Your Family Is a System

A family with four teenagers pulled into a local campground. Out popped the four teenagers, who quickly unpacked the car, set up the tent, and started a campfire in fifteen minutes flat. The campsite owner strolled up to the parents, who were standing by and watching. “What’s your secret, folks?” the owner marveled. “I’ve never seen a group of teenagers work so hard when they first arrive at our campsite.” The mother replied, “Yes, we are a well-oiled system, aren’t we?” The father leaned in and added, “We don’t let anyone go to the bathroom until the camp is all set up.”

Your family is a system, plain and simple. Whether or not it is a well-oiled system depends on a number of things that will be discussed in the next couple of chapters. First, however, let’s be clear about what it means to say that your family is a system.

A system can be defined as a number of parts that interact with one another. Your family is made up of parts, or members: mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, stepmothers and stepfathers, stepbrothers and stepsisters. Together, these members represent two generations of a family and make up what is sometimes called the “nuclear family.” But you also can see your family as containing many other members as well: grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. Including these members allows you to develop a much broader picture of your family from a three-generation perspective (or more).

Regardless of how many people you count, seeing your family as a system requires that you focus on how these members relate to one another. Think about your family members right now and how they interact. What two members would you describe as being the closest with each other? How about the most distant? Are there members who are angry at one another? What family members seem to act very differently around you in comparison to when they are with other members?

By paying attention to the relationships between your family members, you can begin to make sense of how you all act in ways that create a larger “whole” that we can describe as a system. In fact, to explain systems, it is often said that the “whole is greater than its parts.” This means you cannot fully understand a family by only knowing each of the individual family members. You have to see them in relation to one another to get the sense of the family as a “whole” system.

Another way of defining your family as a system is to introduce the idea of boundaries. Think of the boundaries around each of the states in America. How do you know when one state ends and another one begins? In some instances, the boundaries are very easy to observe. You cross a river, lake, ocean, or other natural border, and you find yourself in a different state. In other cases, however, the only way you know you have changed states is a highway sign that either welcomes you or wishes that you come back to visit soon. Some boundaries are easy to see, and others require more work to discover.

Similarly, boundaries help define families as systems. Some boundaries are external, meaning that they help to define who is in the family and who is not. In addition to determining family membership, external boundaries also influence how much information gets in and out of the family.  There also are internal family boundaries. These boundaries determine how much communication occurs between various family members, as well as the amount of closeness or distance family members experience with one another. 

Maintaining internal and external boundaries is one of several tasks the family system must accomplish in order to be “well oiled.” Another task includes meeting the family members’ most basic needs: food, clothing, shelter, love, and affection. Still another task involves developing a sense of identity about what it means to be a member of your family. What does your family stand for? How do you define yourselves?

            Taken together, these tasks help create a climate in families that helps balance the needs of each family member with the desire to experience a sense of belonging to something larger than oneself. We know that the relative balance of individuality and connectedness varies from family to family and from culture to culture. For instance, our mainstream American culture values the rights of the individual, and hence some families tend to regularly emphasize and support the expression of each member’s uniqueness, even if family togetherness sometimes has to be given up. In Eastern cultures, by way of contrast, the opposite tends to happen. These families tend to sacrifice the desires of individuals for the greater family whole.

Overall, however, it is the relative balance of both separateness and togetherness experiences that define the “well-oiled” family system in any culture. To achieve this balance over time, the family system relies on a set of rules that help shape and guide the interactions of family members. Some rules are easy to identify, such as “our family always attends church together.” Someone (usually a parent) has explicitly stated that rule, and there are consequences for refusal to comply. Other rules are more hidden and are the result of tradition more than anything else. For instance, your family members may have the habit of giving each other a hug or a kiss before leaving the house. No one said you “have to” do this, but it is an expectation nonetheless. It’s just what the members of your family do with one another.

            Boundaries, tasks, and rules help us to describe how well families operate as a system, especially in response to stress and the passage of time. All families deal with stressful events from time to time, and those who manage crises better tend to be the ones that are able to show maximum flexibility. Being flexible means family members can adapt their boundaries, tasks, and rules to fit the situation they are facing.

For instance, a family may experience the hospitalization of a parent for some minor but necessary surgery. That family must reorganize itself temporarily to accommodate its members’ needs. When a situation demands lasting changes, more flexibility must be shown. For instance, the hospitalization example might have involved a more serious and long-lasting disability. The family system facing this situation will have to adjust more permanently in the way of changes in response to the stressful event.

When these life stressors occur, all parts of the family system can be affected. Among other things, this may include how well your teenager will do in school while your family is dealing with the stressful event, and even sometimes for a long time afterward. This depends on how many adjustments all of you were required to make, where more changes equal more disruption in schoolwork. However, sometimes even smaller events can knock a teenager “off his game” long enough to have some longer-term negative consequences.

The strong connection between family factors and adolescent educational issues has been extensively documented in the research literature. Often as not, these studies focus specifically on the connection between parenting behaviors and the school performance of teenagers. For instance, researchers have reported that mothers and fathers who display more support and use less harsh discipline tend to have students with higher grade point averages.  Lower amounts of warmth and closeness and higher amounts of conflict in the parent-adolescent relationship also have been associated with academic difficulties such as skipping classes, being held back, and experiencing suspensions or expulsions.  Still other researchers have demonstrated the important role that parental monitoring plays in determining their teenager’s degree of school success. In essence, the more parents know about their teenager’s activities, the better their sons and daughters do in school.  

The point here is that families do matter, especially when it comes to the academic performance of their teenagers. And the presence of family factors related to more positive relationship qualities (support, warmth, closeness, involvement) seems to matter most of all.  This is the compelling reason behind the direction of this book, which involves a focus on your family’s strengths and capabilities.

At the same time, even the most well-functioning family systems come face-to-face with the demand for more enduring change as a result of the passage of time. As we shall see in the following chapter, thinking about the family system as passing through different stages will allow us to better understand the requirements for change faced by all families with adolescents, and how this knowledge can help parents and teenagers remain strength based in their approach to school-related matters.