Two communication researchers, Jack M. McLeod and Steven H. Chaffee, found that most models of families relied on dichotomous ideas (e.g., autocratic/democratic, controlling/permissive, modern/ traditional).14 Instead of relying on these perspectives, McLeod and Chaffee realized that family communication happens along two different continuums: socio-orientation and concept-orientation. In a series of further studies, David Ritchie and Mary Anne Fitzpatrick identified two family communication patterns: conformity orientation and conversation orientation.15, 16
Socio-Orientation
To McLeod and Chaffee, socio-oriented (conformity oriented) families are indicated by “the frequency of (or emphasis on) communication that is designed to produce deference, and to foster harmony and pleasant social relationships in the family.”17 Families high in socio-orientation tend to communicate a similarity of attitudes, beliefs, and values. Similarity and harmony are valued while conflict s avoided. Family members maintain interdependence within a hierarchical structure. One of the authors comes from a family where similarity and harmony were valued to the extent that any amount of disagreement was frowned upon. The parents never (literally) argued or disagreed in front of the children. Despite the desires of her parents, the personalities of the children soon emerged and revealed that neither child could go along with total similarity and harmony. One child dealt with this difference by learning to keep his opinions to himself. The other sibling, who happened to be the oldest child, never learned to keep her opinion to herself. Her communication style simply did not align with the conformity orientation and friction was the result. You may have similar experiences if your communication style is different from your family’s communication orientation.
Concept-Orientation
To McLeod and Chaffee, concept-oriented (conversation oriented) families use “positive constraints to stimulate the child to develop his own views about the world. and to consider more than one side of an issue.”18 High concept-orientation families engage in open and frequent communication. Family life and interactions are perceived to be pleasurable. Self-expression is encouraged when attempting to make family decisions. Parents/guardians and children communicate in such a way that parents/guardians socialize and educate their children. Understanding the communication pattern within a family can lead to the ability to adapt to the family communication pattern rather than consistently communicating in a manner that is uncomfortable within the family structure.
Four Combinations
To further explain the concepts of socio- and concept-orientations, Jack M. McLeod and Steven H. Chaffee broke the combinations into four specific categories (Figure 11.1.1).
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Family Communication Pattern
Consensual
The first family communication pattern is the consensual family, which is marked by both high levels of socio- and concept-orientation. The term “consensual” is used here because there is a tendency in these families to strive for or have pressure for agreement between parents/guardian and children. Children are encouraged to think outside the box as long as it doesn’t impact the parents/guardians’ power or the family hierarchy. However, “These conflicting pressures may induce the child to retreat from the parent/ guardian-child interaction. There is some evidence of ‘escape’ by consensual children, such as strikingly heavy viewing of television fantasy programs.”19
Protective
The second type of family communication pattern is the protective family, which is marked by high levels of socio-orientation and low levels of concept-orientation. In these families, there tends to be a strong emphasis on child obedience and family harmony. As such, children are taught that they should not disagree with their parents/guardians openly or engage in conversations where differences of opinion may be found. McLeod and Chaffee noted that parents/guardians strive to protect their children from any kind of controversy, which may actually make them more vulnerable to outside pressures and persuasion because they have not been taught how to be critical thinkers.
Pluralistic
The third type of family communication pattern is pluralistic, which is the opposite of the protective family and marked by high levels of concept-orientation and low levels of socio-orientation. In these families, “The emphasis in this communication structure seems to be on mutuality of respect and interests: the combination of an absence of social constraint plus a positive impetus to self-expression should foster both communication and competence.”20 Some parents/guardians worry that this type of openness of thought actually creates problems in their children, but McLeod and Chaffee noted that these families have children who are more likely to say they want to grow up and be like their parents/ guardians than the other three types.
Laissez-faire
The final family communication pattern, laissez-faire, is marked by both low concept- and socioorientations. In these families, there tends to be a lack of parent-child interaction or co-orientation. Instead, these children are more likely to be influenced by external factors like the media, peers, and other forces outside of the family unit. McLeod and Chaffee said that these children are more like a control group in an experiment because of the hands-off nature of their communicative relationships with their patterns. As such, it’s somewhat difficult to discuss the effectiveness of this study of family communication.
Research Spotlight
In a 2018 study by Kelly G. Odenweller & Tina M. Harris, the researchers set out to examine the relationship between family communication patterns and adult children’s racial prejudice and tolerance. The researchers used a mostly college-aged sample of 190 adults.
Parental use of socio-oriented family communication patterns was positively related to an adult child’s reported levels of prejudice and bias towards their own group, and negatively related to being racially tolerant. As for concept-orientation, there were no relationships found at all.
Ultimately, a parent’s conformity oriented family communication style can affect their children’s racial biases.
Odenweller, K. G., & Harris, T. M. (2018). Intergroup socialization: The influence of parents’ family communication patterns on adult children’s racial prejudice and tolerance. Communication Quarterly, 66(5), 501–521. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2018.1452766
Family Systems Theory
At the turn of the 20th Century, philosophers started questioning how humans organize things and our understanding of organizing. One critical theorist was Belarusian-born Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov, who wrote a philosophical treaty on the nature of organization in 1922.21 Bogdanov’s ideas ultimately influenced Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory. In a series of works, Bertalanffy conceptualized what has become known as general systems theory.22 Bertalanffy defined a system as “sets of elements standing in interrelation.”23 A classic mechanical system is a non-digital watch. Figure 11.1.2 shows the basic layout of a watch’s innards.
Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Watch System
In this illustration, we see how the balance wheel causes the fork pin to move, which turns the escapement wheel. The escapement wheel turns the third wheel (seconds), which turns the second wheel, which turns the first wheel (minutes), which turns the reduction gear, which turns the hour wheel. All of these different parts must work together to tell time. If a problem arises at any part of this process, then it will effect the entire system and our ability to tell time accurately.
So, how does this ultimately help us understand family communication? A psychiatrist named Murray Bowen developed family systems theory in the 1950s while working at the National Institute of Mental Health. His theory stemmed from the work of general systems theory discussed by Bertalanffy.24 Like Bertalanffy, Bowen’s theory started by examining how everything exists within nature and is governed by natural processes. Two of these processes, individuality and togetherness, became central to these ideas.25Individuality is a “universal, biological life force that propels organisms toward separateness, uniqueness, and distinctiveness.”26Togetherness, on the other hand, is “the complementary, universal, biological life force that propels organisms toward relationship, attachment, and connectedness.” 27 This essential dialectical tension creates an organism’s differentiation, or its drive to be both individualistic while maintaining intimate connections with others in the larger environment. This more ecological view of how humans exist becomes a central tenant of Bowen’s family systems theory. Bowen argues that human behavior was not greatly determined by social-construction or intra-psychically generated. Instead, Bowen believes that a great deal of human behavior is habitual and rooted in billions of years of evolutionary history.
In his earliest work, Bowen examined schizophrenic patients as he was interested in the development and treatment of schizophrenia. Instead of focusing just on the schizophrenic patient, Bowen started analyzing the broader range of relationships within the individual family units. Ultimately, Bowen argued that schizophrenia might be an individual diagnosis, but is in reality, “a symptom manifestation of an active process that involves the entire family.”28 Dr. Bowen goes on to rationalize, “When schizophrenia is seen as a family problem, it is not a disease in terms of our usual way of thinking about disease…When the family is viewed as a unit, certain clinical patterns come into focus that are not easily seen from the more familiar individual frame of reference.” 29 In essence, when we stop to think about a family as a system, it’s much easier to understand the manifestations of behaviors of family members.
Characteristics of Family Systems
Over the years, numerous researchers have furthered the basic ideas of Murray Bowen to further our understanding of family systems. Part of this process has been identifying different characteristics of family systems. According to Kathleen Galvin, Fran Dickson, and Sherilyn Marrow,30 there are seven essential characteristics of family systems: interdependence, wholeness, patterns/regularities, interactive complexity, openness, complex relationships, and equifinality.
Interdependence
The term interdependence means that changes in one part of the system will have ramifications for other parts of the system. For example, if one of the gears in your watch gets bent, the gear will affect the rest of the watch’s ability to tell time. In this idea, the behaviors of one family member will impact the behaviors of other family members. To combine this idea with family communication patterns described earlier, parents/guardians that are high in socio-orientation and low in concept-orientation will impact those children’s willingness and openness to communicate about issues of disagreement.
On the larger issue of pathology, numerous diseases and addictions can impact how people behave and interact. If you have a family who has a child diagnosed with cancer, the focus of the entire family may shift to the care of that one child. If the parents/guardians rally the family in support, this diagnosis could bring everyone together. On the other hand, it’s also possible that the complete focus of the parents/guardians turns to the ill child and the other children could feel unattended to or unloved, which could lead to feelings of isolation, jealousy, and resentment.
Wholeness
The idea of wholeness or holism is to be able to see behaviors and outcomes within the context of the system. To understand how a watch tells time, you cannot just look at the fork pin’s activity and understand the concept of time. In the same way, examining a single fight between two siblings cannot completely let you know everything you need to know about how that family interacts or how that fight came to happen. How siblings interact with one another can be manifestations of how they have observed their parents/guardians handle conflict among themselves or even extended family members like aunts/ uncles, grandparents, and cousins.
Holism is often discussed in opposite to reductionism. Reductionists believe that the best way to understand someone’s communicative behavior is to break it down into the simplest parts that make up the system. For example, if a teenager exhibits verbal aggression, a reductionist would explain the verbally aggressive behavior in terms of hormones (specifically testosterone and serotonin). Holistic systems thinkers don’t negate the different parts of the system, but rather like to take a larger view of everything that led to the verbally aggressive behavior. For example, does the teenager mirror their family’s verbally aggressive tendencies? Basically, what other parts of the system are at play when examining a single behavioral outcome.
Patterns/Regularities
Families, like any natural organism, like balance and predictability. To help with this balance and predictability, systems (including family systems) create a complex series of both rules and norms. Rules are dictates that are spelled out. Many children grow up hearing, “children are to be seen and not heard.” This rule dictates that in social situations, children are not supposed to make noise or actively communicate with others. Norms, on the other hand, are patterns of behavior that are arrived at through the system. For example, maybe your mother has a home office, and everyone knows that when she is in her office, she should not be disturbed.
Of course, one of the problems with patterns and regularities is that they become deeply entrenched and are not able to be changed or corrected quickly or easily. When a family is suddenly faced with a crisis event, these patterns and regularities may prevent the family from actively correcting the course. For example, imagine you live in a family where everyone is taught not to talk about the family’s problems with anyone outside the family. If one of the family members starts having problems, the family may try to circle the wagons and ultimately not get the help it needs. This is an example of a situation that happened to one of our coauthors’ families. In this case, one of our coauthor’s cousins became an alcoholic during his teen years. We’ll call him Jesse. Very few people in the immediate family even know about Jesse’s problems. Jesse’s mother was a widely known community leader, so there was a family rule that said, “don’t make mom or our family look bad.” When Jesse’s parents found out about his alcoholism (through a DUI), they circled the wagons and tried to deal with the problem as a family. Unfortunately, dealing with a disease like alcoholism by closing ranks is not the best way to get someone treatment. One night Jesse’s mother was called out to an accident at a local night club where a drunk driver had hit several people. When Jesse’s mother showed up, it was only then that she learned that the drunk driver had been her son.
In this case, the rule about protecting the family’s image had become so ingrained, that the family hadn’t taken all of the steps necessary to get Jesse the help he needed. Although no one died in the accident, one young woman hit by Jesse was paralyzed for the rest of her life. Jesse ended up going to prison for several years.
Interactive Complexity
The notion of interactive complexity stems back to the original work conducted by Murray Bowen on family systems theory. In his initial research looking at schizophrenics, a lot of families labeled the schizophrenic as “the problem” or “the patient,” which allowed them to put the blame for family problems and interactions on the schizophrenic. Instead, Bowen realized that schizophrenia was one person’s diagnosis in a family system where there were usually multiple issues going on. Trying to reduce everything down to the one label, essentially letting everyone else “off the hook” for any blame for family problems, was not an accurate portrayal of the family.
Instead, it’s important to think about interactions as complex and stemming from the system itself. For example, all married couples will have disagreements. Some married couples take these disagreements, and they become highly contentious fights. These fights are often repetitious and seen over and over again. Mary asks Anne to take out the trash. The next day Mary sees that the trash hasn’t been taken out yet. Mary turns to Anne at breakfast and says, “Are you ever going to take out the trash?” Anne quickly replies, “Stop nagging me already. I’ll get it done when I get it done.” Before too long, this becomes a fight about Anne not listening to Mary from Mary’s point-of-view, while the conversation becomes about Mary’s constant nagging from Anne’s point-of-view. Before long, the argument devolves into an argument about who started the conflict in the first place. Galvin, Dickson, and Marrow argue that trying to determine who started the conflict is not appropriate from a systems perspective, instead, researchers should focus on “current patterns serve to uncover ongoing complex issues.”31
Openness
The next major characteristic of systems is openness. The term openness refers to how permissive system boundaries are to their external environment. Some families have fairly open boundaries. In essence, these families allow for a constant inflow of information from the external environment and outflow of information to the external environment. Other families are considerably more rigid about system boundaries. For example, maybe a family is deeply religious and does not allow television in the home. Furthermore, this family only allows reading materials that come from their religious sect and actively prevents any ideas that may threaten their religious ideology. In this case, the family has a very rigid and closed boundary. When families close themselves off from the external environment, they essentially isolate themselves. Children who are reared in highly isolated family systems often have problems interacting with other children when they come into contact with them in the external environment (e.g., school). Some families will choose to homeschool their children as another tool to close the family system to foreign ideas and influences.
Complex Relationships
It’s important to remember that all family systems also have multiple subsystems. One of the areas that Murray Bowen became very interested in was how family subsystems develop and function during times of crisis. In Bowen’s view, a couple may be the basic unit within an emotional relationship. Still, any tension between the couple will usually result in one or both parties turning to others. If there are not others within the family itself, partners will bring external people into the instability. For example, James and Ralph just got married. After a recent argument, Ralph ended up talking to his best friend, Shelly, about the argument (Figure 11.1.3). Bowen argues a two-person system under stress will draw in a third party to provide balance, which ultimately creates a two-helping-one or a two-against-one dynamic. It’s also possible that James decides to talk to his mother, Polly, which creates a different triangle.
Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Nature of Three
Families are filled with relationship triangles. We could describe Ralph and James as parents and Shell and Polly as their daughters just as easily. These triangles are always being created and defined within a family unit when there is instability between two people. During times of crisis, these triangles take on a solution to the instability in the two-person relationship. Unfortunately, this “solution” is either two-helping-one or a two-against-one.32 Basically, in a triangle, there are now two people on one side and one on the other, so it gives a sense of balance. The more family members we start to include, the more complicated these triangle structures become.
Equifinality
The final characteristic of family systems is equifinality. Equifinality is defined as the ability to get to the same end result using multiple starting points and paths. Going back to the basic definition of “family” discussed earlier in this chapter, there are many different ways for people to form relationships that are called families. Within family systems theory, the goal is to see how different family systems achieve the same outcomes (whether positive or negative).
Mindfulness Activity
Research has demonstrated that parental mindfulness has an indirect impact on children’s internalizing or externalizing of problems.33 As such, mindful parenting is an extremely useful tool when raising children (specifically being attentive, non-judgmental, and non-reactive). Furthermore, Jill Suttie recommends three specific factors for successful mindful parenting:
Noticing your own feelings when you’re in conflict with your child,
Learning to pause before responding in anger,
Listening carefully to a child’s viewpoint even when disagreeing with it.34
Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn define mindful parenting as “Seeing if we can remember to bring this kind of attention and openness and wisdom to our moments with our children. It is a true practice, its own inner discipline, its own form of meditation.”35 The essence of mindful parenting is about being present in one’s day-to-day interactions with their children. For this activity, answer the following questions. If you are not a parent, think about how your own parents and/or guardians would answer these questions.
When you are spending time as a family, are you free from distractions (e.g., cell phones, television)?
Does your family have a clear schedule that creates a stable routine (e.g., family mealtimes, bedtimes for children)?
Does your family engage in “family time” that does not involve technology?
How often do you dedicate time to focus purely on your child’s needs?
When engaging in a conflict with your child, do you remove yourself when you start to get angry (taking a “time out”)
How often do you apologize to your child when you’re wrong?
When watching your children’s behavior, do you find yourself observing them or judging them? 8. When was the last time you considered your intentions, judgments, and attitude towards your child during an interaction?
Mapping Communication Patterns
One of the revolutionary tools created by Murray Bowen to understand complicated family relationships is the genogram. A genogram a pictorial representation of a family across generations. Unlike a traditional family tree, a genogram is designed to detail family data and not just basic demographic information (biological sex, birth dates, death dates, etc.). When used effectively, you can track generations of family interactions, medical issues, psychological issues, relationship patterns, and any other variable a researcher or clinician may be interested in studying.36
The standard genogram starts with a couple pairing of some kind. In a genogram, males are represented by squares and females are represented by circles. Figure 11.1.4 is a key for common elements in a genogram. Please understand that this is not an exhaustive list. Researchers commonly add symbols to illustrate specific issues of interest. Furthermore, not all of the symbols below are necessarily agreed upon by all researchers who utilize genograms. As such, it’s essential to know the key an individual is using when attempting to understand a genogram.
Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Genogram Key
As you can see in Figure 11.1.4, your basic genogram allows individuals to look at various basic characteristics of individuals within a family, the types of relationships, types of relationship interactions, and any physical/mental illness and other diseases. When thinking about your average family, many people think of the idyllic family represented in Figure 11.1.5. In this genogram, we have two heterosexual couples who each have a boy and a girl, who then turn around and have a boy and a girl of their own (and, of course, one dog and one cat). However, most families don’t look like this. Families are complicated and messy.
Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Idyllic Family
To help us understand genograms, let’s look at your typical family, The Skywalkers (Figure 11.1.6). As you can see, there is a lot going on in this genogram. We have three general familial lines in play within this genogram: The Solo’s (to the left), the Skywalker’s (in the middle), and the Naberrie’s (to the right). We have four generations represented within this genogram. For our purposes, the “index person” is Luke Skywalker (highlighted in the yellow box). For those of you who are unaware, the first trilogy of Star Wars centers around Luke Skywalker, so it makes sense to see him as the index person for our genogram.
Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): The Skywalkers
Let’s examine some of the family interactions. Let’s start with Luke and Leia. They are fraternal twins who were separated by birth. Luke is adopted by his uncle Owen Lars and his wife Beru Whitesan. Leia, on the other hand, is adopted by Bail Prestor Organa and Queen Breha Organa. Ultimately, the two do find each other and establish a close relationship as adults, which is why the “cut off repaired” symbol was used between them. Luke also happens to be best friends with Leia’s future husband Han Solo. Han has an interesting life before Leia. From what we know, he may have been previously married to Sana Starros (she said they were, he said they weren’t). There’s also the possibility that Han had an affair with an unknown woman and had a child out of wedlock named Danielle Kieran.
Of course, the bulk of the original trilogy of Star Wars movies centers on the triangle relationship between Luke, Leia, and their father, Anakin Skywalker (also known as Darth Vader). To put it mildly, Vader is a slightly distant father figure and prone to acts of violence. His acts of violence are not only targeted at his children, but also at anyone he perceives to get in his way. During one of his more dramatic acts of violence, Darth Vader destroys the entire planet of Alderaan, which kills Leia’s adopted parents in the process. Of course, this is after he gives the order to kill his half-brother Owen and his wife, who were Luke’s adopted parents. As we said earlier, families are complicated and messy.
Now, we used the Star Wars world as a tool to help illustrate how genograms can help us breakdown family histories and understand family dynamics. Let’s look at a genogram from a real family. The following genogram is created without names, but all parts of the genogram represent an actual family (Figure 11.1.7).
Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Real Family Genogram
Take a few moments and look at this genogram. What do you see? How would you characterize this family? You have a number of close relationships. You have two children who were adopted. Both of whom have repaired the relationships with their birthmothers, but have no apparent connection with their birth fathers. You have single adults with pets. You have three marriages that ended in divorce. For a couple of people, we have no information, which is why we have question marks for two males in the genogram. We have a situation where two male siblings had an intense hatred for their stepmother. We have one gay man who is single and a bisexual woman who is now living with another bisexual woman. We also have one male suspected of alcohol abuse.
We show you this genogram because it’s more realistic of how modern families look. Modern family systems aren’t always clean and easy to follow. Sure, we could put all of these people on leaves in a family tree, but you would only get a fraction of the picture of what this family looks like. Genograms are an excellent tool for getting a bird’s eye view of how a family functions.
Research Spotlight
In 2014, Justin Parent, Jessica Clifton, Rex Forehand, Andrew Golub, Megan Reid, and Emily R. Pichler set out to examine the relationships among parental mindfulness, relationship quality, and parental firm control (“degree to which the parent consistently regulates and monitors the child’s activities and conduct”37). For this study, the researchers specifically examined Black children who had a single mother and the mother had a cohabitating male partner (CMP) who lived with them. The average age of the children participants was 13 years old; the average age of the mother was 39; and the average age of the CMP was 41.
First, the research did not find a relationship between a mother’s mindfulness and her CMP’s mindfulness. For the mothers, mindfulness was positively related to relationship quality, and positively related to parental firm control. For the CMP, mindfulness was positively related to relationship quality, but was not related to parental firm control. We should also mention that mother and CMP relational quality was positively related, and there was a positive relationship between mother and CMP use of parental firm control.
The researchers used family systems theory to help explain the CMP’s role within the family system. Specifically, the researchers argue, “It is also important to note that the MCP’s role in different family subsystems may be, at least in part, determined by how a mother defines her male partner’s role. For example, his main role may be to meet her relationship needs and/or contribute to completing general household responsibilities (e.g, grocery shopping, cleaning) rather than setting limits on an adolescent aged child.” 38
Parent, J., Clifton, J., Forehand, R., Golub, A., Reid, M., & Pichler, E. R. (2014). Parental mindfulness and dyadic relationship quality in low-income cohabiting black stepfamilies: Associations with parenting experienced by adolescents. Couple & Family Psychology, 3(2), 67–82. https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000020
Key Takeaways
Although there are numerous definitions for the term “family,” this book uses the following definition: two or more people tied by marriage, blood, adoption, or choice; living together or apart by choice or circumstance; having interaction within family roles; creating and maintaining a common culture; being characterized by economic cooperation; deciding to have or not to have children, either own or adopted; having boundaries; and claiming mutual affection. The family structure is represented by single-mothers, single-fathers, two-parents, and adults living together without children. The idea of family has shifted away from the notion that a family is made up of a mother, father, and children.
Jack M. McLeod and Steven H. Chaffee originally coined the term “family communication patterns” and broke the concept into two different patterns of family communicative behavior: socio-orientation and concept-orientation. Concept-orientation is the pattern of family communication where freedom of expression is encouraged, communication is frequent, and family life is pleasurable. Conversely, socio-orientation is the pattern of family communication where similarity is valued over individuality and self-expression, and harmony is preferred over expression of opinion.
Murray Bowen’s family systems theory is an extension of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory. Bowen argued that human behavior is not determined by social-construction or intra-psychically generated, but is habitual and rooted in billions of years of evolutionary history. As such, to understand how someone behaves or communicates today, it’s important to see how this behavior/ communication can be understood through generations of family members.
Exercises
Reflect on your experiences as a family member. How does your own family compare to other families in communication patterns and structure?
Describe your idea of the ideal family. How would your ideal family communicate? Is this different from your own family?
Use conformity orientation and conversation orientation to describe two families you know.
Create your own genogram for your family, including at least three generations. You can create this using a pen and paper, graphic arts software, or genogram software. The genograms used in this book were created using Genogram Pro, https://www.genopro.com/. There is also a paired down free version of this software: https://www.genopro.com/free/.
In a 2018 study by Kelly G. Odenweller & Tina M. Harris, the researchers set out to examine the relationship between family communication patterns and adult children’s racial prejudice and tolerance. The researchers used a mostly college-aged sample of 190 adults.
Research has demonstrated that parental mindfulness has an indirect impact on children’s internalizing or externalizing of problems.33 As such, mindful parenting is an extremely useful tool when raising children (specifically being attentive, non-judgmental, and non-reactive). Furthermore, Jill Suttie recommends three specific factors for successful mindful parenting:
