Communications Chapter 7 Homework Gender legacy Couples Not Overtly Recognize Gender The Reason For their Division Labor But

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Chapter 7:

Communication and Family Roles and Types

Chapter Preview

• Specific Role Functions and Family Responsibilities

• How Family Members Learn, Adjust, and Relinquish Family Roles

• Communication in Different Types of Couples and Families

Chapter Outline

I. Introduction

a. Within families, roles are established, grown into, grown through, discussed,

negotiated, redefined, and accepted or rejected

b. Complex ways that people use language to talk about family roles (e.g., co–

breadwinners, stay-at-home parent, noncustodial father, third mother-in-law)

c. Means different things to enact different roles (e.g., partner, mother, brother, ex–

sister-in-law, cousin, stepfather)

d. Family roles: recurring patterns of behavior that develop as family members interact

and create shared meanings and negotiate what behaviors to perform

i. Fixed role perspective: unchanging; view of roles based solely on biological,

iv. Reflect: (a) the identity and cultural background and role models of a person

who occupies a social position, (b) the relationships in which a person

interacts, (c) the changes each family member experiences as he or she moves

through the life cycle or life crises, (d) the effects of each member’s role

performance on the family system, and (e) the extent to which a person’s

social/psychological identity is defined and enhanced by a particular role

II. Specific Role Functions and Family Responsibilities

a. McMaster model of family functioning: Focuses on discovering how a family

ii. Gender roles influenced by religion, culture, same-sex parent modeling, career

demands, individual expectations

iii. Men’s roles are becoming more flexible as adult partners renegotiate family

roles and responsibilities and fathers become more involved in raising kids

iv. Changes in family life have led to greater androgynous role enactment

v. Role expectations: Behaviors family members anticipate masculine and

feminine individuals will enact to fulfill family responsibilities

c. Providing nurturance and support: Family members provide a sense of mutual

admiration, support, and reassurance that helps us cope with difficult circumstances

i. Parental role is to nurture children; communicate caring, values, sense of

community through advice, directives, answers, empathy, support, affection

1. Associated with mothers, but fathering is changing

2. Older siblings may help nurture younger siblings

ii. Providing support and empathy (nonjudgmental understanding and concern

for another); focus on each other’s needs, listen to problems

d. Providing for individual development: Aiding in tasks to become self-sufficient

i. Family members must interact in ways that facilitate each other’s

opportunities for self-discovery and talent development

ii. Messages to support individual choices; the recognition of members’ ideas,

arguments, and decisions creates a context for valuing independence

iii. Role of parents, but also siblings, mentors, and peers

e. Providing for kinship maintenance and family management: Maintaining relational

ties and managing the daily lives and needs of all members

i. Kinship maintenance: Managing and nurturing ties with extended family

1. Living in the same household, visiting, other face-to-face

communication, or mediated communication

ii. Management of daily needs: families also share responsibilities to help meet

the daily needs of members

1. Includes decision-making to facilitate housekeeping, child care,

recreation, and the management of family finances

2. In dual-earner partnerships, men tend to spend more time working

3. Changes in family structure (e.g., divorce, commuter marriage) may

f. Providing basic resources

i. Traditionally men have been financial providers, but providing resources is no

longer a gendered expectation

1. Dual career couples: Each person pursues a full-time career and

expects to advance up the career ladder

2. Dual earner couples: Both partners are employed but one or both work

jobs that do not offer a career ladder or promise of advancement

1. More challenges for single parents and low-income, unmarried couples

2. Family members of all ages report more negative work-to-home

spillover than home-to-work spillover

iv. Effective communication is critical to managing work-family stress

1. Coordination of family’s schedules, duties, and responsibilities

2. Communication strategies mothers use to manage family spillover into

the workplace: Venting with superiors and/or coworkers, receiving

affirmation and assurances from coworkers, seeking advice from

coworkers, and seeking instrumental support from supervisors

III. Role Appropriation Process

a. Role expectations: Models and norms that a society/culture provides for how certain

family roles should be enacted

i. Role expectations arise from significant others and complementary others

2. Complementary: people who fulfill your reciprocal role function and

directly impact your role; discuss expectations for interaction

ii. Arise from a person’s experiences and self-understanding

iii. Reflect an imagined view of self: The way you like to think about your own

actions and self-presentation, what you believe you should be like in your life

b. Role enactment: Communication behaviors an individual uses to perform a role

i. Reflects individual’s capacity for carrying out the role

ii. Persons in complementary or opposing roles impact role performance

iii. If complementary family members perceive things in similar ways, it

enhances role performance

c. Role negotiation: process whereby family members interact and socially construct

and structure their reality and give meaning to their roles

i. Role enactment process involves implicit or explicit negotiations with family

members in related roles

ii. Role negotiation involves managing conflict

iii. Role conflict occurs when competing demands are made on an individual in

the fulfillment of his or her multiple social roles

1. When complementary or significant others have different expectations

of another’s role performance

d. Mature and functional families come to understand how family communication

functions to create, enact, and change family roles

IV. Couple and Family Typologies: A way to explore how roles develop through interaction

a. Fitzpatrick’s Couple Types

i. Eight meaningful factors that affect role enactment within marital

relationships: (a) conflict avoidance, (b) assertiveness, (c) sharing, (d) the

ideology of traditionalism, (e) the ideology of uncertainty and change, (f)

temporal (time) regularity, (g) undifferentiated space, and (h) autonomy

ii. Three couple types

(b) “Emotionally divorced” for this type, because separates are

least likely to express their feelings

3. Traditional couples: Fairly conventional belief system, resist change

or uncertainty, high degree of interdependence, low autonomy, engage

in conflict when necessary, but would rather avoid it, strong sex-typed

roles, oppose androgyny

(a) Tend to be the most satisfied

iii. Mixed types represent many couple systems that evolve and change over time;

about 60% of couples can be categorized as “pure,” 40% are mixed

b. Gender-organized couple types: Gender influences partners’ roles, communication,

and parenting

the relationship and see their roles, though different, as equal

c. Family communication patterns: Family types based on conformity and conversation

i. Consensual: High conformity, high conversation

ii. Protective: High conformity, low conversation

iii. Pluralistic: Low conformity, high conversation

iv. Laissez-faire: low conformity, low conversation

d. Typologies of stepfamilies

i. Bonded stepfamilies: Characterized by low dissension and avoidance, high

3. Fewer mental health symptoms

ii. Functional stepfamilies: Characterized by moderately high involvement,

flexibility, and expressiveness; moderately low dissension and avoidance

1. Stepparents considered as friends rather than as parents

2. Higher communication competence

3. Fewer mental health symptoms

iii. Ambivalent stepfamilies: Characterized by slightly above-average dissension

and avoidance, slightly below-average involvement, flexibility, and

expressiveness

V. Discussion Questions

d. Who, other than parents, is responsible for carrying out role functions? How does this

play out in families? And how are role functions represented in the media? How

might this influence families?

e. How have family roles in your family of origin changed over time? And what has

been the effect of these role changes on the family system?

VI. Case Study Questions

a. Looking back at Rebekah’s circumstances in the case that opened this chapter, how

might her feelings and decisions regarding graduate school be influenced by her role

expectations, as well as her husband’s role expectations, at home? To what extent are

her responsibilities at school and at home interfering with her role performance in

both contexts? And what advice might you give her to (re)negotiate her family

responsibilities with her husband and children so as to finish her degree program?

Activities

Brainstorming Roles: Prompt students to write down a list of the roles they enact in their

families. They can be structural or interactional (e.g., daughter, cousin, caregiver, peace maker).

• How did they come to perform each of these roles?

• How does this role influence the ability to do other roles?

Application of Role Appropriations: As an alternate to considering their own family roles, ask

the students to choose a movie or book and share how they perceive role functions being

enacted, or show movie scenes and ask groups to identify the five essential role functions. Ask

students to describe how role expectations, role enactment, role negotiation, and role conflict

play out in these families.

Marital Relationship Role Negotiation Interviews: Ask students to interview married couples

about the negotiation of role functions as they moved from a premarital relationship to their

present family state

• How did they negotiate their changing roles during their transition from unmarried to

married?

• How much role negotiation is implicit and how much is explicit conversations?

• What were times of role conflict?

• What tensions or arguments regarding roles resurface over time?

Gender Roles and Work: Have students read Medved et al. (2006) Family and Work

Socialization Communication: Messages, Gender, and Ideological Implications in Journal of

Family Communication to illustrate the different messages men and women receive regarding

their work choices. You may also supplement this discussion by addressing similar themes from

Sheryl Sandberg’s popular press book Lean In.

• What are the differences in messages men and women receive about work and family?

• How much have these messages changed in recent times?

• How have they stayed the same? What are the implications for family and work life for

both men and women?

Family Role Negotiation: The TV series Modern Family stars the Pritchett-Dunphy-Tucker

clan, a large and blended combination of three families that together portray an honest and often

hilarious depiction of the everyday ups and downs felt throughout the family unit. Throughout

the series there are several instances of role negotiation. In First Days (Season 5, Ep. 2), the

family works to function with members filling new roles: Claire returns to the workforce, Cam

starts a job at the high school, and Mitch attempts to juggle both Lily’s first day of 1st grade and

an important meeting at work. There are several clips that could be shown to illustrate these role

concepts. Use these clips to jump-start discussion on role conflict, negotiation, and enactment;

McMaster’s role functions; and position- vs. person-orientated approaches to roles.

Gendered Expectations of Parenting Roles: Compare and contrast expectations of fathering

vs. mothering in the media.

Option 1: Many media examples exist for this illustration, including I Don’t Know How She

Does It (regarding the mothering role) vs. Big Daddy (regarding the fathering role). You may