiological needs and drives.
• Situations involving socializing behavior both inside and outside the family.

Families develop a standard of acceptable behavior for those situations. The standard and latitude for acceptable behavior determines the style of behavior control.

Which behavior control styles are identified?

Four styles of behavior control are identified:

• Rigid behavior control. This pattern is seen in situations where the rule involves a very constricted and narrow standard that allows little room for negotiation and change despite the context of the situation.
• Flexible behavior control. This involves a reasonable standard and amount of flexibility given the context.
• Laissez-faire behavior control. This refers to situations where the standard of rule is not an issue because total latitude is allowed and anything goes.
• Chaotic behavior control. In this pattern families shift in a random way from rigid to flexible to laissez-faire and family members are unaware which standard and latitude will be applied at any given time.

The model views flexible behavior control as the most effective behavior control style and chaotic behavior control as the least.

What is the environment of evolutionary adaptedness?

The environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) is the ancestral environment to which a species is adapted. It is the set of selection pressures that shaped an adaptation. For a long time scientists (such as John Bowlby) believed that the standard EEA was characterized by mother-father child rearing, where the mother was the primary and exclusive caretaker.

What is cooperative breeding?

Cooperative breeding refers to a breeding system in which group members, other than the genetic parents, help one or both parents rear their offspring. The parental care provided by group members other than the genetic mother is called allomothering. Allomothers are individuals of either sex who are not the mother and can be male, and even the genetic father.

How does Hamilton’s rule explain the altruism of alloparents?

Hamilton’s rule states that the cost of helping should be less than benefits to offspring calibrated in line with the alloparent’s degree of relatedness to his or her charge. Alloparents enhance their inclusive fitness by helping kin. Allomothers help infants as long as cost is not prohibitive and so long as it does not interfere with their own future reproductive career or caring for their own offspring when they have them.

How can cooperative breeding be characterized?

Cooperative breeding systems are flexible and dynamic. They often have one or more mated pairs. There is delayed dispersal by maturing family members. There has to be sufficient phenotypic flexibility so individuals can shift between non-reproductive and reproductive roles. There has to be some underlying neural circuitry among alloparents to respond to signs of infant need.

How can cooperative breeding lead to slower maturation?

As a result of the help of alloparents, the usual quantity versus quality tradeoffs that constrain maternal decisions no longer pertain. Mothers can produce more (or more closely spaced) offspring because the total cost of rearing each offspring to independence can go up without jeopardizing the mother’s own survival or that of her offspring. Also, the reduced costs of child rearing and the benefits of group membership mean higher rates of maternal survival.

How does cooperative breeding influence emotional and cognitive development of infants?

Unlike most other primates, human mothers’ commitment is highly contingent on social circumstances. They respond to lack of support by failing to commit right after birth, abandoning the newborn, or infanticide. They also discriminate about which infants they invest in based on their sex, birth order, and viability. Babies that are born full term and healthy looking, that are sensitive to social support cues, and engage their mothers right from birth have a higher chance of maternal commitment. This supports their emotional and cognitive development.

Why are humans so cooperative and hyper-social?

Humans are distinguished from other apes by their cooperative heritage, instead of the usual competitive heritage. Infants born in cooperative breeding systems depend on different caretakers. Maternal commitment is contingent on the mother’s perception of support from allomothers. Infants have to be adept at monitoring caretakers, reading their intentions and moods, and eliciting their care. Through practice and conditional rewards, infants improve these skills and as they grow up and become adults, become members of a hyper-social, information-sharing, and culture-transmitting species.

What is socioeconomic status?

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a construct that captures various dimensions and is multifaceted in nature. It is defined as an individual’s location in multiple environmental hierarchies, usually involving economic resources (financial capital), educational achievement (human capital, knowledge, and skills), and occupational status (social capital, connections to and the status and power of individuals in one’s social network). Each aspect of SES may have independent influence on how children are raised and how they develop over time.

How is socioeconomic status related to human development?

There is a lot of research into the correlates of socioeconomic status. Research indicates that more socially and economically disadvantaged adults and children are at risk for physical, emotional, and behavioral problems. There are associations between poverty and mental health, SES and cognitive development, and social class position and physical wellbeing. The influence of SES on children may result from the actions of parents. SES is associated with family socialization practices and the health and well-being of children. What is not clear, is the causal relationship of these correlations.

What is the social causation view of socioeconomic influence?

The social causation perspective argues that social conditions lead to variations in social, emotional, cognitive, and physical functioning. It states that social position influences the lives of individuals across time and that socioeconomic disadvantage has negative consequences for adults and children. Two theories within this perspective are the family stress model of economic hardship (FSM) and the family investment model (FIM).

What is the family stress model of economic hardship?

The FSM proposes that financial difficulties have an adverse effect on parents’ emotions, behaviors, and relationships, which in turn negatively influence their parenting strategies. This model links socioeconomic disadvantage to a family stress process that increases parents’ emotional distress and jeopardizes the healthy development of children.

What is the family investment model?

The FIM looks at the ways that parents invest financial, social, and human capital to promote the talents and wellbeing of their children. It links parents’ socioeconomic advantage to children’s physical, emotional, cognitive, and social wellbeing. The model proposes that parents with higher income and more educational attainment will make greater interpersonal and material investments in their children’s development than parents with lower SES that are forced to focus on immediate needs.

What is the social selection view of socioeconomic influence?

The social selection perspective argues that the traits and dispositions of parents influence their social status and the health and well-being of their children. Individual differences facilitate the accumulation of social advantages and are transmitted from parents to children. Positive characteristics of parents reduce exposure to economic hardship and pressure, decrease the likelihood of parent emotional distress and interparental conflict, foster involved parenting and nurturing, and lead to greater child wellbeing. This view believes that the correlations between SES, family stress processes, and child wellbeing will be reduced once controlled for positive parental characteristics.

What is the noneconomic parental resources perspective?

The noneconomic parental resources perspective is an example of a theory within the social selection view. It proposes that parental characteristics that employers value and are willing to pay for (like skills, honesty, good health, diligence, reliability) also improve children’s life chances, independent of their effect on parents’ income. Children of parents with these attributes do well even when their parents don’t have much income.

Why is there a need for an integrative model of socioeconomic influence?

On the one hand, the social causation model places too little emphasis on the role of individual differences and human agency. On the other hand, the social selection model minimizes the role that socioeconomic circumstances may play in the lives of parents and children. Recently, studies have found support for a dynamic interplay between social position and life-course development:

• Low SES in a child’s family of origin predicts lower academic achievement and continuing life stress during childhood and adolescence.

• Low SES in the family of origin predicts adverse economic and related life circumstances for adolescents.

• Antisocial youths experience lower educational attainment, which in turn increases their risk for further antisocial behavior as young adults. Both the SES and ongoing behaviors of these young adults affect the development of their children.

What is the interactionist model of socioeconomic influence?

The interactionist perspective argues that the association between SES and human development involves a dynamic interplay between social causation and social selection. It proposes an ongoing reciprocal relationship between the characteristics of individuals and the broader socioeconomic environments in which they live. Individual attributes influence a person’s social and economic position in a reciprocal process within and across generations. The following relations are hypothesized in the model:

• Positive personal characteristics (e.g. persistence, social competence, ambition) are positively related to (future) SES and the investments made in their children.

• A direct positive path from personal parental characteristics to child wellbeing. This could occur biologically through genes or the intrauterine environment or via social learning processes.

• Social and cognitive skills reduce the occurrence of SES-related family stressors.

• Low SES leads to less parental investment, affecting the child’s emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physical wellbeing.

Why is it important to examine the mental health risks for adolescents in high socioeconomic status groups?

There is a lot of research into the mental health of adolescents in low or medium socioeconomic groups, but there lacks information about those in high socioeconomic status groups. Mostly because it is believed that those adolescents have access to all kinds of protective factors. However, research shows that they are actually very similar to adolescents in low socioeconomic groups. They show externalizing problems, higher rates of major depressive disorder, and substance abuse. Understanding why they don’t seek help and what contextual factors are at play can help early intervention efforts and avoid a range of adverse outcomes.

Why do adolescents in high SES groups face barriers to help-seeking for mental health concerns?

Even though adolescents in high SES groups have greater access to health services and support, young people from low and medium SES groups engage more with health and school services. This may be due to a ¨culture of affluence¨. The unique social environment of adolescents in high SES groups might hinder help-seeking due to power, privilege, and stigma or shame about seeking help for mental illness.

How can the current theme be examined using Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human development and the help-seeking measurement framework?

Bronfenbrenner’s theory posits that an individual’s development is influenced by a series of interconnected environmental systems, ranging from the immediate surroundings to broad societal structures. Within the microsystem that surrounds them, adolescents experience a multitude of external and internal pressures. These stressors and other contextual factors within the microsystem may modulate the relationships between high SES and mental health.

What are the mental health concerns for adolescents in high SES groups?

Research shows significant mental health concerns related to substance use, externalizing and risk behaviors, bullying, depression, stress, and anxiety. Also, adverse and stressful life events, internalizing problems and prescription misuse. Adolescents in high SES groups engage in higher levels of alcohol use and intoxication, they have an earlier onset of drinking, and are more frequently intoxicated.

What factors other than family SES influence mental health concerns among adolescents in high SES groups?

Parents, neighborhood SES, school types, and peers play a crucial role. The parent-adolescent relationship especially had an influence. Excessive parental pressure to perform is associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. It is possible that parental expectations to perform academically and other forms of parental criticism interfere with the development of identity and sense of self.

What is known about help-seeking behavior by adolescents in high SES groups?

The main sources of help-seeking for mental health were formal (e.g. school-based interventions) and informal (e.g. peers). The issues were usually bullying, anxiety, depression, and substance use. With regards to school or telephone services, there were no differences between adolescents from high SES groups and low/medium SES groups. But there were differences in health service use. This may be because there is a culture among high SES families that values privacy, deterring them from seeking help, especially when their parents hold powerful societal positions.

Why should family factors be studied when looking at children with chronic pain?

Children who suffer from chronic pain have increased risk of having chronic pain syndrome in adulthood. The family is an important context for understanding, assessing, and managing pediatric chronic pain. There are associations between family and parent factors and the outcomes of chronic pain in their child, such as later disability. To understand the effect of the family and parents on the future of a child with chronic pain, specific parental behaviors and broader family factors should be examined.

Which models allow for studying parent and family factors?

It is often unclear what kinds of family factors are being investigated. There are two dominant theoretical models in which parent and family factors may be considered:

• Operant behavioral theories are centered on the role of social reinforcement in maintaining maladaptive pain behaviors. Treatments based on these theories attempt to shift social contingencies through operant conditioning to reinforce well behaviors.

• Family systems theories emphasize individuals’ behavior within the context of their family situations, such as the child’s response to pain under the conditions of the family’s overall functioning. Treatments based on these theories try to change dysfunctional patterns of relating and communicating using more traditional family therapy approaches to achieve change.

Why is there a need for an integrative approach when studying family factors and child chronic pain?

The specific relationship between parental responses and child pain outcomes are far more complex than has been considered yet. An integrative approach will improve understanding of the influence of parent and family factors through examining testable paths by which individual levels and family level variables may influence children’s pain and disability. This will emphasize the multiple levels of family assessment and integrate operant and behavioral theories of parent behavior within the broader family systems theories.

What would such an integrative model look like?

Parenting variables, like parenting style, are situated within a broader context of dyadic variables, like the quality of parent-child interaction. This is further embedded in a more global familial environment (e.g. the environment of family functioning). There is a reciprocal influence of the child’s pain itself and its accompanying levels of disability, as well as child and parental factors, and it interacts with all levels of individual, dyadic, and family variables. All these relationships need to be placed in the developmental context where family variables need to be viewed in correspondence with the age and developmental stage of the child.