Family Communication Midterm

Baumrind's Parenting Styles (and the 2 dimensions that these styles reflect)

*Authoritarian Parenting - high demand; low responsiveness *Authoritative Parenting - high demand; high responsiveness *Permissive Parenting - low demand; high responsiveness Baurmrind's parenting styles reflect orientation to interaction with child around the "dimensions" of: - Demandingness (control): degree to which parent requires child behavior to align with parent expectations - Responsiveness (affection): parent orientation to warmth in interaction and expression of affection for child → his parenting styles emphasize parent behaviors

Dialectical Theory (in intimacy)

*Dialectic Approach - thinking about intimacy in families - meaning making, people in relationships are always making meaning that are wrought from the struggle of competing, often contradictory, discourses - the most salient struggles in relationships is between autonomy (an individual's need to be independent) and connection (the need to feel connected in a relationship) - Dialectical thinking examines the complex nature of intimacy (closeness) and distance (separateness) - we are used to thinking about intimacy in 2 ways (monologic and dualistic thinking) *Monologic Thinking: where more intimacy (closeness) in families is better than distance (separateness) *Dualistic thinking: about closeness, unlike the monologic approach, this type of thinking recognizes the importance of negative emotions and differentiation in close relationships

Coontz & The traditional Family

- Coontz explains that the idea of the traditional family has evolved over the decades. Due to cultural changes and adaptations, the "traditional" family (dad goes to work, mom is the caregiver) can no longer be used as a model to demonstrate life in the average family - Additionally, the majority of families today simply cannot compare their family to this traditional idea, because it holds unobtainable standards. - Colonial Times: families were extremely unstable due to high mortality rate - Disease and lack of medical advancements limited the lifespan of people during this time - Colonial families also lacked modesty: parents and adults would openly discuss sex or sexual topics in front of children - Late 19th century: During the 1850s to 1880s industrialization was at its peak. Therefore, families were rather large because the more children a couple had, the more extra "working hands" they had to help out. During this time child labor was very common and parents sent their children to work at age 6.

Family Roles & their connection to age, gender, and position

- Gender Roles: can be defined as the expectations assigned to masculinity and femininity - Gender Role Socialization: pertains to the process by which men and women learn what roles are appropriate to their sex - Gender can be seen as a cultural performance. Both men and women can perform masculinity or femininity, but, of course, when a male body performs femininity or a female body performs masculinity, they may be subjected to discipline by the greater culture given the expectations for men's and women's roles - Families serves as the disciplinarians, providing early teaching about how to perform a gender that is appropriate to one's biological sex and congruent with cultural expectations - Gender roles are socially constructed and are taught; they are not natural or innate - Our impressions of how men and women should behave in the family are a result of beliefs derived from interaction and observations - Parents instruct their children about men's and women's roles and masculinity and femininity - these messages about masculinity and femininity are communicated to children early in life (even at birth), the gender role messages begin early - As the children get older - they appear to know their own sex and begin to acquire their gendered sense of self - once at preschool age, girls and boys begin to be inundated with gender-based messages about their sex - ex. assigning different household duties to boys and girls

How are families different now than 50 years ago?

- The "American Dream" is more diversely understood - There are more single parent families - Gay and Lesbian families have become more widely accepted - Women are choosing to have children at a much older age - Increase in 'dual-earner' families (both parents work) - Increase of stay-at-home dads and "bread-winner" moms

Marital Types (by Fitzpatrick)

- Traditional Couples - Independent Couples - Separate Couples

Limits to Systems Theory

- it is too abstract: too abstract to study families, more narrowly focused theories would be more helpful to scholars - there is too much focus on families being open to change "Other critiques include: (1) homeostasis at the expense of change, (2) pattern at the expense of unpredictability, (3) the system at the expense of the individual, (4) insensitivity to culture, (5) its positivist intellectual tradition that puts the researcher outside the system in a search for objective truth about the system [assumes there is a universal truth, and positions the researcher outside the family, to observe and find truth] "

Why is intimacy difficult to study in families and what 3 characteristics of family life make this so?

- we refer to closeness and intimacy as synonymous. A close relationship, then, is characterized by intimate behavior and intimate experience - Researchers expect that some closeness characterizes the family, yet the concept itself is difficult to define because all families view it differently, and conceptualizations of intimacy vary FAMILY LIFE CHARACTERISTICS: 1. Through the process of child rearing, both parents develop a sense of closeness and love for one another - this emotional bond serves as a kind of reward for the parents for all the time and energy invested in nurturing children. - the expectation for loving closeness to be a hallmark of families is pervasive, but, as we know, it is not always found in practice - the expectation of love and affection is not necessarily universal 2. culture pervades all aspects of family life especially with regard to what family members believes is the right way to communicate with one another - differing cultural values have an impact on the way family relationships are communicated and the way conflict is conducted in the family 3. Culture also affects emotional expressiveness - cultures vary a great deal in the value they place on emotional expression compared with emotional inhibition or control - Chinese American families express intimacy less frequently than do European American families - Affection is not displayed openly in Chinese American families because this behavior is considered childish and in bad taste

Systems Theory

-considers how families create and regulate as a system and seeks to provide explanations for family behaviors -all systems share certain characteristics -focuses on recurring patterns that allows us to predict family behaviors -seeks to provide explanations for families behaviors - wholeness: a system cannot be fully comprehended by a study of its individual parts ( not individual parts but the whole ) - Interdependence: behaviors of members are interrelated , families are tied together - Hierarchy: a family system reflects a complex set of structures and relations of members --> suprastysem: community, culture (beyond family system) --> subsystem: interpersonal/personal (kids,parents) - Boundaries/Openness: families are an open system that receive information from outside systems and need to create boundaries to restrict that flow (as systems, families have to work to define separation from environment and within subsystems) - Calibration/Feedback: the process of systems setting their parameters, checking on themselves, and self-correcting - change is accomplished through feedback - (+) change / morphogenetic - (-) no change /homeostatic - Equifinality: the ability to achieve the same goals through different means

Genres of Family Stories

1. Birth Stories: give us a sense of belonging to our families, demonstrates expected roles of child. (ex: story of your birth or a siblings birth) 2. Courtship Stories: stories about when individuals in a family first meet, fall in love, wedding ceremonies. (ex: how grandparents met) 3. Story on the margins: gives voice to events that are often silenced/ignored, don't always have happy ending but helps the family plan for the future and learn from experience (ex: story about a parent's divorce) 4. Survival Stories: teach families how to cope under times of stress/struggle (ex: story about a family member who survived a war)

Four Functions of Family Stories we Discussed

1. Building Identity - family stories help families define, articulate, and refine their sense of collective identity, and in doing so, they contribute significantly to the system's meaning 2. Creating Links Among the Past, Present, and Future - Helps families remember events and experiences and creating shared memories among family members 3. Teaching Lessons and Morals 4. Negotiating Dialectical Tensions and Managing Difficulties

Six Forms of Dialectical Tension Management

1. Cyclic Alternation 2. Segmentation 3. Selection 4. Disqualifying 5. Reframing 6. Neutralizing

4 goals of a theory

1. Explanation - explain what is happening in certain family relationships 2. Understanding - in order to explain what's happening, we need to understand how x influences y 3. Prediction - we can predict the quality of a relationship across other relationships 4. Social Change - find ways to make these relationships better

Six Characteristics of Family Stories

1. Feature a family member or several family members 2. Involve a plotline of some type 3. Develop around something significant for the family 4. Exist in performance 5. Contain an element of drama 6. Are somewhat fluid over time

Meaning Making Practices

1. Theme - provide a centering function, used as guides for communication, developed to provide a way to look at/deal with reality (Ex. "no matter how difficult things may get our family never gives up") 2. Metaphor - a comparison made between family and another event, idea, behavior, etc., create a sense of reality for families 3. Myth - beliefs about the family that are selective or constructed to represent the family in a way that may not be accurate/true (Ex. Scene from the movie Hitch - great grandfathers signature in a book in the museum) (Ex. Having the same last name as a celebrity or historical figure. → great grandmother or father was involved in a certain thing) 4. Ritual - recurring, patterned communication event that is highly valued in the family, provides a sense of family unity, maintain a family's culture/identity

Properties of Rituals (Wolin & Bennett)

1. Transformation 2. Communication 3. Stabilization

4 elements of a theory

1. statements about the relevant contexts (i.e. the theory is about newlywed couples' communication) 2. A set of general propositions (i.e. assertions about the context, such as, newlyweds will express agreement with one another, their communication will be more positive than negative, they depend on social support from their extended networks) 3. Statements that connect their propositions (i.e. if their extended network shows disapproval, their communication will change from mostly agreement to more disagreement) 4. The theory must have the capability to be tested or applied in a way that will allow a researcher to see if it is useful

Transformation

A period of time between nonritual to ritual. The article discusses a "liminal period" which is "a time when we are not what we were before the ritual and are not yet what we will become after the ritual is enacted" - Family members first engage in the nonritual condition of their lives, and then they enter a prepatory state building up to the ritual, and then the ritual is finally performed. - The transformation property motivates families to keep performing certain rituals that they enjoy (e.g. Christmas)

Circumplex Model

Believes family life is conducted along 2 critical dimensions: adaptability & cohesion *Adaptability: The ability of a family to recalibrate in response to stress. Families are more adaptable when they are able to change rules, roles, and so forth in response to crises (flexibility) *Cohesion: Refers to the degree of emotional connection the family experiences. Cohesion represents the emotional bonding members have with one another and the degree of individual autonomy a person experiences in the family system. - Cohesion Reflects: I vs. We Balance, closeness (the impact of one person's emotions on others), loyalty, and independence - There are 5 levels of cohesion ranging from extremely low cohesion (disconnected to disengaged families) to extremely high cohesion (enmeshed or overly connected families) --> In between these two extremes are low to moderate cohesion (somewhat connected families), moderate cohesion (connected families), and moderate to high cohesion (very connected families) --> This creates 5 family types based on closeness. **Families in the middle 3 types are considered "balanced" and those on the 2 extremes are considered "unbalanced" - The middle types are more likely to have optimal family functioning while the unbalanced types are seen as problematic if they continue over time. → Balance on each dimension is best → Balanced families tend to have optimal family functioning and are more satisfied and have fewer problems (behavioral and psychological)

Bowlby (Attachment Theory)

Bowlby argues that parent-child attachment is reproduced throughout life in relationships we have - sought to explain why children develop strong attachments to their mothers, or caregivers, and cry upon separation from these attachment figures - Bowlby also argued that children development attachment styles are based on how available and responsive their caregivers have been, and thus the quality of the first love relationship between infant and caregiver is critical in establishing a pattern for the infant's future attachments

Lareau & parenting styles - Concerted Cultivation

Concerted Cultivation: Children learn through experience through participation in institutionalized activities *Pros: Gives them a sense of confidence and teaches them skills that will help them excel in future careers (i.e. feeling comfortable with adults, giving a firm handshake, and maintaining eye contact). Also teaches them time management skills (family calendar, busy schedule) *Cons: - sense of entitlement (parents hid money problems from children, and in the case of Garrett even went into debt to support his busy lifestyle) - less free time and less freedom to do what they choose - children often didn't form as strong of friendships (Garrett played on several different sports teams and didn't have time to maintain friendships outside of practice or games, or build friendships at school) - Other siblings had to work around the eldest/busiest schedule of the household- creates a sense of competition/jealousy in the family - places a higher importance on activities rather than family gatherings (Garrett's family rarely ate dinner together and he frequently missed family reunions to play soccer; his mother rarely called her parents or visited them even though they only lived an hour or two away- due to busy schedule) - Children don't establish very strong bonds to kin/extended family **Teachers at both schools studied "generally supported practices of concerted cultivation, with an emphasis on the development of the child through organized activities, development of vocabulary through reasoning and reading, and active parent involvement in schooling and other institutions outside of the home."

Social Construction

Considers the importance of meaning and the construction of identity in families - How meaning is created through communication - we make sense of experiences and our social world through talk - look at the routine and everyday talk in a family to reveal what's important 2 key sites of meaning making in families: - identity/roles: how do we construct different identities and roles? - emotions: how are emotions shown in families and how do we come to know these emotions? Rooted in interpretive tradition: looking at routine everyday talk in families reveals what is important

Family Celebrations

Holidays, special occasions, and any right of passage. These types of rituals are usually standard across most US families. These occurrences are usually practiced routinely over time, which leads the family to become more standardized. The heads of the family must communicate family celebrations. -"Whatever symbols the family selects to represent its holiday or whatever aspect of a rite of passage is emphasized, the rituals performed convey both the commonality of the family with the culture, and its uniqueness"

Developmental Theory

How a family changes over time across the course of life 1. Family development is goal oriented 2. Determinism = one stage must be completed before moving on to the next 3. when the individual develops the whole family does as well 4. the process of family development is linear ** Revised Development Theory: not all change is related to development, some can be random (divorce, wedding, birth, death)

Guerrero (Attachment Theory)

Discusses how communication can play 4 roles in the attachment process: 1. Communication as a cause of attachment styles 2. Communication as a consequence 3. Communication as a mediator of attachment and relationship quality 4. Communication as reinforcing of attachment style

Configuration of Families (Cont.)

Extended - biological includes relatives such as grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as well as parent(s) and children. Communal includes intentional family of friends. may have the potential for conflict if issues such as growth and change are not addressed Step Family/Blended - two adults and child(ren) who are not the biological offspring, span two households, each headed by one partner (divorce), onflict may arise around subsystems, rules, roles, and time management Single parent - one adult with child(ren), challenging communication demands. can be helpful in co-cultures that stress the group over the individual Same sex - two people of the same sex in intimate relationship Couples - two adults living together in romantic relationship, no children, cohabiters: lack of communication role models, marrieds: much communication is rooted in daily routines and problem solving

Neutralizing

Finding a compromise between the two polarities rather than reframing them. The notion of a separate togetherness relates to neutralizing. the couple is not completely connected, yet not completely separate either - it is somewhere in between ex. "Paula wants to spend all her time with her twin brother, Paul. Paul wants a lot more distance. They compromise and spend less time than Paula wants but more time than Paul wants."

Hays & Motherhood Ideology

Hays says there are 2 types of mothers, the traditional mother and the supermom. they are both intensive mothers, the other difference is that the supermom has both her children and a paying job to attend to. Hays argues that mothers are placed in an impossible bind, "good, intensive" mothers are always available and child-centered, but our culture values, and supports, and sees worth in paid work, careers, and resources provision. Mothers are then asked to make a choice, work or stay at home. No matter what mothers choose, they often are still left feeling inadequate in some way. The conflict and struggle around enacting motherhood results not from choosing work or staying at home but from the ideology of intensive mothering.

Zelizer's argument about how the ideology of children has gone from viewing them as profane to viewing them as sacred

Historically, we have moved from seeing children's worth connected to the resources they could provide in families (child labor for example), to thinking about them as worthy and full of potential. This shift can be categorized as moving from seeing children as profane to seeing them as sacred. As a result, how we view children now has also influenced the ideology around parents roles and how the behaviors they should enact as they raise children . - for instance, think of Hays' intensive mothering ideology.

Family Traditions

More meaningful rituals than family celebrations. They do not have the annual periodicity of holidays, and they are not as standardized through American culture like Holidays are. Family traditions are events like family vacations, birthdays, and parties. What makes these rituals different than in family celebrations is that the family has more freedom when deciding how to partake in these traditions. - With holidays and other family celebrations, the practices are pretty universal, but with family traditions, the family chooses how to engage. - Family traditions are much more meaning-making for a family than family celebrations are

Lareau & Parenting Styles - Accomplishment of Natural Growth

Places more emphasis on children choosing what to do because parents usually don't have as much time/money to put them in extracurriculars *Pros: - greater sense of freedom/independence - fosters creativity - sense of privilege to receive gifts and be enrolled in activities because families talked more about money problems - children formed stronger friendships because they played with neighbors and formed a close knit community - Children often took on more responsibilities and were more independent (Katie would make her own lunches and snacks after school and rode the bus to her Grandma's by herself) - revolves around family closeness (Tyrec's mom called her parents every day and had frequent visits, family spent a lot of time together and family reunions were a priority) - children were closer to kin/extended family *Cons: - lack some of the skills children who grew up in a concerted cultivation environment learn in terms of institutional comfort - generally had weaker verbal skills and less familiarity with abstract concepts - not as comfortable with adults - not as much parent involvement

Stabilization

Rituals help to stabilize family life because a ritual will take place time and time again. "In the face of external changes, ritual gives the family a stable way of recognizing itself." Ritual acts as an anchor for the family, they usually provide something to look forward to, and everyone in the family knows their roles when it comes to the ritual. - Rituals are also sometimes carried over through generations of a family, so they help to link the past, present, and future. There is an expectation that the offspring will repeat the same ritual, and then pass it down to the next generation.

Rituals (Wolin & Bennett)

Rituals: symbolic forms of communication that, owing to the satisfaction that family members experience through their repetition, are acted out in a systematic fashion over time -3 Types of rituals: 1. Family Celebrations 2. Family Traditions 3. Family Interactions

Routine vs. Ritual

Routines can be the things we do in life to get through the day - rituals are meaningful behaviors - routines can become rituals if they become meaningful to "family identity" or "sense of belonging"

Roles vs. Rules & Levels of Rule Meaning

Rules and roles are interrelated - as rules flow from certain types of family roles, and certain type of family roles are shaped by family rules - Rules: prescribed behavior that is obligated, preferred, or prohibited - Rules can be explicit or implicit, evolve over time, work best when considering the needs of individual family members, and they are affected by cultural trends - We can think of rule meaning in 2 levels: 1. regulative meaning: tells us what to do or what not to do (take out the trash) 2. Constitutive Meaning: what meanings are assigned to following or not following the rule (not taking out the trash will upset your parents and make them think you are not doing what is expected of a good child) --> when implicit rules become linked to social or cultural categories and the function of family members, we then see them as roles

5 Central Themes of Family Definitions

Self Definitions of Family - When family members identify other individuals as family, their self-definition is their reality. Definition Through Interaction - Families created and maintained through their own interactions and their interactions with others outside of the family unit Voluntary & Involuntary Ties - Biologically, legally, or socially derived, although these categories overlap Creation of Boundaries - Boundaries mark limits in the family... primarily metaphorical, or symbolic Evolving Time - Dependent on the notion of evolving time because critical components of family life are the family's history and the expectation of a future together

Selection

Some families choose to manage the tensions between closeness and separation through selection - they select one of the two and ignore their need for the other -ex. The Meyers family is very distant" (no matter what - they've chosen one extreme)

Family Interactions

Usually most meaningful for families because they are usually completely unplanned. These rituals include events like dinnertime, bedtime, and leisure activities on the weekends. This type of ritual truly enables families to discover who they are with no influence from culture or society. - "Compared with family celebrations or traditional rituals, these daily routines are the least standardized and the most variable over time"

Bartholomew (Attachment Theory)

and his colleagues did further work on attachment and also looked at adult attachment styles - Bartholomew (and model) differ in how they think about the reproduction of attachment - Child-caregiver bond and attachment style is important and influential, but, adult attachment is not simply reproduced throughout life and that attachment styles can change *they said an individual's orientation to self and other (partner) determines their attachment styles *It is an individuals orientation to self (worthiness) & others/partners (responsiveness) *Bartholomew's Attachment Styles for Adults: 1. Secure (comfortable with both autonomy and intimacy) 2. Preoccupied (preoccupied with intimacy) 3. Dismissing (dismissing of intimacy) 4. Fearful (fearful of intimacy)

Systems Theory (Cont.) - How the concepts are helpful to understanding families (interdependence, calibration/feedback, etc.)

The systems perspective compares a family to a machine, in that each individual is a working part that contributes to the culture and well being of the family as a whole. Each individual or part of the "machine" works on their own, but together they create a new process in which each element or individual feeds off of one another to maintain homeostasis, or the behavioral norm within a family. In this sense, each family member affects and is affected by the others, thus emulating a system.

Theories

Theory - an abstract system of concepts with indications of the relationships among these concepts that help us understand a phenomenon such as family communication - Theories helps us answer the why and how questions about our family experiences (like divorce, violence, gender, etc....) - Theories, like stories, evolve and change overtime (for example- communication changing because of technology) - Thinking of theories as tools allows us to see that theories do not contain truth, they are simply ways to help researchers accomplish a task. (i.e to explain understand, predict or change family communication)

Bowlby & Ainsworth (Attachment Theory)

They came up with 3 attachment styles: 1. secure attachment - seen in confident infant, responsive caregiver (video of infant and mother, she displayed secure attachment) 2. Ambivalent (or anxious) Attachment - seen with tempermental infant, inconsistent caregiver 3. Avoidant Attachment - seen with undemonstrative infant, undemonstrative caregiver *they argue that these attachment that forms (whether it's one of the three styles) - once you see it in young children it will be reproduced throughout life

Townsend & Fatherhood Ideology

Townsend argues that the cultural ideology of men sees them as providers. Fatherhood is defined largely by this ideology (and also by the trait of protection). Townsend sees fatherhood as a "package deal" (employment, marriage, home ownership, fathering behaviors). Fathers are culturally expected to work at their paying job everyday, and afterwards, attend to their children and their wife.

Configuration of Families

Traditional Nuclear Family - is composed of a married couple living with their biological children, with the husband/ father working outside the home wife/mother working inside the homes (mother as full-time homemakers). Bi Nuclear - span two households, each headed by one partner. (divorce) Blended - more than one family mixed together (remarriage) Family of Origin - family you are brought up in, close to a family of procreation but also include those that are raised by a family (adopted) and same-sex family

Communication

With ritual, communication takes place in two different forms. There is affective communication and symbolic communication. - Rituals foster communication through strong affect, in other words, when strong emotions are being shown through communication. - families can get in arguments, but can usually most past them quickly because of their close relational ties. - Rituals help families express their emotions, and it can sometimes be thought of as therapeutic - symbolic communication: endows ritual with meaning. The family will use many symbols in its ritual performance. Some symbols are concrete, and some are just forms of expression, but this symbolic expression helps families negotiate and engage in specific rituals. - Interactions can symbolize power relationships, generational ties or unsettled conflicts. - These symbols are different and unique for every family, and they become symbolized through the interactions that take place

Dialectic Thinking

although we can derive insights about intimacy in the family from both the monologic and dualistic approaches, dialect thinking focuses more closely on the complex nature of separateness and connectedness in the family - intimacy is seen not as the absence of distance, but rather intimacy and distance are seen as simultaneously operating in family relationships

Separate Couples

conventional in some gendered aspects of marriage (wife taking husband's name and keeping a regular schedule), separate couples also stress individual freedom over relationship maintenance. these couples opt for both psychological and physical distance in marriage. They also report being conflict avoidant in their marriage.

Disqualifying

exempting certain issues from the general pattern - a family with a general pattern of closeness may disqualify this pattern when it comes to certain situations -ex. Sabrina and Max Walter are close and enjoy a warm relationship. But Max may not want to have Sabrina know all about his relationships with girls. If the two follow a pattern of disqualification, they may tell each other everything except about the topic of romantic relationships -ex. The Randolph family is very close; they tell one another everything except they never talk about money" "we are really close... except for these types of situations."

Dialectical Theory

focuses on ongoing contradictions/tensions that exist in family life. 1. Autonomy/connection - our desire to be independent from family and trying to find intimacy with them 2. Openness/Protection - conflicting desires to be open and vulnerable,revealing personal information, but some information we want to keep hidden or protected 3. Novelty/Predictability - conflict between comfort in stability and excitement of change --> rooted in interpretive/hermeneutic

Role Negotiation

how roles are interactive, we are enacting a role as others are enacting a role. How we construct what our role is. If we want to enact a role in a certain way, but other families are enacting a role in a different way, conflict can occur. - Tensions may be inherent in the expectations that shape our role behavior in families - Role Conflict: a situation where someone experiences competing role related expectations - Interpersonal Role Conflict: sometimes two or more family members wish to enact the same role behaviors - Intrapersonal Role Conflict: occurs internally within one family member

Reframing

in reframing, the family combines the two poles into a unity. This integrating approach redefines the dialectic so that it no longer seems to contain an opposition. Some of the elements of a family's private communication may act to reframe and unify the tensions of closeness and distance. -ex. "Michael and Andrea Soliz believe they become closer when they do different things all day at work and then have experiences to share with each other when they do get together..." which brings them closer because of their separateness

Role Expectation

internalized sets of beliefs about the way we will function in a particular role. Whether a newborn or an elder family member, each family member will experience some sort of expectation of how to behave - expectations may be different than reality - Our personal expectations around the role, cultural expectations, and also other's expectations for a certain role (reflected of both personal and cultural expectations)

Hazan & Shaver (Attachment Theory)

looked at how adult attachment is a result of child-caregiver attachment styles (which remain stable over time) - the theory asserts both that adult attachment is a result of these patterns set in childhood and that the patterns remain relatively stable over time - Secure Attachment: comfortable with intimacy and autonomy, trust and depend on others, and can reach out for help when they need it - Ambivalent (Anxious) Attachment: anxiety around intimacy, fearful of abandonment, need assurance from others - Avoidant Attachment: distrustful of others (and getting too intimate), more comfortable with autonomy, often will report child separation from their mothers *they agreed with Bowlby & Ainsworth, the attachment is reproduced throughout life. BUT they want to see how the reproduction is manifested in adults. - They described what these attachment styles looked like in adults. → These four are still arguing the same thing (that attachment is reproduced throughout life, but Hazan and Shaver were more about the attachment styles in adult life)

Cyclic Alternation

occurs when families feature one of the opposites at particular times, alternating with the other. When families try spiraling back and forth between the two poles of the autonomy-independence dialectic, they enact many different communication behaviors to accomplish this cyclic alternation -ex. "Ellie is close to her sister Sue as an adult, she was very distant from her when they were children"

Roles

socially constructed patterns of behavior and sets of expectations that provide us a position in families - role behavior is socially constructed as we interact with family members

Independent Couples

the belief that individual freedom should not be constrained by marriage characterizes independent couples. These couples believe in less conventional sex roles, also believe in a high level of sharing and companionship between partners, but also believe sharing should not threaten an individual's autonomy. Independents try to stay psychologically close while maintaining some physical space between themselves and their spouse. These couples report assertiveness and do not avoid conflicts.

Segmentation

the segmentation technique isolates separate spheres for closeness and autonomy ex. "Rob is close to his cousin when they're on their grandpa's farm together, but when he seems him in town, he's distant" ex. roommate relationship

Role Enactment

there are developmental changes in the family system that may occur, which means the roles you play will change throughout your lifetime. The temporal nature of roles relates to the idea that people are not the roles they play. Roles are behaviors, and when people engage in these behaviors, we say they are playing a role. Yet they have the capacity to drop a given role and pick up another, or to modify the role, acting out some of the prescribed behaviors and not others - the behavior that we do, how we do the role. If we are enacting the role of mother or father within certain expectations, we might be acting with intensive mothering - being there for our children all of the time.

Traditional Couples

there is an emphasis on stability more than spontaneity. they maintain regular routines for organizing their lives. they exhibit interdependence and sharing to a high degree, they are not particularly assertive but they do not avoid conflict when it comes up in their relationship. They endorse community customs relating to marriage such as the wife taking the husband's name and traditional gendered divisions of labor. → traditionals report being the most satisfied of the three types

Attachment Theory

→ rooted in positivistic-empirical tradition -looks to explain the relationship between bonding and behavior, notably how this behavior can be activated for protection - suggests that attachment is one of the behavior systems that is universal across species - initially examined young children's relationships with mothers or primary caregivers and looked at these interactions to see attachment