What can I learn about the family through life? - Chapter 15

We lead linked lives: our lives and development are intertwined with those of our family members. 

How to understand family?

The family systems theory views the family as a system: consisting of interrelated parts, and it's a dynamic one that adapts to changes in members and the environment. The nuclear family is traditionally father, mother, and at least one child. However this is not really fair to the many other forms of families so "immediate family" might be better. 

Family systems are really complex with their reciprocality and many subsystems like the couple, parent-child, and sibling subsystems. A fourth subsystem is coparenting (the ways in which two parents coordinate their parenting and function as a team). Mutually supportive coparenting can have big influence on the child, even next to the influence of a good couple relationship. Parents have indirect effects on their children by influencing their partners too. An extended family household gets even more complex, as families live with other kin. The family is by all means, and in its many forms, a system within other systems (the microsystem in larger systems), and it depends a lot on culture. And, of course, it changes throughout life: through changes in membership and changes in a person or relationship. The concept of family life cycle is the sequence of changes in family composition, roles, relationships and developmental tasks, from the time people marry until they die. Duvall for instance outlined eight stages, with each a particular set of members, different roles and different tasks. But this traditional family life cycle is experienced by increasingly less people, so it doesn't truly seem relevant anymore.

The world is changing and there have been important social changes that alter family experiences (based on the US):

1. More single adults. 
2. Later marriage.
3. More unmarried parents.
4. Fewer children. 
5. More working mothers.
6. More divorce.
7. More single-parent families.
8. More remarriages (forming reconstituted families). 
9. More yeras without children.
10. More multigenerational families. 
11. Fewer caregivers for aging adults.

Some view these changes as "decline of the family", emphasizing negative effects. But some of these changes bring positive things too. Ultimately, family is more diverse than ever. 

What does family mean to the infant?

Fathers today are more involved with their children than ever, and they have good abilities for it. Still, there is gender difference in involvement and style (this is different if the father is the primary caregiver). More fathers live apart from children than ever before too. Mothers and children benefit from a supportive father. When a system does not function well, it can be challenging to change it but it can be done with effort and support. 

What does family mean to the child?

Parental acceptance-responsiveness is about if parents are warm, affectionate, supportive and sensitive to their children's needs. Of course they act on misbehaving, but they consider their child's perspective. Parental demandingness-control is about how much control lies with the parent when it comes to decisions. Demanding and controlling parents set rules and watch their children closely to see if they obey, while less controlling and demanding parents allow more autonomy. By crossing these two dimensions, four basic child rearing patterns emerge:

• Authoritarian parenting: with high demandingness-control and low acceptance-responsiveness. A restrictive style with many rules and the parents often use power-assertion tactics to ensure their power. 
• Authoritative parenting: with high demandingness-control and high acceptance-responsiveness. A style with clear rules and consistency, but with more explaining of the rules and more perspective-taking. The approach is more democratic and reasonable, so the parents are in charge but involve the children too. This style generally has the best outcomes. 
• Permissive parenting: with low demandingness-control and high acceptance-responsiveness. Very child-centered, the child has a lot of freedom and parents exert little control. 
• Neglectful parenting: with low demandingness-control and low acceptance-responsiveness. Uninvolved parenting, with hostile, rejecting or indifferent actions. They can be overwhelmed with themselves so they do not have energy for their children. 

SES, poverty and culture influence parenting styles and whether they're effective. Why do these differences exist? There are three major explanations:

• Financial stress. The family stress model focuses on the negative effects of financial stress on parents, which leads to marital conflict and bad parenting and thus damaged child development. Poverty has many bad effects. 
• Resource investment. Low-SES parents can invest less money and time in their children's development. 
• Cultural values and socialization goals. Low-SES parents may have more concerns like their children involving in crime or teen pregnancy, and these may contribute to a more authoritarian style. They also may parent in a way that prepares their children for the kind of job the parents have (obeying a boss, instead of being the boss).

We saw that parents influence their children's development through parenting. These are four models of influence in the family that feature (other) ways of thinking about family influence:

• Parent effects model: which assumes that influences go one way - from parent to child. 
• Child effects model: which highlights the influences of children on their parents (e.g. how the child's age or personality influences parenting, and evocative gene-environment correlations). 
• Interactional model: focuses on the gene-environment interaction concept, states that it takes the child effects ánd parent effects to influence development. 
• Transactional model: focuses on the reciprocal influence of parent effects and child effects on each other. So, how they change each other in interaction: how the relationship goes bad or good as the two interact. 

When children have to share attention with a new sibling, and get less attention, some can get difficult. It brings positive things too, but it can be a bit challenging for some. Parents have to continue to provide love and attention and try to maintain the usual routines. 

Sibling rivalry is a normal part of being siblings and may be part of evolution. While living in such close proximity, they can not resolve conflicts maturely yet. Levels of conflict decrease after early adolescence. Despite its ambivalence, siblings are close too and siblings play mostly positive roles in each other's development. They have four important functions:

• Emotional support.
• Caregiving.
• Teaching.
• Social experience.

However, they can influence each other negatively when they develop a bad relationship or influence each other to do bad things. Of course they can also affect each other indirectly by affecting their parents. 

What does family mean to the adolescent?

Contrary to belief, most parent-adolescent relationships are and remain close. It is more likely for a troubled parent-adolescent relationship to already stem from a troubled parent-child relationship. However, during early adolescence conflict increases temporarily, and parents and adolescents spend less time together. The key developmental task is achieving autonomy, and the parent-adolescent relationship then typically becomes more equal. A blend of autonomy and attachment is ideal. Conflict, however not too much, can foster autonomy. How autonomy takes shape differs in each culture. Authoritative parenting, but with granting their children more autonomy, is usually the winning approach (again, also depending on culture). 

Helicopter parenting refers to developmentally inappropriate levels of control and guidance to late adolescents (overparenting), which has bad outcomes. Most are too extremely trying authoritative parents.

What does family mean to the adult?

Married adults feel great in the "honeymoon phase" but some experience a decline in satisfaction as time goes by, even in the first year after marriage. Relationships get more realistic. Couples should try to maintain a high level positive and supportive interaction. 

New parenthood is a stressful life change, involving both positive and negative sides. Marital satisfaction generally declines after a baby is born, mostly for women since they do most work (as the parental imperative happens). Self-esteem declines a bit, especially for mothers. However, it is very variable among people how this life change is experienced, due to child and parent characteristics and the social context and support. Strengthening good coparenting can help. 

More children means more work and stress, and there can be a work-family conflict (when it's hard to combine work and family life). Working parents are also subject to spillover effects: effects of work events on family life and home events on work. Puberty brings challenges of more conflicts with the child, and more conflicts with each other as partners over how to handle this. And it's hard to feel good when your child is struggling in adolescence. But of course stressed parents, or parents with marital problems, influence their child's functioning and feelings as well. Overall, children generally have a (little) negative effect on marital satisfaction, but parents will always emphasize the positives. 

The family after the last child's departure is the empty nest. Marital satisfaction then on average increases. A minority of parents has a hard time with the leaving, named the empty nest syndrome, but generally they react more positively than negatively. Boomerang children are children that later return home, due to whatever reason, and some never leave. Parents usually adapt well to this, especially if the children are taking responsibility and progressing towards flying solo.

Then, there are three major grandparenting styles:

• Remote: just seen occassionally by their grandchildren, geographically and probably therefore also emotionally distant.
• Companionate: frequently seeing each other and doing fun things together, but no parental role.
• Involved: with a parental role too. 

Relationships with siblings get better, though with less frequency of seeing each other, as we age, but some ambivalence can carry over. Siblings that had bad relationships in childhood may clash in response to big life events. The parent-child relationship can grow more equal and understanding, more friendlike, as both age. Only when parents reach very old ages or have serious problems, role reversal may occur, in which the child turns into the caregiver. 

Middle generation squeeze/sandwich generation phenomenon: this stands for how middle-aged adults are pressured by demands from both the younger and the older generations. Traditional gender-role norms cause women to be kinkeepers: the ones who keeps family close and handles family problems. Caregiver burden is when someone gets psychologically overwhelmed with caring for others. Caregiving is hardest when the recipient of care has a form of dementia, the caregiver lacks personal resourches like a secure attachment style, the caregiver lacks social support, and/or cultural and contextual factors do not support caregiving. 

What about other types of family experiences?

Divorced or widowed singles are less happy in old age than never-married people. Cohabitation (living together without being married) is on the rise, with its motivations being convenience, trial marriage, and being an alternative to marriage. On average, couples who live together and then marry are less satisfied with their marriage than people who first marry. One explanation is that cohabiters are usually younger and lower in income, and they may have less conventional family beliefs and less commitment to marriage. However, since cohabitation is rising, this seems a less good reason. A second explanation is that cohabitating adults do not get into it with the intention of always staying together, but then eventually do marry because it is normal and they've been together so long for example. Marital success rates improve as partners are engaged before living together, if they have not cohabited before, and if they do not have a child before marriage. 

Wanting and not being able to have a child is very difficult, but general childlessness does not diminish adults wellbeing and sometimes boosts it.  

In same sex couples, relationships are egalitarian (it's not like one is the wife and the other the husband). They are generally very devoted parents with the biological parent taking the lead. Children with two parents of the same sex have better developmental outcomes than children with one parent, and the same as children with heterosexual parents. 

High-risk couples for divorce are typically young adults that have been married for an average of 7 years, with often young children. It's especially likely if they married young, got a child before marriage, and with low SES. Divorce and everything that comes with it is often (but not always!) experienced as crisis for everyone involved. After 2 years, families usually begin really getting back on track. Several factors can help facilitate a positive adjustment to divorce, and prevent lasting damage:

• Financial support. 
• Good parenting by both the custodial and noncustodial parent.
• Minimal parental conflict.
• Additional social support. 
• Minimal other changes. 
• Personal resources (like intelligence, coping skills, emotional stability).

When a parent remarries, it can first bring difficulties, as a new family system has to take shape. It is often hardest for girls. Overall, adolescents in reconstituted families or single-parent families are less well-adjustment than those in warm intact families. However, it varies much, as it ultimately depends on good parenting and good relationships within the family system. Family process is way more important for wellbeing than family structure!

What about family violence?

Family violence contains child abuse and the broader term child maltreatment. Of course there are several other forms of family violence too, like sibling violence or when there's abuse in the parent's relationship. 

Child abusers tend to have been abused as children themselves. This is an example of intergenerational transmission of parenting: thus the passing on of parenting styles from generation to generation, probably due to observational learning, genetics and epigenetic effects. But this does not happen for the majority. Next, abusive mothers are often battered by their partners and learned violence is the way to solve things or let out frustration. Abusers also often have mental health problems. And, abusive parents often have distorted, ego-threathening perceptions of normal child behavior. 

Children with medical problems or difficult temperaments can be more at risk of abuse. It seems a high-risk parent and challenging child interact to create problems. And they also affect each other even more like the transactional model of family influence says. Of course, sociocultural and ecological context matter too. In short, abuse seems most likely when a vulnerable person faces overwhelming stress with insufficient social support. 

Abuse leaves much lasting damage, but some maltreated children can get back on the good developmental path; depending on genetics and environmental factors.