Family of origin dynamics and intergenerational patterns

Family of Origin

The origin of the family describes the family in which one is grown up, inter-family interactions and relations between one's parents', siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. The current study examines the origin of a family and determines the systematic research based on the behavior and relation of members and provides evidence-based practices in order to address the relational gap found among the family members.

Systematic Analysis

Family Hierarchy

Family Subsystem

Attachment Styles in Family

Family Boundaries

Family Adaptability

Thematic Research

Early Marriage and Divorce

Evidence-Based Research and Intervention

Genogram

The family in which one is grown up with the collaboration of adult's economic contribution and influence from parents, siblings and grandparents collectively describes one's family of origin. The origin of one's family tends to effect the systems that are being followed in the family and describes the degree to which they can be adaptive in nature. However the family is considered to possess a central role in the behavior and attitude of an individual who inclines either to follow the values and systems being adapted by the family or strive to modify the ways through which one lives (Engels, 1942). The family of origin of an individual also resides around the influence from biological and divorced parents who are considered to play their role in the childhood of an individual and effects the life of the ones who are part of the family.

The family of origin that will be discussed in this study comprises of 12 members as illustrated in Genogram; attached in appendix, and are described as follows:

1) Sandy, who Mexican-American and is 55 years old, lost her mother and got married at the age of 16 and has 2 children, Jennifer and Candace, Sandy remarried Don and both have son named Don Selby III aged 24.

2) Don, who is an English-Irish-American and is 63 years old and is married to Sandy and contributed in the parenthood for Sandy's daughters and their son.

3) Jennifer, who is the first daughter of Sandy and is 38 years old, has three children, divorced, and is responsible for her the brought up of her children. She is close to every person in family including her biological father.

4) Candace, who is the second daughter of Sandy with aged 34 years, married a man and got separated and then remarried a woman with three children -- girls. She is close to her parents and siblings excluding the biological father, and close with her daughters except the middle one.

5) Don Selby III, is 24 years old boy and the youngest one in the family, unmarried and straight, closer to his mom than his father and closer to Candace than Jennifer, and is best friends with Jennifer's daughter Alena.

Systematic Analysis

Family Hierarchy

Don, being the head of the family, is responsible for the family decisions and is considered to be an important member of the family in order to gain consent related to family matters, but he accepts and appreciates the opinions from his wife and consider her a reason to challenge and motivate him in the aspects of life. Don also claimed that he wanted a wife who spoke her mind, was open-minded and was not silent (personal communication, February 19, 2015). Don further said that Sandy has challenged her too much throughout the life, but life would have been boring if she was not so challenging (personal communication, February 19, 2015). The contribution of Don in the parenthood of his all three children is significant and due to the Don's perspective towards the importance of education and independence has caused the children to be raised as independent and education persons.

Family Subsystem

The family consists of the subsystem which is considered to be made up from the small group of people who possess their own rules, characteristics and boundaries and the people who are the part of this subsystem can change with the period of time. The subsystem of the family consists of two or three members who are independent in nature but are interrelated with the overall family members (Rosenblatt & Gergen, 1994). Therefore, the family that is being studied in this paper contains 2 subsystems that consists of Jennifer with her three children and, Candace with her three children. Jennifer' eldest child is Alena who is 18 years old, Mica who is 8 years old and Aubriella who is 3 years old, Jennifer married Mica's father David Sanchez and got divorced, however Alena and Aubriella has same biological father. Jennifer loves her parents and siblings but she is also responsible for her children and that makes a subsystem in the family in which Jennifer is the nurturer, caretaker and decision maker of her family. Candace, on the other hand, has been married to her wife who has three children who are being accepted by Candace; who is an independent woman and her siblings, niece and nephew look up to her for counseling and that is how there exists second subsystem in family in which Candace is responsible for the nurture of her children and is part of her own family.

Family Boundaries

According to Faber et al., (2003), the family contains flexible-intergenerational-boundaries in which children are being taken cared by their adults and children listen to their parents. In this family, Don worked full time and Sandy worked part time to support the family and the children were brought up by both of them in proper manner that they became educate and independent persons in their life, which ultimately indicates that the family consists of flexible-intergenerational-boundaries.

Family Adaptability

The family tends to be highly adaptive in nature; all the family members possess strong foundation in God but none of them is found to be conservative in nature. The parents' belief in church impacted the children and they grew up as a believer but yet developed their own personalities independently. This attribute of family has significant example of children having tattoos and Candace coming out as a lesbian, who is being accepted by her parents and all family members. The family became adaptive with the children being educated and independent. Moreover, Sandy being open minded in nature and Don's appreciation of her being open minded caused them to change their perspectives and accept the undertakings of their children.

Thematic Research

Early Marriage and Divorce

The family observed in this study shares close bonds with all the family members but the family seems to encounter with divorce issues. It has been observed in this family that family members got married at an early age usually below 20 years and got divorced and then remarriage. The relation between the step parents and step children is not found to be troubling but the degree of attachment between step parents and step children varies. According to the national estimation of early age divorces conducted by Bramlett and Mosher (2001) indicated that the rate of getting divorced in the first marriage is one-fifth in which couples get divorced within the 5 years of marriage, however, the teenagers who get married tend to be separated and divorced in more than the couples of 20 age and above. In this family, it has been observed that Sandy was married at the age of 16 and got divorced at the age of 20; the first marriage of Sandy lasted less than 5 years. The same scenario is applicable for Sandy's daughter Candace, who got married at the age of 18 and then got divorced at the age of 22; indicating the relevance with the study of Bramlett and Mosher (2001) and hence proved that teenage marriage ended within 5 years.

The early marriage in couples tend to be wind up with divorce due to several factors and the divorce rate is high among the one-third of the young couples who tend to be divorced within the five years of marriage, however half of the young couples end up with divorce within the ten years of their marriage. The reasons for the divorces in early marriage vary but the meta-analysis conducted by Field (1976) indicated that half of the divorces occurred due to the immaturity of couples in which teenagers are less likely to judge their partner and themselves, moreover they tend to be in a growing stage which changes the course of their life with the passage of time and as the time passes, their perspective of life changes and they adapt different habits and inhibit different behavior which adversely effects their liking for each other and promotes divorce. However, it has been observed in girls that they get married in young age and after getting married, they become dependent on their partner but also they focus on their life and strive to develop their career by completing their education and concentrating on their job; and by the time they become independent of their lives by achieving and accomplishing the professional-life-oriented goals, they end up with divorce because of their change of perspective and independency. The same scenario seems to be applicable for Candace; who got married at the early age but as a child and as a person she was more adhered to being an independent person which ultimately effected on her being dependent on a man and become dominant in life and this condition led to the divorce.

Another problem which arises when young coupled are married, they seem to face financial issues because being teenagers they don't possess enough qualification and professional experience to get a good job which results in the financial hardships of teenagers and makes them spend less time with each other due to part-time job with college or double shifts at work which makes them realize that they got married to stay together and happy instead of facing professional and financial hardships, therefore such cases also end up with divorces. The study conducted by Field (1976) also indicated that teenagers get married in order to fulfill their desire of being with someone and infer specific desires which are when fulfilled then they tend to get divorced. Most teenagers do not understand the significance of being married to someone and does not give importance to their marriage after a couple of years and take their marriage for granted, due to which their acceptance of divorce increases and they tend to get through with it more easily. Teenagers get married to spend most of their time with their partner but due to pressure of making good profession and for the completion of their education they tend to spend less time with each other and their work time and school time contradicts with each other which makes them less time to be with each other, they tend to feel alone in this situation and see marriage as a liability which they have to compromise with their time; such cases also end up with divorces.

Marriage is often considered to possess positive impression on the life of couples but if the marriage results in the separation and further, divorce between the couples then the lives of individuals are found to be encountered with the adverse effects. These effects are observed not only in the couples but also the people around i.e. children are effected by it. The children who face the separation and divorce of their parents at an early age end up being juvenile and become involved in the usage of drugs and show negative behavioral aspects in their daily life (Fagan & Rector 2000). Moreover, the children being adhered to parental divorce in their early age tends to develop at a slow pace in the educational aspects than the children who do not face parents' divorce, therefore the children with divorced or remarried parents show less progress in educational activities. The development of children is often effected by the divorce and remarriage of parents but in the family that is being observed in this study does not possess any adverse effects of remarriage or divorce on the development and behavior of children.

The family observed in this study is structured as a blended family in which children live with their biological mother and step-father and in this case, the development of the child becomes the responsibility of both the parents otherwise children adhere to be juvenile in nature and experience problems in their school and social life but, the study conducted by Portrie & Hill (2005) suggests that when parents fail to monitor the activities of children then these children encounters with several behavioral problems and in blended families the involvement of step parent is not found to be significant in the activities and lives of children and it is required for the better development of children that not only biological parent but the step parent should also take part in the developmental activities of children and should consider them as important aspect in his marital life, the step parent should be exhilarated towards the problems that are faced by the children and should know how to address them in order to get close to the children. However, the family observed in this paper does not show any negative effects of step parenting and this has occurred due to the fact that Don played his enormous part in the development of children and adopted strict measures to look after the daily activities of children but, apart from being strict and conservative, Don also accepted the necessity to accept the opinions and beliefs of his children which resulted in the stable and close relationship between the family members.

Evidence-Based Research and Intervention

The familial disturbances occur when changes related to the structure of family takes place and the family members, including couples and children encounter with the consequences of these disturbances. The consequences of these familial disturbances can be attempted in order to resolve them by the clinical experts who possess the ability to evaluate and provide the necessary measures to solve the familial issues. Evidence-Based-Practice or EBP is the clinical practice in which patients' needs, desires and values are considered by the experts and then measures are suggested to resolve the issues that are disturbing the patient with respect to the best available clinical-procedures and practices. In this way, it has been inferred that EBP centers the patients' requirement and then experts find the best available way to solve the patients' problems with the help of available evidence for the solution of the problems. The EBP for the family is required when there is the existence of blended family with divorced people. The effects of divorce on children and parents can lead towards the inappropriate behavior of children and can adversely affect their development. However, the scenario remains same for the parents whose negative behavior rises after the divorce which effects their surroundings and people.

According to Carr (1999), the EBP provided for the couples who are likely to get divorce in the near future should be provided with the behavioral-marital therapy in which the clinician tries to dissolve the communication gap between the couples so they open up and discuss about their needs and wants from their marital relationship. The couples can be provided with the cognitive-marital therapy in which the clients' or couples focus on the beliefs that they tend to possess about each other and their marriage and talk about their problems in order to find substitute to eradicate the problems prevailing among them. However, the insight-oriented therapy can provide couples with the intervention in which they can encounter with the feelings of each other and enlighten the ways in which these feelings are being addressed. The study showed that the behavioral-marital therapy is considered to be the most appropriate on the basis of evidences collected from the research in order to address the marital problems.

The children are found to be the most effected by the parents' divorce also need the clinical practices to overcome their distress. The evidence-based-procedure examined from the Coven et al., (1992) suggested that intervention with the help of CODIP model or behavioral therapy is the most appropriate and effective method to address and resolve the issues that are being faced by the children. In this EBP therapy, the children are provided with the flair to express how they feel and perceive their parents' divorced situations, and how they feel from the separation of one of the biological parents. In this therapy, children are provided with the concepts of divorce in order to eradicate the misconceptions they possess and in this way the communication gap between the children and parents decrease and children get the new and positive perspective of life and start trusting their parents. Dattilio (2005) suggests that the behavioral-oriented therapy is the most appropriate therapy for couples and children in which both can communicate and encounter the problems they have with the changes in family structure i.e. divorce and remarriage, so that the communication gap between the family members can be decreased and both can understand the needs and wants of each other and can address them accordingly.

The family that has been analyzed in this study should be provided with the behavioral-therapy in which parents should be provided with the significance of marital relation and then they should be encountered with the children's feelings about their remarriage. In current family, the second generation tends to be close to each other but the relation between Don and his son Don Selby III is not found to be close enough. There may exist communication gap between both of them which can be addressed by following the behavioral-therapy. Moreover, there exists relational gap between the third generation; as Candace is not found to be close with her middle daughter i.e. Josephine, which may be due to the fact that Candace is the second mom and her daughter is having difficulties with being close to her as well as Candace may not know the reason for which she is not being able to become close to her. The behavioral-therapy will provide the couples in family an opportunity in which they can communicate and understand the marital relation as there exists history of Candace and Jennifer being divorced within the 5 years of marriage, so this therapy can provide both of them with the increased probability of more stable relation in future. Moreover, the behavioral therapy for Don Selby III and Josephine will also increase the communication among them and their parents and will make them become closer and better understand each other. The overall results of the EBP -- behavioral therapy will make the family relations stronger, stable and closer and in this way the familial problems and differences will be eradicated and a healthy familial environment will foster.