Conclusion
Family conflict is a crucial aspect of family communication closely related to relationship satisfaction and the individual psychological well-being and social functioning of all family members.
Although in many ways comparable to conflict in other types of interpersonal relationships, the unique characteristics of family relationships make family conflict unique as well. As a consequence, understanding family conflict requires understanding the unique relationships and attributes of family, which is why family conflict cannot be studied without consideration of family communication more generally.In addition, family conflict does not occur in isolation from other communication and relationship behavior of families. Family conflict is a central part of family communication and affects the communication and relationships of family members even when they are not engaged in conflict communication. Likewise, family conflict communication is affected by how families communicate and relate to each other during times that they are not in conflict, which for many, if not most, families represents the majority of their interactions. Conflict plays an important role in what are among the most important functions of families, including the socialization of children, the development of autonomous and more independent identities of adolescents, and the negotiation and renegotiation of family roles, rules, and relationships. That notwithstanding, to focus on family conflict exclusively when describing these functions and developing theoretical explanations of family conflict in isolation from other communication processes means to miss important parts of the larger picture that is the family. More important, it leads to an incomplete understanding of family conflict as well.
Family conflict is but one part of the larger process of family communication and is best understood in relation to this process.
FCP theory is a comprehensive theory of family communication and the processes that constitute it, including family conflict communication. For example, FCP suggest that conflict in more conversation-oriented families is best understood as a behavior that strengthens family relationships because it helps families establish a shared social reality. In contrast, in more conformity-oriented families, conflict is best understood as a behavior that undermines authority relationships and thereby prevents families from establishing a shared social reality. Thus, the very function of family conflict and how family members react to it is affected by FCP and cannot be understood in isolation from them.Although research has made great strides in understanding family conflict, there is still much to be learned about it. We know almost nothing about the effects of family conflict on the psychological well-being and social functioning of parents. While this lacuna is understandable in its historical context that made parents the responsible and purposeful actors in family conflicts, it is clear that parents nevertheless are affected by family conflict. This is obvious for marital conflict where the involved parties are primarily the parents. But it is equally true for parent-child conflict. Parents spend a significant amount of time and resources on their children and often identify with the parent role. Thus, family conflict has the ability to undermine their self-identity and in itself can be seen as an obstacle to obtain important interpersonal goals in their relationships with their children. Consequently, parent-child conflict should lead to negative affect as well as negative psychosocial outcomes for parents.
Another aspect of family conflict that in my estimation is in urgent need of elaboration is the role that children play as instigators and perpetuators of family conflict. For the same reasons that the effects of conflict on parents have been neglected by researchers, the role that children play in how conflict develops in families has been ignored.
While there is at least an implicit acknowledgment in some research on parenting and family communication that some children are “more difficult” than others, a systematic investigation of what child characteristics and behaviors contribute to frequency and intensity of family conflict is lacking. This question is of obvious theoretical importance, but it also has relevance for practitioners who have spent much of the past decades educating parents on how to communicate during family conflict in ways that minimizes conflict’s negative effects on children. Maybe by developing strategies to influence children’s behaviors rather than that of their parents, practitioners can reach those families whose parents have either been resistant to or incapable of implementing the advice they have received.Finally, we have not paid enough attention to the effect of culture on family conflict communication. From psychological and intercul- tural research (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998), we know that cultural norms vary widely and have direct effects not only on social norms and behaviors but also on cognitive processes as well. These effects should be particularly pronounced in family relationships, which in most, if not all, cultures are of particular personal and social significance. Because culture has well-established effects on core aspects of family relationships, such as gender roles (Eagly & Wood, 1999) and the power dynamics between parents and children (Claes, Debrosse, Miranda, & Perchec, 2010), as well as in conflict in other interpersonal relationships (Ting-Toomey et al., 2000), we would expect that culture plays an important role in how persons communicate during family conflict as well. Much like the way family conflict can only be understood when the family context in which the conflict occurs is understood, the family context can only be understood if the cultural context in which the family is situated is understood. As of now, this understanding of the cultural context is severely lacking.