PSYC 3310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Family Therapy, Margaret Mead, Phase Transition
20 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 4 ADOLESCENTS AND FAMILIES
The Family System
• Socialization: the process through which children acquire the attitudes,
beliefs, behaviours, and skills that their parents and culture consider
appropriate
o Children learn to control their impulses, interact with others, and
become competent and well-adapted members of their culture.
• According to Robert LeVine (1974), families in every society have the same
three basic goals for their children.
o To make sure they survive to adulthood
o To give them the skills and attitudes needed to support themselves
economically as adults
o To encourage other social values, such as achievement, social
advancement, creativity, and self-fulfillment
Families as Dynamic Systems
• Family systems theory: the family is a unit; any change in one component
necessarily means a change in another component
• While parents certainly influence their children, children also influence their
parents.
• Families form complex social systems of relationships that are constantly
responding to changing circumstances.
Positive and Negative Feedback Loops
• Positive feedback loop: a system in which an increase or decrease in one
connected factor leads to a change in the same direction in the other
connected factor
o When a response from one individual generates a similar response in
another individual
o Can be in a good or bad way
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o E.g., Polite request from a child can produce a polite response from a
parent.
o E.g., Increase in anger from a parent leads to an increase in defiance
in a child.
• Negative feedback loop: a system in which a change in one connected
factor leads to a change in the opposite direction in the other connected factor
o Behaviour of one person leads to an opposite response in another
o E.g., When an adolescent is angry, the parent becomes calm which
makes the adolescent become calmer.
• In general, negative feedback tends to keep a system stable, while positive
feedback tends to change it.
Disequilibrium and Phase Transitions
• Any time there is a significant change in a family member or in a dyadic
relationship, it creates an imbalance or disequilibrium in the family system.
• E.g., Going through adolescence, divorce, moving, financial difficulties
• Puberty forces both the parents and the child to make major adjustments in
their attitudes, behaviours, and ways of relating.
o Interactions between parents and adolescents become more variable
and less predictable.
o Can create sense of insecurity in both the parents and the teen
• Phase transition: a period of change in a family system during which minor
events may have far-reaching consequences
Changing Functions and Expectations
• With adolescence, the child’s social interests begin to move outside the
family, even to exclude the family.
o Friends and age mates takes on new importance.
• Children and parents have a long history of interacting with each other, but
the rapid changes of early adolescence bring a lot of their assumptions and
expectations about each other into question.
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• When an expectation about someone turns out to be wrong, it has both
cognitive and emotional consequences.
o Cognitive – whatever ideas about the person led to that expectation
are at least partly wrong and need to be re-examined
o Emotional – the result may be disappointment, or even anger,
depending on the kind of expectation involved
• Questions of autonomy are a frequent source of conflicting expectations.
• Parents and adolescents generally agree on the order of major developmental
tasks during adolescence.
o E.g., going to a club, getting involved in a romantic relationship,
handling one’s own money
o Adolescents expect to handle here issues at an earlier age than their
parents expect they should.
o These clashing expectations can lead to disappointment and a feeling
on the adolescent’s part of not being respected and trusted.
• Issues of authority and control also become more troublesome in early
adolescence.
o Teens begin to expect to have more say in family matters, while the
parents may still expect their decisions to be accepted without
question.
o Early adolescents interrupt their parents more often and agree with
them less often than children do.
• Traditionally, parents and family help prepare adolescents to function as
adults.
o In the past, teens often learned household and occupational skills by
working side by side with their parents and older siblings.
o In today’s society, that function has been taken over more and more
by institutions outside the home, such as schools, peers, and the
internet.
o Parents may not even have the particular knowledge their children
need.
Document Summary
In general, negative feedback tends to keep a system stable, while positive feedback tends to change it. 3: margaret mead (1978) pointed out that as the place of social and technological change increases, the skills, customs, and knowledge of older generations become less and less relevant to the young. 4: adolescents in european have much more extensive contact with their extended families, tend to live closer to each other, children are often sent to stay with the grandparents during vacations. Authoritarian parents: demanding, but not responsive, expect prompt, unquestioning obedience, respect, conformity. 6: use power assertion, behavioural and psychological control, punishment is strict, harsh, and often physical, do not show much affection think that showing affection will undermine their authority. Permissive/indulgent parents: responsive, but not demanding, children are allowed to do as they please, low consistency in use of rules, expectations not clear, discipline is rare and inconsistent.
