Home / Summaries / The Handy Psychology Answer Book / family-boundaries-therapy

The Psychology of Every Life: Love, Marriage, and the Baby Carriage - Families

6 important questions on The Psychology of Every Life: Love, Marriage, and the Baby Carriage - Families

What is a family?

The U.S. Census defines families as groups of people ralted by birth, adoption, or marriage. More informal definitions include groups of people who live together in long-term committed relationships. For example, many homosexual couples live together for decades without the benefit of legal recognition. In general, however, the definition provided by the U.S. Census reflects the conventional understanding of the term "family."

What has recent U.S. Census data shown about married life in America?

The data in the table below describes the percentage of men and women in 2004 who have never married or who have been divorced. As the table shows, the traditional nuclear family is only one of many lifestyles favored within the United States.

Unmarried People in the United States in 2004:

- % Never married - % Divorced

Men 25-29 - 53,6% - 5,1%
Men 30-34 - 30,3% - 13,1%
Men 35-39 - 20,2% - 20,7%

Women 25-29 - 41,3% - 7,0%
Women 30-34 - 22,3% - 17,1%
Women 35-39 - 16,2% - 25,6%

How do family structures vary across cultures?

The most common way that family structures vary across cultures involves the role of the extended family. Modern industrialized and Western cultures favor the nuclear family over the extended family. Young married couples move away from their parents to start their own new family in a separate home.

In many traditional cultures, the boundaries between the extended family and the nuclear family are much more diffuse. Multiple generations often live together in a single household and grandparents, uncles, and aunts play influential roles in the couple's marriage and in the rearing of their children.

What is mean by the term family systems?

Great insight into the ways the families function has come to us from the family therapy literature. Coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, family therapy broke away from the discipline of individual therapy to form its own theories and general philosophical outlook. The core idea, influenced by the seminal work of the biologist Ludwig von Bertolanffy, was that families should be looked at as systems and not as a static collection of isolated parts.

In other words, families are best understood as a dynamic whole - alsmost as living organisms - rather than as an unrelated pile of objects.

What is meant by boundaries in a family?

Salvador Minuchin (1921-) is one of the pioneers of family therapy. He developed a school of family therapy called structural family therapy. In this approach, Minuchin emphasizes the importance of boundaries.

Boundaries refer to the lines between different family members or subsystems that mark the limits of influence, information, and decision-making power. For example, there needs to be a clear boundary between parents and children. Children do not need to know about the sex lives of their parents or the details of their financial situation. Moreover, children should not have undue influence on their parents' marriage.

What is the difference between rigid, firm, and permeable boundaries?

In a family, boundaries should be firm, but permeable. If the boundaries are too rigid, there is no communication or mutual influence across generational or interpersonal boundaries. This leads to authoritarian or disengaged family systems.

If the boundaries are too permeable, then there is insufficient respect for privacy and different family members inappropriately interfere with each other's decisions. This leads to an enmeshed family system.

Ultimately, firm but permeable boundaries are optimal. For example, parents should listen to the opinions and the preferences of their children, but still make the final decisions.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

The Handy Psychology Answer Book | 9781578593545 | Lisa J Cohen

View summary