4.3 Family Dynamics
Family dynamics refers to many characteristics of a family, such as roles and relationships, communication patterns, and various factors that shape family members’ interactions. Family dynamics and the quality of family relationships can positively or negatively impact an individual’s health because family members rely on each other for economic and emotional support. Healthy family relationships can be sources of security and comfort, and unhealthy family relationships can be sources of stress. For example, secure and supportive family relationships can provide love, advice, and care, whereas stressful family relationships can cause burdens of arguments, intrusive behaviors, and hurtful criticism.[1] Table 4.3 compares characteristics of healthy and unhealthy family dynamics.
Table 4.3. Characteristics of Healthy and Unhealthy Family Dynamics[2]
| Healthy Family Dynamics | Unhealthy Family Dynamics |
|---|---|
| Family members use clear communication. | Family members use unclear, limited, or hurtful communication. |
| Family members are permitted to make choices and their privacy is respected. It is not expected that all members must agree on issues. | Family members demonstrate enmeshment, overinvolvement, and/or permeable boundaries in which individuals are too involved in other members’ lives. It may be expected that all members agree on issues. |
| Family members take responsibility for their own behavior and adequately fulfill their family roles. | Individuals take responsibility for other family members’ behavior more than they should, or they do not take responsibility for their own behavior, resulting in inadequate fulfillment of family roles or role conflict. |
| Family members experience cohesiveness of the family. | Family members feel isolated. |
| The family provides supportive relationships. | The family provides stressful relationships. |
| Family members demonstrate positive interactions. | Family members demonstrate poor quality or negative interactions. |
| Family members treat one another with mutual respect, and the family provides love, advice, and care. | Family members are treated with disrespect, resulting in arguments, criticism, and onerous demands. |
| Family relationships are mutually satisfying with demonstration of emotional warmth. | Family relationships are not mutually satisfying, and cold, detached, or overbearing emotions exist. |
| Family expectations are flexible. | Family expectations are rigid. |
| Family members feel the family is stable and secure. | Family members feel the family is disorganized and unstable. |
Families can be functional in some characteristics and simultaneously dysfunctional in others. No two families are exactly alike, and few families experience continuous, blissful, ideal family circumstances.
Families who effectively function and meet the needs of their family members are referred to as high-resource families. High-resource families exhibit resiliency, the ability of its members to cope with adversity and recover emotionally from stressful or traumatic events. They may have resources like adequate financial resources to meet family needs, extended family support, a strong friend network, or a strong religious community. The term low-resource families refers to families who do not effectively meet the needs of their family members.[3]
The term family dysfunction refers to failure of the family to accomplish the intended family functions of economic support, emotional support, socialization, control of sexuality and reproduction, and ascribed status. Family dysfunction can be caused by an individual family member’s dysfunction or disruption in the family as a whole that threatens its stability. Dysfunctions are typically unintended. For example, family members do not intend to establish poor communication patterns, economic hardship, or invisible sexual boundaries (i.e., incest).
Family dysfunction is often handed down from generation to generation, with family members being aware that something is wrong in the family system. For example, substance misuse and patterns of unsteady income are examples of common family dysfunctions.[4] Traumatic experiences with caregivers also affect a child’s sense of self, the way they communicate, how they form relationships with others, and their future health.[5]
- Jabbari, B. (2023). Family dynamics. StatPearls [Internet]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560487/ ↵
- Jabbari, B. (2023). Family dynamics. StatPearls [Internet]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK560487/ ↵
- Giuliani, D. (n.d.). Sociology of family. Pressbooks. https://pressbooks.pub/rdg097v1/ ↵
- Giuliani, D. (n.d.). Sociology of family. Pressbooks. https://pressbooks.pub/rdg097v1/ ↵
- Gillis, K. (2023). 8 common dysfunctional family roles. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/invisible-bruises/202303/8-common-dysfunctional-family-roles ↵
Refers to many characteristics of a family, such as roles and relationships, communication patterns, and various factors that shape family members' interactions.
Exhibit resiliency, the ability of its members to cope with adversity and recover emotionally from stressful or traumatic events.
The ability to effectively cope with adversity.
Refers to families who do not effectively meet the needs of their family members.
Failure of the family to accomplish the intended family functions of economic support, emotional support, socialization, control of sexuality and reproduction, and ascribed status.