Defining Family Conflict
Even a cursory review of the literature on family conflict reveals that there is no universally agreed on definition for family conflict (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2006b). In the broadest sense, of course, family conflict is interpersonal conflict among family members and can be defined using the same psychological and behavioral terms that interpersonal scholars use while specifying the relational context of family.
One such basic definition of conflict is simply a perceived incompatibility of goals between family members (Fincham, Bradbury, & Grych, 1990). In this exclusively psychological definition, conflict is an internal perception of individual goal blockage that requires neither a manifestation of observable behaviors nor that other family members are even aware of the perception of conflict. A second type of definition combines psychological and behavioral aspects of conflict. For example, Donohue and Kolt (1992) defined conflict “as a situation in which interdependent people express [italics added] (manifest or latent) differences in satisfying their individual needs and interests, and they experience interference from each other in accomplishing these goals” (p. 4).Another frequently used way to further define family conflict has been to focus on the relational outcomes of conflict behaviors and to label them accordingly as either func- tional/constructive or as dysfunctional/destruc- tive (Deutsch, 1973; Donohue & Kolt, 1992). Focusing on the relational outcomes of conflict is often motivated by the desire to identify and teach “good” conflict communication skills. Because of the inherent ambiguity of the meaning of conflict behavior, the ability to identify such universally good conflict behavior is naturally limited (Sillars & Canary, 2012). Nonetheless, research on constructive and destructive conflict communication has led to the identification of conflict communication skills that often do have positive relational outcomes and that allow families to improve the quality of their problem solving and other conflict communication and ultimately their interpersonal relationships (e.g., Christensen & Jacobson, 2000; Donohue & Kolt, 1992; Gottmann, 1994).
In addition to the inherent ambiguity of conflict behavior, another important problem in identifying constructive versus destructive conflict behaviors is that behaviors can have multiple outcomes or can affect different family members differently. For example, accusing the partner of not taking one’s emotions seriously might be constructive in that it clarifies important value differences that exist between partners, but it might simultaneously be destructive in that it convinces that partner that he or she is not really interested in responding to those emotions and to end the relationship. Furthermore, whether an outcome is positive or negative also depends on from whose perspective the judgment is made (McCoy, Cummings, & Davies, 2009). Locking a teenager into a room to prevent her from seeing a boyfriend could be considered effective from the parent’s perspective, while from the child’s perspective, the behavior would be considered less positively. Whereas it is relatively easy to make theoretical distinctions that employ fairly abstract concepts such as “interest versus needs centered” and “bolstering versus compromising interdependence” (Donohue & Kolt, 1992) when labeling conflict as either constructive or destructive, judging concrete behaviors using the same abstracts concepts is much more difficult.
A final way to distinguish between different types of conflict is one that is based on observable behaviors rather than more abstract qualities such as relational outcomes. For example, Cahn (1992) identified three types of conflict communication as “specific disagreements,” “problem-solving discussions,” and “unhappy/dissolving relationships.” Similarly, Straus (1990) distinguished between reasoning, verbal aggression, and violence as types of conflict behaviors, and Adams and Laursen (2001) observed coercive, constructive, and unresolved conflict. Although much of this work is dedicated to demonstrate the qualitatively different outcomes associated with these conflict behaviors, these typologies are based on the behaviors themselves, not their outcomes.
Differentiating between reasoning, verbal aggression, and physical violence, which essentially groups behaviors into categories along an intensity dimension, is not the only way by which to distinguish between conflict communication behaviors. Sillars et al. (2004), in a recent review of family and marital conflict, found that the different types of conflict behavior identified by researchers can be generally classified as falling into four types that are based on two underlying dimensions. In their model, the first dimension distinguishes direct from indirect communication, whereas the second dimension distinguishes cooperative from competitive communication. The four resulting types are negotiation (direct and cooperative), which includes behaviors such as agreement, metacommunication, problem solving, and validating; direct fighting (direct and competitive), which includes behaviors such as blaming, coercive acts, confrontation, and disagreement; n onconfrontation (indirect and cooperative), which includes behaviors such as facilitation, irreverent remarks, resolving acts, and topic management; and in direct fighting (indirect and competitive), which includes behaviors such as denial, equivocation, and withdrawal. In a more recent review, Sillars and Canary (2012) used a similar system to classify conflict messages along the dimensions of directness (direct vs. indirect) and valence (positive vs. negative).
As this short review demonstrates, family conflict communication has been defined in numerous, not necessarily mutually exclusive ways. Each definition highlights specific aspects of conflict and family relationships while neglecting others. In my opinion, a good definition of family conflict from a communication perspective is that family conflict is an observable behavior that expresses family members’ perceptions of goal incompatibility and/or goal blockage and its associated negative affect and that has high probability to affect the behavior and psychological wellbeing of family members.