Family Communication Patterns and Family Conflict

Although family conflict is certainly impor­tant in shaping families’ shared social reality in that roles, expectations, and meaning are often the issues that family conflict revolves around (Sillars & Canary, 2012), the primary determinants of family shared social reality are the communication patterns that charac­terize the mundane, day-to-day family inter­action that family members use habitually in their interactions (Koerner, 2007; Rueter & Koerner, 2008). Only in the context of these patterns can family conflict be understood.