Family Structural Assessment: LDS Large Family Analysis
This paper presents a structural assessment of a large Latter-day Saints (LDS) family consisting of a widowed mother, twelve adult children, fifty-six grandchildren, and eighteen great-grandchildren. The assessment is organized across three dimensions: internal structure (family composition, gender roles, sibling ranking, and subsystems), external connections (spousal ties, extended family, education, and vocation), and contextual factors (ethnicity, socioeconomic standing, religious beliefs, and geographic distribution). The paper draws on research linking family structure to mental health outcomes and moral authority, situating this family's notably low rate of individual disorders within the context of its strong marital stability, religious cohesion, and shared values.
- Introduction and Family Overview: Large LDS family selected; basic composition described
- Internal Structure: Composition, Roles, and Beliefs: Gender roles, religion, marriage stability, and disorders
- Sibling Ranking and Family Subsystems: Sibling order dynamics and overlapping family subgroups
- External Connections and Extended Family: Spouses, grandchildren, vocation, and education
- Contextual Factors: Ethnicity, Class, and Geography: German heritage, middle-class standing, geographic spread
- Conclusion: Family cohesion rooted in religion and shared values
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper applies a clear three-part structural framework (internal, external, contextual) consistently throughout, giving the assessment logical organization and academic rigor.
- It grounds observational claims in peer-reviewed citations, connecting real family characteristics to broader research findings on marriage stability and mental health outcomes.
- Specific demographic details — ages, geographic locations, sibling order — give the analysis concrete grounding and make abstract concepts like "subsystems" tangible.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the use of a structured analytical framework to organize qualitative family observation. Rather than narrating family life descriptively, the student categorizes evidence under three distinct structural dimensions and reinforces interpretations with cited research, modeling how clinicians and social scientists formally assess family systems.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an overview of family composition, then moves through internal structure (roles, religion, marital history, sibling dynamics, and subsystems), followed by external factors (spousal connections, education, vocation), and concludes with contextual elements (ethnicity, class, health beliefs, and geography). This mirrors a standard family systems assessment format used in social work and family therapy education.
Introduction and Family Overview
The family chosen for this assessment is a large family that seemed likely to provide plenty of interesting anomalies and peculiarities. The structural assessment of the family includes three aspects: (1) internal, (2) external, and (3) contextual. The internal aspect is composed of who is in the family and how they are connected.
This family has two parents — a man and a woman — although the father recently passed away. The family is composed of 12 children: eight boys and four girls. The mother is 70 years of age, and the children range in age from 30 to 54 years old. The children are all married (or have been) and all have produced offspring. Additionally, a number of those offspring have reached an age at which they are capable of reproducing, and as a result there are great-grandchildren as well, with more expected. The majority of the offspring are male, but approximately 45% are female. Many of the offspring share a family name, and all are connected through a strong sense of family identity.
References
Erickson, S. A. (2010). The wrong of rights: The moral authority of the family. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 35(5), 600–616.
Wade, T. J., Veldhuizen, S., & Cairney, J. (2011). Prevalence of psychiatric disorder in lone fathers and mothers: Examining the intersection of gender and family structure on mental health. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 56(9), 567–573.
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