Family Conflict
The family is the first institution through which children learn behavioral norms, social and cultural patterns, and interpersonal skills. Families, probably harmonious most of the time in most cases, certainly see their share of interpersonal conflict at various levels of intensity from grudging obedience to outright violence.
Spouses discuss, debate, argue, or fight over a myriad of topics, usually leading to resolution or management, but sometimes leading to divorce or even murder. Parents and their children fight over allowances, behavior, chores, curfews, schoolwork, and even who has the bigger dessert. Finally, siblings often are in conflict with one another, the substance varying with their sex, age difference, and family resources (such as the number of TV sets). Conflict in families is normal but varies widely with the experience, resources, and skills the parents have to handle it. Culture, personality, and resources interact to determine conflict style. Sometimes, parents are facilitators, sometimes judge and jury, sometimes mediators, sometimes negotiators (Chapter 17) and sometimes providers. Each stage of family development--courtship, marriage, parenthood, grandparenthood, and widowhood apparently requires a different approach. Stages are easily devised and presented, but there is enormous variation (e.g., divorces, multiple and late marriages, immigrants who introduce cultural variations such as extended families, and non-traditional families such as those with gay parents)—and we must take account of external factors such as the state of the economy.We have developmental, ecological, ethological, feminist, structural functionalist, social exchange, symbolic interaction, systems, and undoubtedly more theories that purport to explain family conflict. Sprey (1990) provides a multi-disciplinary survey of theoretical perspectives discussing issues such as religion and power. Smith and Harmon (2012) survey a bewildering variety, incorporate a journal article illustrating how each theory guides research, and discuss how theories can be evaluated. It is nearly impossible to operationalize all the variables suggested by all the theories and even more difficult particularly in the US given the mobility of individuals and families to conduct longitudinal studies to justify many of the conclusions reached. Theories about family functioning appear to be in a pre-paradigmatic state of development:
In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possibly pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant. As a result, early fact-gathering is far more nearly random activity than the one that subsequent scientific development makes familiar. Furthermore, in the absence of a reason for seeking some particular form of more recondite information, early fact-gathering is usually restricted to the wealth of data that lie ready to hand. (Kuhn, 1996).