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PCB 4024 : SPECIAL CHILDREN AND FAMILY COUNSELING

Course Leader: Puan Hajah Sabariah Siron

COURSE NOTES

TOPIC 3: FAMILY STRUCTURE

1.1 FAMILY STRUCTURE

Families - organizationally complex emotional systems.

comprise at least three four generations.

A family attempts to arrange itself into functional or enabling group so

that it can meet its needs and goals without preventing members from

meeting their individual needs and goals (Kantor & Lehr 1975).

A family develops rules that outline and allocate the roles andfunctions of its members. Those who live together develop patterns for

negotiating and arranging their lifes to maximize harmony and

perdictability.

Affection, loyality, and a continuity or durability of membership

charaterize all families.

When these qualities are challenged, in crisis situation or severe

conflict , families are typically resistant to change, likely to engage in

corrective maneuvers to reestablish familiar interactive patterns.

All families promote positive relationships among members,attend to personal needs of their constituents, prepare to cope with

developmental or maturational changes ( children leaving home) as

well as unplanned or unexpected crises (divorce, death, a sudden acute

illness).

All must organize themselves in order to get on with living.

All must develop their own special styles or strategies for coping with

stresses imposed from outside or from within the family itself.

1.2 GENDER AND CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS

Males and females are indoctrinated from early in life into different

gender-role behavior in the family.

Biology undoubtedly plays a determining role in gender differences,

Most of the differences (value systems, personality characteristics, roles,

problems solving techniques, attitude toward sexuality, etc are the result

from learning reinforced by society and passed down across

generations(Philpot, 2000).

As a result of their differing socialization experience, members of each sexdevelop distinct behavior expectations, and have differing life experiences,

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Gender-role changes have had a powerful impact on family functioning.

Percentage of women in paid employment has risen, at home

responsibilites of men and women have had to be redefined.

The pattern of gender-linked behaviors, expectations, and attitudesregarding a familys sex-defined roles has begun to change.

Male and female roles differences have become less clearly defined.

Today many families, especially those of the younger generations, struggle

to fine more flexible if not yet fully worked out patterns for living together

harmoniously.

Cultural factors, play an increasingly central role in understanding family life.

Values, rituals common transactional patterns, ways of communicating

brought in through immigration that contribute to the behavioral patterns, levels ofalculturation and ethnic identification, and socioeconomic power have an impact on

how(and how well) families function.

Social class differences also add to diversity between families, shaping the

resources, expectations, opportunities, privilages, and options of their members.

Depending to a large extent on social class membership,work may be

fulfilling or despairing; a mean to achieving upward mobility or a dead end; filled with

satisfactions or boredom; or, in the case of the underclass, frequently nonexistent.

People lives are contrains by the larger forces of racial,cultural,sexual, andclass-based inequalities.

(McGoldrick, 1998)

1.3 FAMILY INTERACTIVE PATTERNS

Families display stable, collaborative, purposeful, and recurring patterns of

interactive sequences.

Nonverbal exchange patterns between family members represent codedtransactions, transmits family rules, check acceptable behavior tolerated by the family. ( a

son does not speak before his mother speaks ).

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The complementary construction of family members requires long periods of

negotiating, compromising,rearranging, and competing. These transections are usually

invisible, not only because context and subject constantly change but also because they

are generally the essence of minutiae. Who passes the sugar?Who checks the map for

directions, chooses the movie, changes the channel?Who respond to whom, when,and in

what manner? This is the cement by which families solidify their relationships.Minuchin,Lee,and Simon,1996: p30.

sabariah _siron@email. unitar.edu.my 3.01. 2009

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TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION

1. Share your experience of your family culture, system, values and relationship.

2. Do you agree with the statement that family values, culture, system has to

change as time changes. Discuss in detail.

mailto:sabariah@unitar.edu.mymailto:sabariah@unitar.edu.my