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Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
Lecture Notes
Chapter 9: Family Communication
Outline and Key Terms
I. Introduction: The Importance of Family Communication
A. The family is an exceedingly important site for societies.
1. Family is a primary source of early socialization.
2. Family communication instills and frames cultural values from the
beginning and is a key starting point for your sense of self and identity.
II. Families as . . .
A. Segrin and Flora identified three ways of defining family: structural
definitions, functional definitions, and transactional definitions.
1. Structural definitions of family are those based on biological ties or
legal ties (marriage or adoption).
2. Functional definitions of family are those based on the ways family
relationships work, and work well, such as by giving social and financial
assistance.
3. Transactional definitions of family are those based on the
communication that happens between people that serves to constitute a
relationship as familial and to create family identity.
B. Families as Structures
1. For many purposes, families are seen primarily as social or
demographic structures that contain and connect particular individuals.
2. LePoire argues that family structure can be defined according to
biological ties, legal definitions, or even sociological definitions, referring
to groups of people who self-define as family outside of biology or law
and function as a family.
3. These noninstitutionalized family forms can include kin networks, or
the extended relational network of cousins, second cousins, children of
cousins, uncles, aunts, and even long-term friends who are considered
family.
4. A frequent representation of family within a structural perspective is the
nuclear family, just the parents plus their children.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
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5. Extended family is a family that has at its center a nuclear family but
also includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and all other living
forms of blood relatives.
6. In addition to nuclear and extended families, other families include:
a. Family of origin—the parents you were born to
b. Family of descent—the clan or historical family tree that you
branch from
c. Single-parent families—one in which you are the only parent
of at least one child
d. Blended families—when parents adopt nongenetic offspring,
divorce, or remarry other partners
e. Binuclear family—two families based on the nuclear form
7. The one defining feature of such traditional views of a “family” is a
transgenerational concept that involves the existence of at least one
member of one generation who is the responsibility of at least one member
of another generation.
a. Traditional notions of the nuclear family have been
supplemented by many other diverse possibilities.
b. One of those possibilities is family of choice, or the family
created by a group of people you decide is your “true” family even
though there is no genetic connection.
C. Families as Systems
1. Some scholars approach the defining and studying of family using a
systems theory approach, which can be applied to anything made up of
parts but operating as a whole that can achieve functions that the parts
alone cannot and that also creates an environment in which those parts
must exist.
2. Characteristics of Systems
a. Systems are goal-oriented and self-regulating, meaning that the
parts of the whole work together toward a common objective and
that the system checks its own activity, adjusting when and how it
needs to in order to continue toward the goal.
b. Systems show hierarchy among component parts of the
system in that one component is in charge of other parts.
c. Systems are mutually interdependent, and the performance of
one part will affect the success of the total system (common fate).
3. Viewing Families as Systems
a. Systems theory has been applied to the study of families.
Instructor Resource
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b. Scholars argue that families are like systems in that they are
mutually interdependent, are hierarchical, share a common fate,
and self-regulate.
c. Most families have a power hierarchy, and all members share a
common fate and depend on one another for their outcomes and
performance to some extent.
d. In addition to internal dynamics that work as systems, families
also exist within other connections of people and can be
characterized as “systems” from that point of view.
1) Family systems are placed in networks of other
structures, systems, and social connections that affect its
experience.
2) Families also exist within social and cultural
environments in which certain expectations of family
(especially as structure) exist.
3) The family has connections with other groups, and these
networks influence the way in which family life is
experienced.
4). When a family group is not perceived as “normal” in
conventional family structure, the family faces issues of
discourse dependency, in which they must frame and
represent themselves to one another and to the outside
world through their communication.
D. Families as Transacted Relationships
1. Rather than being understood as structures or systems, families can be
viewed as performances and are sites of communication.
2. Norms and Rituals
a. Families have norms, which are habitual rules for conducting
family activities.
b. Families have rituals, which are formalized routines that guide
certain types of events (e.g., dinner, birthdays).
3. Authority and Power
a. Families have power structures within them that are transacted
in communication.
b. Especially when children are young, there is a firm authority
structure in a family that means that decisions are not effectively
made between equal beings.
c. The nature of the authority structure can depend on religion,
ethnicity, and culture.
Instructor Resource
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d. In some, the parent may be viewed as head of the family.
e. In others, equality among mature members may be stressed.
f. As younger members mature, communication may become more
inclusive.
g. As teens develop their own identities, family communication
and decision-making processes may change.
h. Family communication styles are not fixed but change over time
with family developments.
i. Power can be formally structured in families or can also be
informally structured or bidirectional where children have some
form of power as well.
j. The bidirectionality hypothesis states that power can operate in
two directions.
4. Privacy and Secrets
a. Families negotiate privacy boundaries are and what information
counts as secret or personal.
b. There are often issues of communication boundary
management and privacy management.
c. These are, in everyday communication, most often related to
personal information that specific persons or members may have
and that others do not know.
d. There may be family secrets that the members agree to conceal
from other people outside the family group, such as alcoholism in
one parent or a teenager’s fight with a drug problem or anorexia.
1) The keeping of such secrets can be either toxic or
bonding.
2) Such communication not only protects the family
reputation in the outside world but also serves to bind the
members together through the playing out of their shared
secret.
3) These secrets are private knowledge holding them
together and are part of the important dynamic of family
secrets.
5. Family Storytelling
a. A final important communicative aspect of families is the
process of family storytelling, which acts as an important
mechanism for the creation of a sense of family identity.
b. A family identity is an important aspect of an individual’s
connection to the world and image of self.
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c. A family identity revolves around intergenerational storytelling,
where the elders talk about dead relatives or relate stories about
particular family characters who defined the essence of being in
the family.
d. Family narratives are also important in this process, not only in
indicating a family’s sense of what it is like in general but also in
indicating how it deals with difficult and traumatic experiences.
e. When a family starts to develop a common story about such
events as these, the members blend their own individual and
personal experiences together into a shared story that marks and
creates—and hence transacts or constitutes—the family history in a
particular way.
5. The Communication of News and Kin Keeping
a. News is shared in everyday communication with family
members.
b. Sahlstein (2006, 2010) has noted that this brings out one
particular function of certain members of the family who serve to
do “kin keeping”; that is, they act as a reservoir for information
about members of the family, and they pass it to the others.
c. Communication is not just about messages but is about the
relational priorities that are indicated by the way in which
information is spread around.
d. The transmission of information is done in a way that supports
(or at least represents the strength and nature of the bonds in) the
family system.
e. Information flow does not just happen randomly: It serves a
transactive function in the maintenance of family and personal
relationships.
III. Change and Development in Family Processes
A. Whatever form a family takes, its structure—and hence the influence of structure on
the family processes and communication patterns—will change with the passage
of time.
1. Some of these changes are seen as normal growth.
a. New children are born.
b. Children go to school.
c. Children become more independent.
d. Children turn into adolescents, leave home, and start families of their
own.
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e. The parents age, need to be looked after, and eventually die.
2. Other changes are seen as fractures in the surface of normality.
a. Divorce
b. Separation
c. Chronic illness
d. Job loss
B. Immediate Change in Families
1. Immediate changes will change the dynamics of communication in a number of
ways.
2. An example of an immediate change is the addition of a first child.
a. This change brings difficulties/differences in the communication
patterns and the relational behaviors that follow.
b. When there are children present, the focus of attention and the nature of
tasks about which the couple communicates will necessarily change, too
(Socha & Yingling, 2010).
c. A couple with a new baby talks about diapers and sleep patterns.
d. When there are no children to consider, the couple can act much more
spontaneously than when it must consider the children as well.
(1) The need to arrange babysitters so that the couple can have
some “alone time” is not something that romantic couples ever
have to take into account when they are youthful and hormonally
active.
(2) After commitment to a long-term partnership and the addition
of children, however, romantic talk tends to get pushed aside in
favor of discussion of practical childrearing tasks, and this in part
accounts for the decreasing couple satisfaction that is associated
with the addition of children (Rholes, Simpson, & Friedman,
2006).
(3) The couple gains new topics for conversation (feeding
schedules, the dangers of electric sockets, and the most desirable
sorts of fluffy toys). Its communication also loses some of the old
styles (especially romantic and relaxed topics and the chance to
have spontaneous and uninterrupted talk).
C. Gradual Changes in Families
1. Less extreme changes to everyday communication happen all the time in any
family “structure” as the participants grow up or get old or become ill or are faced
with the decisions of life that arise in any family.
2. Alterations to dependency structures exist as parents and child age.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
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3. The structure of the family is the same, but the communication dynamics
change as the elder members become more, not less, dependent on the younger
ones and the younger ones become more, not less, responsible for caring for the
older members.
4. Family is always dynamic and changing.
IV. Families Communicate!
A. Relationships, even in the family, are always under the influence of other relationships
and respond to the direct personal inputs of other people and the activities of other SSAs
(society’s secret agents) to support social norms and conventions.
1. The nested groups of networks, neighbors, and extended family within which a
nuclear family exists are not simply a convenient academic idea.
2. They represent and carry out the living interactions of society as its secret
agents—the people who live in it—act to reinforce their habits, actions, and
opinions for one another.
B. There are different networks of communication within the family.
1. The different pairs of people in the family may talk to one another in different
communicatively and dynamically.