I.

Content
A. Concepts/ Definition of family
B. Family structure and functions
C. Universal characteristics of families
D. Characteristics of a healthy family
E. Family stages and tasks
F. Theories of families
G. The Family Genogram
H. The Family Ecomap

Concept of Family as a Basic Unit of Society

Concept of family
● The family is the basic unit of society.
● families exist in all sizes & configurations & are essential to the health & survival of the individual
members & society as a whole.
● As the primary group for the individual, the family serves as the buffer between the needs of the individual
& the demands & expectations of society.
● The role of the family is to meet the needs of society.
Family
➔ a group of people related by blood, marriage, or adoption living together.
➔ two or more people who live in the same household usually share a common emotional bond, & perform
certain interrelated social tasks.
Family
● It is a number of persons joined together by bonds of marriage, blood or adoption.
● It is composed of two or more persons who are joined together by bonds of sharing and emotional
closeness and who identify themselves as being part of the family.

Family Structures and Functions

Types of Family based on composition:

Many types of families exist, & family types change over time as they are affected by birth, work, death,
divorce, & the growth of family members.

A. Dyad Family - consists of two people living together, usually a woman & a man, without children.
Many single young adults live together as a dyad in shared apartments, dormitories, or homes for
companionship & financial security while completing school or beginning their careers.
B. Nuclear Family - composed of a husband, wife, & children. It is the most common structure seen
worldwide & throughout history.
C. The Cohabitation Family - composed of heterosexual couples who live together like a nuclear family
but remain unmarried.
D. The Extended (Multigenerational) Family - includes not only the nuclear family but also other family
members such as grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, & grandchildren
E. The Single-Parent Family - increase in single-parent families is a result of both the high rate of divorce
& the increasingly common practice of women raising children outside of marriage. This has the
advantage of offering a child a special parent-child relationship & increased opportunities for self-reliance
and independence.
F. The Blended Family-or remarriage or reconstituted family - a divorced or widowed person with
children marries someone who also has children. Advantages of blended families include increased
security & resources for the new family.
 G. The Communal Family - Communes comprise groups of people who have chosen to live together as an
extended family. Their relationship to each other is motivated by social or religious values rather than
kinship. The values of commune members may be more oriented toward freedom & free of choice than
those of a traditional family. Example cults or groups who follow a charismatic leader.
H. The Gay or Lesbian Family - In homosexual unions, individuals of the same sex live together as partners
for companionship, financial security, & sexual fulfillment.
I. The Foster Family - Children whose parents can no longer care for them may be placed in a foster or
substitute home by a child protection agency. Foster parents may or may not have children of their own.
They receive remuneration for their care & concern for the foster child. It’s theoretically temporary until
children can be returned to their own parents.
J. Beanpole family - A family with four or more generations, each of them small; as each generation lives
longer, parent-child relationships last longer.
K. Single state - The never-married, separated, divorced, or widowed individual, often characterized by
privacy, independence, job mobility, opportunity to develop skills and knowledge and geographic
mobility.

Types of Family based on locus of Power or Authority

1. Patrifocal or Patriarchal family - a union in which the man has the main authority and decision- making
power.
2. Matrifocal or Matriarchal - a union in which the woman has the main authority and decision- making
power.
3. Egalitarian - a union in which the husband and wife exercise more or less an equal amount of authority
4. Matricentric - a prolonged absence of the father as in the case of families of Overseas Filipino Workers
gives the mother a dominant position in the family, although the father may in a way also share the
decision-making power with the mother.

Types of family based on place of residence

1. Patrilocal - requires the newly-wed couple to live with or near the residence of the parents/family of the
bridegroom.
2. Matrilocal - requires the newly-wed couple to live with or near the residence of the bride’s parents/family.
3. Bilocal - provides the newly-wed couple the choice of staying with either the groom’s or the bride’s
parents depending on factors like the relative’s wealth or status of the families, the wishes of the parents,
or certain personal preferences of the bride and the groom.
4. Neolocal - permits the couple to reside independently from their parents. They can decide on their own as
far as their residence is concerned.
5. Avunculocal - prescribes the newly-wed couple to reside with or near the maternal uncle of the groom.

Types of families based on descent

1. Patrilineal - affiliates (associates, partners, joins) a person with a group of relatives through his or her
father.
2. Matrilineal - affiliates a person with a group of relatives through his or her mother.
3. Bilateral - affiliates a person with a group of relatives through both his or her parents.

Family Functions
 A. Physical Function - is carried out by providing a safe, comfortable environment necessary for growth,
development, & rest/recuperation.
B. Economic Function - provide financial aid for member, as well as, meeting monetary needs of society
C. Reproductive Function - is met by the birth of children
D. Socialization Function - This is of major importance & includes teaching: transmitting beliefs, values,
attitudes, & coping mechanisms; providing feedback; & guiding problem-solving.

Universal characteristics of families

Socio-economic and cultural characteristics include occupation, place of work, income of each working
member, educational attainment of each family member, ethnic background and religious affiliation, significant
others and the other roles they play in the family’s life, the relationship of the family to the larger community.

Characteristics of a Healthy Family

Include information on housing and sanitation facilities, kind of neighborhood and availability of social,
health, communication and transportation facilities in the community.

Family Stages & Tasks

A. Physical Maintenance - A healthy family provides food, shelter, clothing, & health care for its member.
Being certain that a family has enough resources to provide for a new or ill member is important in
maternal & child health nursing.
B. Socialization of family members - This task involves preparing children to live in the community & to
interact with people outside the family.
C. Allocation of resources - Determining which family needs will be met & their order of priority is
allocation of resources. In healthy families, there is justification, consistency, & fairness in the
distribution.
Resources include not only financial wealth but also material goods, affection, & space.
D. Maintenance of Order - This task includes opening an effective means of communication among family
members, establishing family values, & enforcing common regulations for all family members.
E. Division of Labor - The issue here is who will fulfill certain roles, such as family provider, caregiver, &
home manager
F. Reproduction, recruitment & release of family members - Who lives in a family often happens more
by changing circumstances than by true choice. Having to accept a new infant into an already crowded
household may make a pregnancy a less-welcome event or cause reworking of this tasks.
G. Placement of members into the larger society - This task consists of selecting community activities,
such as school, religious affiliation, or a political group that correlate with the family’s beliefs & values.
H. Maintenance of Motivation & morale - A sense of pride in the family group when created, helps
members defend the family against threats & serves as support people to each other during crises.

Stages of Family Development by Evelyn Duvall

Stage 1: Marriage and the Family

This stage is referred to as marriage, what occurs during it is also applicable to couples forming co-habitation,
lesbian/gay, or single alliances when formal marriage does not occur. During this first stage of family
development, members work to achieve three tasks:

Stage 1 Tasks:
1. Establish a mutually satisfying relationship
2. Learn to relate well to their families of orientation
 3. If applicable, engage in reproductive life planning

Stage 2: The Early Childbearing Family

The birth or adoption of a first baby is usually an exciting yet stressful event that requires economic &
social role changes. An important nursing role during this period is health education about well-child care
& how to integrate a new member into a family.

Stage 3: The Family with Preschool Children

A family with preschool children is a busy family.
Children at this age demand a great deal of time because their imagination is at such a peak, and safety
considerations such as unintentional injuries (accidents) become a major health problem.

Stage 4: The Family with School-Age Children

Parents of school-age children have the important responsibility of preparing their children to be able to
function in a complex world while at the same time maintaining their own satisfying time. For many
families, this is a trying time. Important nursing concerns during this family stage are monitoring
children’s health in terms of immunization, dental care, & health care assessments: monitoring child safety
related to home or automobile accidents, & encouraging a meaningful school experience that will make
learning a lifetime concern.

Stage 5: The family with adolescent children

The primary goal for a family with teenagers differs considerably from the goal of the family in previous
stages, which was to strengthen family ties and maintain family unity.
Now the family must loosen family ties to allow adolescents more freedom and prepare them for life on
their own.
As technology advances at a rapid rate, the gap between generations increases; life when the parents were
young was very different from what it is for their teenagers.
This makes stage 5 a trying stage for both children and adults.
A nurse is a neutral person who can assist families at this stage when communication is difficult.

Stage 6: The Launching Center Family

For many families, the stage at which children leave to establish their own households is the most difficult
stage because it appears to represent the breaking up of the family. Parental roles change from those of
mother or father to once-removed support people or guideposts. The stage may represent a loss of self-
esteem for parents, who feel themselves being replaced by other people in their children’s lives. A nurse,
again, can serve as a counselor to such a family. He / she can help the parents to see that what their children
are doing is what they have spent a long time preparing them to do so, & that leaving home is a positive,
not a negative step in family growth.

Stage 7: The family of middle years

When a family returns to a two-partner nuclear unit, as it was before childbearing, the partners may view
this stage either as the prime time of their lives (an opportunity to travel, economic independence, & time
to spend on hobbies) or as a period of gradual decline (lacking the constant activity & stimulation in the
home, finding life boring without them, or experiencing an “empty nest” syndrome).

Stage 8: The family in Retirement or older age

Families at this stage are more apt to suffer from chronic & disabling conditions than younger ones are.
Although families at this stage are not having children, they remain important because they can offer a
great deal of support & advice to young adults who are just beginning their families. Many grandparents
care for their grandchildren while the parents are out working.
 Rights of a Family

1. The family has the right to exist and to progress as a family.

2. Every family has the right to live freely its own domestic religious life under the guidance of the parents,
as well as the right to profess publicly and to propagate the faith, to take part in public worship and in
freely chosen programs of religious instruction, without suffering discrimination.
3. The family has the right to exercise its social and political function in the construction of society.
4. Families have the right to be able to rely on an adequate family policy on the part of public authorities in
the juridical, economic, social, and fiscal domains, without any discrimination whatsoever
5. Families have a right to social and economic order in which the organization of work permits the members
to live together, and does not hinder the unity, well-being, health and the stability of the family, while also
offering the possibility of wholesome recreation.
6. The family has the right to decent housing, fitting for family life and commensurate to the number of the
members, in a physical environment that provides the basic services for the life of the family and the
community.
7. The families of migrants have the right to the same protection as that accorded other families.

Summary of Family Models

Family Theory Description View of the person

Family Systems ⮚ The family is viewed as a system The person is a member of the family and is
Theory (structure) in which the family also considered a subsystem.
Dr. Murray members are interdependent and are
Bowen working towards specific purposes and
goals.
⮚ Families are viewed as open systems
continually interacting with other
systems in the community.
⮚ Families consist of special functional
subsystems. These include the marital
subsystem (parents), sibling subsystem
(children), and the individual parent-
child subsystems. Developmental tasks
accompany the formation of each
subsystem.
⮚ Boundaries regulate the input and
output to and from other systems that
interact with the family system, e.g.,
seeking out health care information.
⮚ Boundaries also protect the family from
the demands and influences of other
systems.

Developmental ⮚ Families are viewed as ever-changing The person is a member of the family where
Stage Theory and growing; each family member is each new member adds to the complexity of
expected to accomplish tasks at the interactions within the family. The
every stage of development. The behavior of the person within a certain age
accomplishment of these tasks is a group could more or less be predicted
prerequisite for the person to succeed in because of its associated developmental
tasks.
 achieving the tasks of the next stage of
development
⮚ The family’s major task is to create an
environment wherein each family
member could master the
developmental tasks required of
him/her to accomplish at each stage of
development.
With this, sequential progression
through the stages of the family life
cycle is ensured.

Structural- ⮚ The family is seen as a social system The person is seen as fulfilling roles within
Functional passively adapting to external the social system.
Theory influences, instead of acting as a
Jeffrey W. Lucas change agent in itself.
⮚ A healthy family functions in harmony
and organizes its members and
resources in achieving family goals.
⮚ Accordingly, the main function of the
family includes the following:
1. To develop a sense of family purpose
and affiliation;
2. To add and socialize new members;
3. To provide and distribute care and
services to members; and
4. To organize members and resources in
meeting family goals.

Interactional The family is defined in terms of the unity of The person is capable of interacting with
Theory interacting personalities with assigned other family members and is seen as
Ludwig von positions and roles, expectations and norms of fulfilling roles within the family
Bertalanffy behavior.

Role Theory ⮚ Family life is structured according to ⮚ The person is seen in terms of roles, which
Mead, George H. the roles that are assumed by the person are specialized or shared, depending on
(1934) in interaction with others. Roles are age, sex, social norms, status, and
learned through socialization and there complementarity. Roles may change
is high mutual dependence on through development and negotiation,
division of labor within the family which may depend on flexibility, stability,
⮚ Each family member has a specialized and congruence of expectations.
role ⮚ A person experiences role reciprocity.,
complementarity or strain…
⮚ Role reciprocity or mutual exchange of
responsibilities ensures that personal and
family needs are almost always met and
that everyone in the family would have a
potential for positive growth.
⮚ Role strain may be manifested in two
ways:
 a. Role conflict-unclear, incomplete,
contradictory elements in role which
make the performance of one’s role
difficult.
b. Role overload-consider the impact of
the distribution of power among the
members of the family. Usually, the
person with less power assumes more
unwanted burdens while the person
with more power has less dependency
needs.

Crises Theory ⮚ The family is made up of members who Crisis in a person may take the form of an
individually experience a state of illness, which may pose as a problem to the
disequilibrium resulting from entire family.
situational, developmental, or societal
sources of stress called crisis.
⮚ Crises take two forms-developmental
or situational-which both could be
turning points in an individual’s life.
a. Developmental crisis-are transitional
periods in personality development
characterized by disturbances in cognitive
and effective functioning, e.g., a teenager
who refuses to socialize with her age-mates
in the neighborhood because she fears
ridicule because of her acne problem.
b. Situational crisis –are sudden, unexpected
threats to, or loss of basic resources or life
goals. Example: Loss of a job for the
family’s breadwinner

Basic assumptions:
o all family members are affected
by the inability of one member
to cope.
o The family assists members in
coping with problems by
adopting coping mechanisms as
a group.

❏ A genogram is a graphic representation of a family tree that displays detailed data on relationships among
individuals. It goes beyond a traditional family tree by allowing the user to analyze hereditary patterns
and psychological factors that punctuate relationships.

❏ A genogram is a pictorial display of a person's family relationships and medical history. It goes beyond
a traditional family tree by allowing the user to visualize hereditary patterns and psychological factors that
punctuate relationships.
❏ A genogram is a graphic portrayal of the composition and structure of one's family and an ecomap is a
graphic portrayal of personal and family social relationships.