Parenting dynamics and attachment patterns in the Brice family therapy

Family Crucible

In the book The Family Crucible, family therapists Carl Whitaker and Gus Napier (1978) team up to help a family with dangerous levels of discontent and animosity towards one another. At the center of the rift are the adolescent daughter Claudia and the mother Carolyn. At the periphery are the 6-year-old daughter Laura, an 11-year-old son Don, and the father David. On the surface, it is Claudia's behavior problems that are blamed by both parents for the family's woes. However, during the first meeting with the entire family present, it quickly becomes clear that problems with the marriage may be to blame. This essay will examine the parenting dynamics uncovered by Whitaker and Napier during their family therapy sessions, including the parenting styles used and attachment matrix that exist in the Brice family.

The Brice Parenting Styles

On the surface, the father appears to have an authoritative parenting style because he demands that Claudia be respectful to her mother. However, his primary concern about Claudia's behavior seems to be that she gets along better with her mother. He does not appear to intrude into Claudia's life to the degree that the mother does, nor set authoritarian behavioral guidelines. He seems to truly care about Claudia's suffering, but may be indulgent at times simply to avoid conflict with either Claudia or Don.

The mother comes off as having an authoritarian parenting style with respect to Claudia. This parenting style is not apparent with respect to the other two children, Laura and Don, and therefore may have developed recently in response to the emerging marital problems. The mother appears to be somewhat detached from her other two children as well, although both Don and Laura seem secure in the knowledge that they are integral to the family structure. Overall, Carolyn is probably a good, dutiful, caring parent, yet remains emotionally detached to some extent from her children's lives. The authoritarian, and thus intrusive, side of Carolyn is therefore probably the product of a disintegrating marriage and the formation of a family triangle between father, mother, and Claudia.

Therapeutic Interventions

From Napier's (1978) view, both the wife and husband had become uncomfortable with the degree of dependency that had formed during the first years of marriage and were busy distancing themselves from each other. The father worked too much and the mother spent too much time being a housewife and tending to her mother's needs. The first order of business would be to encourage the couple to begin confronting each other about their concerns, rather than using their children as go-betweens. As Napier suggests, the next step would be to encourage them to become autonomous adults capable of being their own therapists.

The parenting styles and attachment status' of the children inform the therapist about what path to take. In Claudia's case, there is a need to elevate her to almost adult status within the family. This would put pressure on the parents to give Claudia more independence and more responsibility. At the same time, the parents should be encouraged to reaffirm their love and support for Claudia, thereby shifting the attachment status away from anxious-avoidant to secure. This approach has been called autonomous-relatedness (Liddle and Schwartz, 2002). Conclusions

As Napier and Whitaker (1978) noted, the Brice family is the exception because they chose to keep the family alive by seeking professional help. With effective intervention and caring therapists, the determination of the Brice family to climb out of the well of despair they had fallen suggests a brighter future for all.