Download Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Communication in the Family and more Study notes Family Sociology in PDF only on Docsity!
Theoretical Approaches
to Understanding
Communication
in the Family
Introduction of Theory
Family Communication Theories Roles Theory Family Roles Nurturing Roles Providers Nurturers Development Expert (social, emotional, and physical) Health Care Provider Controlling Roles Behavior Control Decision-Making, Family Boundary Maintenance, and Financial Organization Dealing With Role Strain: Dual-Worker and Dual-Career Families and Gender Roles Family Systems Theory Families as Self-Regulatory Goal-Attaining Systems The Normative Model The Developmental Task Model The Psychopolitical Model The Opportunity Matrix Model Reflexive Spiral Model Unified Transcybernetic Model Rules Theory Verbal Rules of Communication Nonverbal Rules of Communication
Summary
Key Terms
Questions for Application
53
Introduction of Theory _______________________________
At this point, we have a full understanding of the definitions of family, com- munication, and family communication. We also have more understanding of the complexities of families in the 21st century through our exploration in Chapter 2 of the various family forms and their potential impacts on family communication. To most fully understand the nature of families and the communication dynamics within them, however, we must fully under- stand the nature of theory. Before you turn off completely at the abstract- ness of this concept in the face of the concreteness of the types of families we have just discussed, let me try to persuade you that theories will be con- cretely useful to us in our application to families. By focusing on families, theories can be socially meaningful and applied. Theories give us a mechanism for understanding phenomena, and families are one such phenomenon. Theories provide us with several functions that will be highly useful as we go about the business of understanding families. First, theories can describe phenomenon (Littlejohn & Foss, 2005). In other words, theories can answer the “what?” question. To be more specific, under- standing what single-parent families, binuclear families, and gay families are is all the work of description. Description can also allow us to delineate the similarities and differences of families (and their accompanying definitions). Families are all the same because they all exhibit the characteristics of relat- edness, nurturing, and control, as we described these concepts in Chapter 1. In addition, they are all different in that single-parent families have a single head of household, and binuclear families have a biological mother and step- father in one home and a biological father and stepmother in another home. Gay families have parents who are homosexual and live in a committed relationship with their partner. This offers a nice understanding of the types of families that are out there, but it does little to help us understand the complex differences and outcomes associated with each family type. The second function of theories can help us on this front. Second, theories can help predict concrete outcomes (Littlejohn & Foss, 2005), or in other words, they help enumerate how something will occur. This is especially important with families because governmental agencies, religious groups, and concerned parents are all interested in the potential effects of communication among family members. Specifically, governmen- tal agencies and religious groups frequently form theories that allow them to predict that traditional nuclear families produce different outcomes than do single-parent homes in terms of better academic performance and less delin- quency among the children in those homes (e.g., McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). Alternatively, parents with teenagers may be interested in predicting the best form of communicating with their teens about risky sexual behav- ior and the potential outcomes associated with it. They might want to know, for instance, that parent-child closeness is associated with reduced adoles- cent pregnancy risk through teens remaining sexually abstinent, postponing
54 FAMILY COMMUNICATION
let’s review three theories that you should find particularly useful in understanding your own families of origin. Although many additional theories will be introduced throughout this text, these three theories are highlighted in a separate chapter because of their enduring ability to describe, explain, and predict communication behavior within families across a wide variety of situations and forms. Roles theory helps us understand why vari- ous members of our family behave and communicate in the ways they do. Roles theory argues that you can predict a role holder’s behavior by the roles he or she holds. Mothers are most likely to be the nurturers , for instance, whereas fathers are most likely to be the resource providers. These roles pro- vide powerful prescriptions for behavior and expectations for how those behaviors should be carried out. Family systems theory allows us to under- stand the ways in which families operate not as individuals but as members of a collective group known as a family. This perspective assumes that the whole of the family is greater than the sum of the parts and that you can never fully understand a family and its communication by attempting to understand its individual constituents. Finally, rules theory helps us under- stand the complex nature of communication rules that occur within families. For instance, families often contain unwritten rules for who talks to whom about what. Specifically, it may be OK to talk to your big sister about the sensual nature of the encounter you had with your girlfriend or boyfriend last night, but there may be strict sanctions if the same conversation were carried out with your mother or father.
Roles Theory
Roles theory assumes that we all hold a variety of roles and that those roles dictate the behavior we will use to carry out those roles on the stage of life. Thus, mothers are simply playing at being moms, and fathers are simi- larly acting out the role of dads. To flesh this out a bit more, it would behoove us to visit Goffman’s (1959) earliest delineation of roles (drama) theory. In it, he argues that there is no such thing as a stable “self” but that we are all really a composite of all the various roles we hold. While self is a topic worthy of its own course, the concepts most relevant to our discussion of families include roles, role expectations, performances, front-stage behav- ior, back-stage behavior, and wings. Roles can be thought of as the various positions we hold in relation to others. We can be mothers, fathers, daugh- ters, boyfriends and girlfriends, wives, husbands, educators, friends, students, and so on. You get the picture. Each role has its own set of expectations associated with it as well as its own set of behaviors that best fulfill its function. Role expectations include anticipated behaviors associated with a particular role. Mothers, for instance, are expected to be available and devoted to their children. This would explain the intensely negative reactions that society has to substance-abusing mothers or mothers who abuse,
56 FAMILY COMMUNICATION
neglect, or abandon their children. These behaviors are simply not part of the expectation of motherhood and in fact run counter to notions of what “good mothers” should do. In addition, “fathers should earn an income” is another example of a powerful role expectation. Stay-at-home dads often become the brunt of jokes regarding slothfulness, laziness, and the like—this at a time when the value of stay-at-home mothers’ jobs is estimated at $131,471 per year (O’Brien, 2002). Nonetheless, violations of expectations for role behavior can have very powerful evaluations associated with them. Performances include all behaviors associated with a particular role. Good daughters should obey their mothers, clean their rooms, never swear (in front of their mothers!), be respectful, and so on. Sisters should be loyal. Fathers should be strong, rational, industrious, and hard working. I’m con- fident that if pressed, you could delineate a whole set of behaviors associated with any familial role. According to Goffman (1959), these performances are carried out on a stage. The front stage is where you perform your role. For instance, mothers are expected to perform their role as “mother” in the home environment and whenever they are in the presence of their children. However, you would not expect this same woman to perform her role of mother in the boardroom with her colleagues. Her colleagues would find this highly offensive indeed because this situation would call for front-stage behavior as “professional/colleague/coworker.” This same situation could be considered back stage for the mother role because the woman may feel freer to swear, be less likely to cook, and be less vigilant about the safety of her environment than she would be at home (she might not put safety covers over her office electrical outlets, for instance). In other words, the back stage is anywhere where you do not feel the pressure to perform one of your primary roles. You can thus “let down” on the behaviors that were important in the other role. Of course, according to Goffman, you are probably performing some other role there because we are either always performing when we are in the presence of others or carrying around a “gen- eralized other” for whom one performs at all times. In other words, Goffman would argue that a woman who highly identifies with her mother- ing role will always behave in ways that are consistent with the performance of that role (almost as if her child could always see her). Finally, if you have ever been on a stage, you will be aware that a stage has wings behind the curtains and off to the sides where actors prepare for their roles. Similarly then, Goffman (1959) argues that wings are those areas where mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and so on prepare for their roles. When I choose my clothing (costume), I’ll choose apparel that is appropri- ate for my role. This makes some sense because I certainly did not wear silk blouses at home for my daughter to spit up on when she was an infant, and similarly, I don’t wear my “painting” jeans around the office. In addition, we may have several performance experts in the wings who help us prepare for our roles. Not unlike other mothers I know, I frequently called good ol’ big sis to get the scoop on the best techniques for getting my daughter to
Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Communication in the Family 57
housework (Griswold, 1993). Although the changes in society cited earlier may make it seem less likely now than in the past, this still appears to be the case in the majority of households. In fact, reviews of the extensive literature on economic resources and marriage show consistently that greater eco- nomic resources are significantly associated with higher rates of marriage for men (e.g., Xie, Raymo, Goyett, & Thorton, 2003). This is especially the case for measures of earning potential (current earnings, earnings over the next 5 years, future earnings, past earnings, and lifetime earnings). These same measures of earning potential did not predict marriage for women. Further- more, as women’s earnings rise, they become more independent and report a decline in the desire for marriage (Oppenheimer, 1997). Finally, only 23% of women in dual-earner couples earned as much as, or more than, their hus- bands in 1997 (Brennan, Chait Barnett, & Gareis, 2001). This figure is con- sistent with a more recent analysis of U.S. Census 2000 data showing that 19% to 30% of wives in dual-career families earn more than their husbands (Winkler, McBride, & Andrews, 2005). However, this trend appears transi- tory in that only 60% of couples maintain this disparity for more than 3 years. Thus, there still exists a strong societal pressure in our society for the man to be the primary resource provider for the family. So much so that if he is deemed less likely to earn money or the woman makes more money, he is less desirable as a marriage partner. Regardless of this pressure on the man to be the primary resource provider of the family, we are beginning to see a preponderance of mothers entering the workforce as well. As you may recall from Chapter 2, the number of married-couple families with wives in the labor force has increased from 31% in 1976 to 51% in 2000 (compared with 70% of women without an infant). This figure is even higher for educated women (64%) and black women (66%; Bachu & O’Connell, 2001). Remember also that the percentage of working mothers increases as their children grow, with working mothers with children under 6 increasing to 59% and those with children between 6 and 17 increasing to 74% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003a). Thus, between half and three quarters of mothers work outside the home. Certain factors enhance the likelihood that mothers will be resource providers. Mothers cite economic need as the most pressing consideration (Israelson, 1989). However, women who score higher on traditional male characteristics are also more likely to work (Krogh, 1985), whereas women who are traditionally more feminine are more likely to take on more femi- nine caregiving tasks (Burroughs, Turner, & Turner, 1984). Furthermore, a husband with more pro-feminist views is also more likely to have a wife in the workplace (Biaggio, Mohan, & Baldwin, 1985).
Nurturers. The provision of nurturance includes providing care, support, and warmth (including, but not limited to, child care and household tasks). Similar to resource providers, nurturers seem equally split along gender lines.
Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Communication in the Family 59
Whereas men are expected to be the primary resource providers, women are expected to be the nurturer-caregivers. This gender division is apparent both before and after children are added to the family. Before parenthood, wives complete 67% of the household chores (3.9 chores a day on average), and husbands complete the remaining 33% of chores (1.9 chores a day on aver- age) (Huston & Vangilisti, 1995; MacDermid, Huston, & McHale, 1990). Following the addition of a child, there is a sixfold increase in the number of family-related activities performed, from 5.8 per day to 36.2 per day (see Figure 3.1). New mothers increase to 5.3 household tasks and 22.7 child care tasks. New fathers, in comparison, increase their household tasks to 2.4 per day while accruing an additional 5.9 child care tasks. Women in dual-earning couples report spending an average of 15 hours a week on household tasks compared with men’s 6.8 hours (Stevens, Kiger, & Riley, 2001). As these numbers make obvious, women are completing more tradi- tionally nurturing tasks than are men. Although this disparity in task load is striking to the observer, women complete up to two thirds of household work before they feel that the divi- sion of labor is unfair (Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994). However, women who contribute highly to the family income are more likely to perceive an unequal division of household labor as unfair compared with women who earn less than their husbands (Stevens et al., 2001). Furthermore, the perception of relational and psychological shared parenting is more important in pre- dicting marital satisfaction than the actual division of the child care tasks (Ehrenberg, Gearing-Small, Hunter, & Small, 2001). Men, alternatively, feel that the workload is unjustly divided when 36% of the tasks fall on them. Interestingly, men contribute more to the household and perceive greater
60 FAMILY COMMUNICATION
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Before Parenthood After Addition of a Child Wives Husbands
Figure 3.1 Number of Household Chores SOURCE: Houston and Holmes (2004).
Consistently, mothers may be more instrumental in encouraging emotional development as well; mothers have been known to encourage the expression of “strong emotions” (anger, frustration, pride) by their sons compared with the weaker emotions (sadness, fear) (e.g., Mulac, Studley, Wiemann, & Bradac, 1987; Shields, 1987). Finally, mothers are highly instrumental in encouraging intellectual development. In fact, parents seem to have almost intuitive abilities to stimulate their children’s learning (Papousek, Papousek, & Haekel, 1987), and most caregiver behaviors provide teaching to their infants (Van Egeren & Barratt, 2004). Mothers are particularly adept at stim- ulating their infants; most frame their communication to infants as “moth- erese,” or specialized speech addressed to infants (Yingling, 1995). Given that mothers most often adapt their work schedules to accommodate the needs of the children (Chait Barnett, Gareis, Boone James, & Steele, 2003), it is highly likely that mothers also provide the most focus with regard to academic achievements as they assist with homework and in other ways provide the groundwork for intellectual growth (e.g., reading to the child and otherwise communicating with the child in ways that encourage intellectual maturation; Laakso, Poikkeus, Eklund, & Lyytenin, 2004).
Health Care Provider. Health care provision is the last role that falls under nurturance. Not surprisingly, because women are doing a majority of the child care tasks, they are frequently relied on to nurse their babies through ill- nesses; arrange for doctors, dentists, and eye exams; and generally attempt to maintain the health of their offspring. It is frequently the case that they nurse their spouses as well. In addition, extended families can be included here in that children are now nursing their elderly parents in the home, and more positive outcomes are expected in mother-daughter than mother-son rela- tionships (Cicirelli, 2003). Furthermore, more mothers are portrayed as ful- filling the caregiving role in magazine depictions, and these magazines (mostly aimed at mothers) include child’s health issues as a major topic (Francis- Connolly, 2003). Only mothers were the focus of a research project examin- ing the beliefs of mothers regarding potential injuries to their preschool children (Weatherman, 2003). It is fair to assume from this research that more women are expected to fulfill health care roles in the family. Resource provision and nurturing roles across family forms. Based on this review of findings, it appears that both men and women play the resource provision and nurturing (nurturing, development, health care) roles now. Regardless of this verifiable fact, it still appears to be the case that the man is expected to be the primary resource provider, based on the fact that earning potential is a consistent predictor of marriage for men, and the woman is expected to be the primary nurturer, based on the fact that she will cut back on outside work-related activities and ungrudgingly complete a greater share of the household and child-rearing responsibilities. This proves especially problematic for single mothers raising children (84% of all single-parent
62 FAMILY COMMUNICATION
homes), because the mother head of household is often expected to be the resource provider and the nurturer. This may account for the fact that up to one third of mother-headed households live below the poverty line (Connecticut Health Policy Project, 2003). Single mothers struggle to fulfill both the resource provision and nurturer roles simultaneously. As we have seen above, most women place greater role salience on their nurturing mother role and spend less time at work or leave work altogether when their children are small. Thus, single mothers experience a great deal of role strain as they attempt to balance out resource provision and nurturing roles. This strain should play itself out in communication in the family such that the mother who must work to support her children has less time to spend com- municating in nurturing ways with her children (e.g., less time to help with homework, to have a leisurely cuddle in the morning before school, to chat over dinner) and may experience more role strain and stress, which may also play itself out in the quality of the communication when communication does occur. Such role strain should also be apparent for single fathers, although there appear to be fewer single fathers living below the poverty line, which indi- cates that they may prefer their resource provision role over their nurturing role (as society dictates and as indicated by the research indicating that women do more of the child care tasks). Little research exists regarding the provision of resources or nurturing in the blended home, but the research reviewed in Chapter 2 indicating that stepmothers are more involved in the parenting role than are stepfathers indicates that the traditional roles of male resource provider and female nurturer continue to prevail in the blended home. Very little research exists regarding the breakdown of resource provider and nurturer roles in cohabiting, married with no children, gay, and gay couples with children families. It can still be expected, however, that one person is primarily responsible for each role within each household. For example, in the gay couple who adopted children in Florida (the Rosie O’Donnell example from Chapter 2), one of the partners quit his nursing job to stay home full-time with the children while the other partner went out to work. It should therefore be expected that the roles of resource provision and nurturers are in evidence in families regardless of their form. These roles, in turn, allow us to predict that the nurturer in these families communicates in more nurturing ways, while the resource provider may be the more dis- tant communicator who is allowed more freedom to influence through his or her communication when it occurs.
Controlling Roles
Although providing a nurturing environment is essential for encouraging growth in the family, it is not the only element to ensure development. Control, or limiting behavioral options of other family members, is also
Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Communication in the Family 63
Family boundary maintenance. One further method of limiting behavioral options is through family boundary maintenance. Parents frequently attempt to control their child’s environment to ensure what they deem to be the child’s best behavior. Most of us remember that one friend who was not allowed to visit or with whom we were not allowed to associate. In this way, our parents decide who is and who is not acceptable for interacting with their children. The belief here is that children influence one another through their behavior. Family members are also limited in their interactions with other extended family members as well. Some children grow up with- out ever knowing their cousins, and sometimes their grandparents, because of existing family feuds. Perhaps not even in their conscious awareness, they are being limited to who is considered within or outside the family bound- ary. As a rather dramatic example, I grew up next to my uncle and aunt, but in a community of property lines and no fences, a fence was erected between our properties following a family feud concerning my grandparents’ inheri- tance. I was allowed to play with Hope and Tom (my cousins), but it was clear that our parents would not speak. Such limitations are those of family boundary maintenance. Tammy Afifi and Paul Schrodt (2003) argue that such family boundary maintenance may be especially relevant within families that include divorce. Parents move out, locks are often changed, and the exiting parent is often not permitted in the house, or when he or she is, they must obey new rules of entry such as knocking before coming in. As we have seen in Chapter 1, many government and social science agencies define families as “sharing a household.” While problematic definitionally, this household includes geographic and material boundaries that distinguish who is in, and who is out, of one’s family. Thus, the “leaving parent” or spouse may feel that he or she is no longer a part of the family because of being out- side the boundary. This may become even more complicated when new spouses and stepparents and sometimes their children enter the family household and now nonbiologically related individuals are living together as one family. Physical boundaries are especially salient in divorced and stepfamilies. Postdivorce and stepfamily situations also provide fertile ground for conflict over rules/roles and privacy boundaries (Afifi & Schrodt, 2003). Stepfamilies offer a potentially turbulent environment as children struggle with too many holders of the same role. The common refrain “you’re not my mom/dad!” shouted at the top of one’s lungs is a perfect example of a child telling a stepparent that he or she has overstepped the boundaries in trying to parent the child. In essence, the child is saying, “That’s my mom’s job; you are not my mom. My mom is part of my family and you are NOT.” Consistently, postdivorce families and stepfamilies are rife with conflicts over privacy issues. Often, children protect the privacy of the parents in one household as a type of loyalty. I’ll never forget the time Huw (my oldest
Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Communication in the Family 65
stepson) said, “I know.. .” and both my husband and I looked at him expectantly, and he said “... stuff. ” Eventually we learned that his mom and stepdad were soon to be married and surmised that this was the “stuff.” He felt the strong need to protect the privacy of his mom even though the two families work hard together to have a conflict-free zone for the children’s sake. Two years later, the boys maintained the privacy of their mom’s pregnancy as well. Thus, children in stepfamilies and binuclear families have strong drives to protect the privacy, roles/rules, and physical boundaries across the families. Financial organization. Finally, the financial organizer can be seen through the dictum, “He who holds the gold, rules.” The person who man- ages the finances usually has a greater say in how finances are distributed and dictates how much is spent on which household or personal items. Some families manage to have two financial managers, but it is a rare couple that agrees on how to run the finances. Many couples find it easier to have one member in charge of this daunting task; disagreements over finances are always at the top of the list in terms of most frequent arguments (Newton & Burgoon, 1990). Therefore, usually one member of the household is respon- sible for organizing the finances. The importance of the financial organizer is highlighted by the differ- ence between dual-worker and dual-career couples. Whereas dual-career couples receive a salary (e.g., teachers, doctors, lawyers), dual-worker couples receive only an hourly wage. This produces strikingly different financial scenarios. Financial organizing is much more stressful for dual- worker couples who cannot expect exponential increases in salary at times that coincide with important life changes (e.g., adding a child, having a child start school or college). The financial organizer in the dual-worker couple has a greater challenge trying to manage the day-to-day finances while also planning for the future. The dual-worker couple is also more affected by financial stress in that they often cannot afford assistance with housework and child care that would allow them the luxury of more time to spend with their children. In this way, finances and the person who organizes them can have a profound effect on the quality of the communi- cation in the family. Organizing the finances can be particularly challenging in divorced families, where long, protracted legal battles can dictate the amount of finances devoted to each household. This can be particularly stressful in the step- or binuclear family because resources are now being devoted to biological and nonbiological children simultaneously. Communicationally, this can result in high levels of destructive conflict that may also include the children; parents have been known to ask children to ask the non- residential parent for the child support. These types of loyalty tests can put much strain on relations between the children and both of their parents.
66 FAMILY COMMUNICATION
2003). Still others make the full commitment to work and pay the consequences of having less time and attention to devote to child care and household tasks. Regardless of the strategies adopted, maintaining both resource-providing and nurturing roles can have consequences in terms of interrole conflict and role strain. A few concepts from roles theory are worth visiting here. The concepts of interrole conflict and role strain are particularly relevant to dual-worker (i.e., both workers are compensated hourly) or dual-career (i.e., both work- ers are paid a salary) heads of households (the most typical family form; Hayghe, 1990). Interrole conflict occurs whenever the performance of one role interferes with the performance of another role. Working mothers are well aware of interrole conflict because the expected behaviors associated with their jobs often prevent them from performing those expected behav- iors associated with performance of the mother role. Being at the office, for instance, contradicts the need to be at home that many new mothers feel. Even now that my daughter is 2, I still feel the pressure to go into the house from the guest house where I’m working on this book where my nanny is attending to my daughter’s nap instead of me. In terms of communication, constant attention to the whereabouts of an active toddler often takes away from the ability to focus singular attention on one’s spouse who has a very important story to tell at the end of his or her stressful day. Both examples illustrate how behaviors associated with one role’s performance can detract from the performance of another role held by the same role holder.
68 FAMILY COMMUNICATION
Figure 3.2 Time constraints are the biggest drawback that children of dual- career parents note, as exemplified by these parents hurrying to get themselves to work after getting the children off to school.
Although much literature emphasizes the fact that women have more interrole conflict than men (e.g., Almquist & Angrist, 1993; Arnold, 1993; Novack & Novack, 1996), evidence exists affirming that men are reporting that work and home are equal in terms of importance (“Study Finds,” 2004). Furthermore, men report similar levels of work-home conflict as do women (Bond et al., 1998) and are now as likely as women to have made career sacrifices in favor of family responsibilities (Moen, 1999; Twenge, 1997). Interrole conflict is a tangible issue for both men and women in dual-career situations. Work relationships can also interfere with marital relationships and cause interrole conflict in that way. This pattern has been explained by the work-family spillover model, which postulates that a marital partner’s stress, emotions, or experiences at work or home spill over into the other domain (Larson & Almeida, 1999). Three processes by which work has been identi- fied to interfere with home life include time interference, energy interference, and psychological interference (Small & Riley, 1990). Time interference represents time at work diminishing time at home. Energy interference refers to fatigue associated with work that diminishes the energy the spouse has to devote to the home and the spousal relationship. Psychological interference refers to absorption with work concerns that takes away from the mental energy available for the home relationship. In an attempt to study this model, Doumas, Margolin, and John (2003) found that in general, spouses reported more positive marital interactions on days when they worked less, were more energetic, ate more, and relaxed more. They also found that wives were more reactive to their husbands’ work stress than vice versa. It is likely that this work-family spillover stress exists in all families that include dual earners. Role strain typically occurs when one either feels uncomfortable with one’s role or does not entirely know how to enact the behaviors associated with one’s roles. This can result in a less than optimum performance associ- ated with that role. New spouses and new parents often struggle to under- stand the complexities of all they are expected to accomplish under the role of wife/husband or mother/father. Consistently, new stepparents are espe- cially prone to this role strain as they struggle to adapt to the role of step- parent. Although “stepparent” already implies that they are one step away from being a real parent, they are now trying to enact behaviors as if they are a parent. The enactment of communication and behaviors associated with this role is particularly difficult. Not only does the new stepparent not “feel” like a parent yet, but the children may actively resist this role as they try to maintain the previously established boundary of their old family (as discussed under boundary maintenance roles). As noted previously, self- perceived competency in one’s role as father enhanced the degree of involve- ment fathers had with their children (Huston & Vangilisti, 1995). Role strain can be associated with diminished competencies and time devoted to that role. In other words, if parents and stepparents don’t perceive them- selves as competent in those roles, they are less likely to communicate and behave in ways that are consistent with that role.
Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Communication in the Family 69
performing 26 household and child care tasks, whereas their husbands worked 34-hour weeks and performed about 5 household and child care tasks. Although both family members share resource provision, they do not share equally the nurturing responsibilities within the household. It is worth- while remembering, however, that the perception of relational and psycho- logical shared parenting is more important in predicting marital satisfaction than is the actual division of the child care tasks (Ehrenberg et al., 2001). Finally, the effects of dual-career couples are not limited to interrole conflict and role strain. There are other potential effects for wives, husbands, and children as well. Working wives are physically and psychologically healthier (Holland Benin & Edwards, 1990), more physically active (Kessler & McRae, 1982), have higher self-esteem, and feel less social isolation (Burke & Weir, 1976). They also feel less economically dependent on their husbands and are less likely to garner their identities from their husbands and children. Furthermore, it has been found that wives who earn more than their husbands may potentially threaten their husbands’ self-esteem (Menaghan, 1982). On the other hand, children from dual-earner homes rate their families as high in family strength, supportiveness, and concern (Greenstein, 1990), as well as in lessons of versatility and flexibility (Ford, 1983). Children’s reports about the situation are not entirely rosy, however; they also note that that their families had many time constraints (Knaub, 1986). Thus, dual-earner families have unique challenges and strengths compared with single-earner families. It is likely that the effects of dual-earner households are consistent across nuclear, step- and binuclear families and families with gay heads of household.
Family Systems Theory
Whereas roles theory provides us with an individual-level explanation for why family members behave the way they do, family systems theory stresses that the whole of the family is more important relative to the individual con- tributions each family member provides. Family systems theory is derived from a more general systems theory that argues that systems (of which families are one example) can be understood only in their entirety. In this way, the concepts of wholeness, interdependence, and homeostasis are all central to understanding the mechanisms of family systems theory. The systems theory concept of wholeness emphasizes that “the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.” Thus, families can be understood not through indi- vidual members’ experiences (which can vary widely from one another—think “beloved sister” and “black sheep” here) but, rather, through the unique dynamics and overall climate achieved in a family; that is, families should be measured at the system level (e.g., size, rigidity, climate) rather than at the individual family level (e.g., perceptions of satisfaction, emotional experiences. A family systems theorist would argue that one can never fully know the inside mechanisms of a family unless one is fully enmeshed in that system.
Theoretical Approaches to Understanding Communication in the Family 71
The system’s theory concept of interdependence stresses the intricate and necessary interrelationships of family members. Interdependence stresses that family members rely on one another to promote the functioning of the family. Borrowing from the concepts of roles theory, this becomes evident in two-parent households, where one parent is the resource provider and the other is the nurturer-caregiver. Both functions must be achieved for the family to function, so both parents rely on one another, and the children rely on both of the parents. In addition, the parents rely on the children to define their roles as caregiver and provider. In other words, they could not function as nurturers or providers without the children in the complementary roles. The concept of homeostasis (balance) stresses the nature of families as goal-attaining systems. The primary assumption here is that families have goals (e.g., well-raised children, social and emotional well-being, family satisfaction) and set about to attain them. The concept of homeostasis emphasizes the balance that families attempt to achieve as they set about attaining these goals. The 15-year-old daughter who becomes pregnant and runs off to Las Vegas to marry the tattooed plumber who fixed the family bathroom last summer sets the family off balance in terms of attaining the educational goals that they perceive will provide their family members with greater physical and emotional well-being. Thus, family members will set about attempting to regain balance within the family system. In a situation where regaining balance is more attainable, a father may restrict a son who snuck out in the middle of the night and took the family car for a joy ride that ended in a police car in order to attempt to regain control over the son’s future well-being. Discipline may be seen as an attempt to regain balance within the family and move individual family members toward attainment of socioemotional competence. Most important from a family communi- cation standpoint, Broderick (1993) articulates several characteristics of a social system that make families unique compared with other nonsocial systems. First, families use communication, which functions to connect the self-aware, self-directed, independent identities within the families. Second, families must use psychopolitical negotiation to achieve joint decisions by members with individual needs and independent wills. Thus, families require a far more elaborate executive mechanism than is found in other types of systems. Third, attributions regarding families must be made at the social systems level. In other words, attributions about a system are different (e.g., size, rigidity, development) from those of individuals (e.g., marital satisfac- tion). Fourth, families use social distance regulation as they approach and avoid members within the family and across family boundaries.
Families as Self-Regulatory Goal-Attaining Systems
Broderick (1993) further outlines family systems theory with an empha- sis on explaining goal attainment in the family through self-regulatory attempts. Family systems theory assumes that families seek goals and set
72 FAMILY COMMUNICATION
