CHFD 3920

The capacity of the system to change its rules and strategies in response to situational or developmental stress.

The concept used to delineate one system or subsystem from other systems or subsystems, or from the surrounding environment.

Rules that are implicit rather than openly stated but are nonetheless understood by all family members

EX: where everyone sits at the dinner table...not really stated but everyone knows where they should sit

an interdependent group of individuals who have a shared sense of history, experience some degree of emotional bonding, and devise strategies for meeting the needs of individual members and the group as a whole.

Those elements of the family experience that become organizing principles for family life, including both conscious and unconscious elements as well as intellectual (attitudes, beliefs, values) and emotional aspects.

The tasks that are common to all families regardless of their particular composition, socioeconomic status, and cultural, ethnic, or racial heritage.

Ex: formation of family themes, regulation of boundaries, management of the household.

The idea that individuals and subsystems that compose the whole system are mutually dependent and mutually influenced by one another

rules about rules

Those processes operating within systems that foster systemic growth and development

Those processes operating within systems that resist changes in existing strategies

The ease with which members and information cross the boundary from one system or subsystem to another

The organizational structure whereby family systems are comprised of various smaller units or subsystems that together comprise the larger family system

Explicit and openly stated rules

recurring patterns of interaction that define the limits of acceptable and appropriate behavior in the family.

The responsibility that all families have for adapting their strategies and rules in response to stress, information, and change.

The specific policies and procedures the family adopts to accomplish its tasks. Also the unique patterns of interaction that each family establishes to execute its basic tasks.

Information transmitted to the system about whether established interactional patterns require alteration.

Both the family's composition and its organization. Composition refers to the family's membership, that is, the persons who make up the family. Organization is the collection of interdependent relationships and subsystems that operate by established rules of interaction.

The idea that systems must be understood in their entirety, which is distinctly different from the simple sum of the contributions of the individual parts.

What the family actually does to manage stress

The perceptions and appraisals that people and families make with regard to specific stressors or events

The cognitive and behavioral problem-solving strategies that are used to respond to a stressor event

The adequacy of the efforts undertaken by the family to reduce stress

Those properties, attributes, or skills individuals, families, or societies have at their disposal when adapting to novel and demanding situations. Coping resources serve to minimize vulnerability to stress

The concept used to describe systems' boundaries characterized by a high tolerance for invididuality

The concept used to describe systems' boundaries characterized by a low tolerance for individuality

The amount of time, energy, and money that the family has available to accomplish its maintenance tasks

Unexpected events that create unanticipated hardships and require adaptations or alterations in the strategies used by the system to execute some or all of its basic tasks

The degree to which the family's boundaries are relatively open or closed

The total number of events, both normative and non-normative, that a family must contend with at any point

The degree of pressure exerted on the family to alter the strategies it employs to accomplish its basic tasks

How the family reorganizes its structure in response to internal demands and external social or environmental events.

A pattern of interaction formed when two family members share an interest with one another that is not shared by others

Within the structural model, definitions of who is in the system and its subsystems. Boundaries regulate how family members are to interact with one another.

An interactional pattern characterized by one family member siding with a second member against a third.

The set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, individual, or family

An inappropriate alliance between one parent and a child against the other parent that undermines the executive functions and authority of the parental subsytem

The lack of involvement among family members that result from rigid boundaries

The over involvement among family members that result from diffuse boundaries

The clear distinctions between the levels of a well-organized system

An imbalance in the family's power and authority hierarchy that develops when power and control rest with the children, or when parents rely on their children for nurturance, support, and care

According to Minuchin (1974), the invisible set of functional demands that organize the way family members interact with one another over time.

A group formed within a larger system that shares common functions or other features such as gender, generation, or interest.

In intergenerational models, a strategy for maintaining distance from others and protecting one's sense of self. Conflict and disagreement can help to maintain an illusion of difference

When applied to the individual, differentiation refers to the ability of family members to express their own individuality and act autonomously while remaining emotionally connected to others. At the family level, differentiation refers to the degree to which difference is tolerated within the family system.

The extent to which one has successfully resolved emotional attachment to one's family of origin. This becomes reflected in the individual's level of psychological maturity.

An attempt to emotionally, psychologically, or physically detach oneself from the family of origin in an effort to avoid fusion and maintain control over one's sense of self

A multigenerational "accounting system" of who, psychologically speaking owes what to whom

The process by which parents project (displace) a part of their own unresolved emotional attachment or conflicts onto one or more of their children

The tendency to submerge one's sense of self in relationships with others, thereby losing the distinctions among emotional and intellectual functioning, self and other

The set of expectations and responsibilities family members develop toward one another based on the patterns and dynamics that have operated in their extended family system over time, and on the particular position they held in their own family of origin. The legacy includes a sense of loyalty and indebtedness to the family

The process by which the family's level of differentiation and the parents' unresolved emotional attachments are reenacted in future relationships and passed along to succeeding generations

A reciprocal pattern of interaction in which one participant assumes a competent caretaking position in relation to the other, who assumes a dependent, child-like position

A superordinate personal structure whose purpose is to organize an individual's experiences (cognitive and emotional, conscious and unconscious) into a coherent and meaningful whole.

A three-person interaction in which the tension and conflict experienced between two persons id displaced onto a third party

A poorly differentiated system characterized by a low tolerance for individuality in which members appear to be "emotionally stuck together"