Challenges and Issues Among Families,

Family Life Cycle and Family System Theory,

Maintaining Harmonious Relationship with Family

Challenges and Issues Among Families

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sociology/chapter/challenges-families-face/

All families face challenges from time to time. Some common challenges families
face in addition to managing chronic pain include things like moving house,
separation or divorce, parenting issues, pressure at work or school, unemployment
and financial problems, illness or disability of a family member, death of a family
member, drug, alcohol, gambling addiction, and domestic violence.

A problem or challenge in one area of your life can also affect other parts. Some
problems can drain a lot of your energy and coping resources. It can make you so
tired that you might not deal effectively with other stressful things that could be
happening like conflicts with friends, exams, or assessment tasks. Sometimes when
we are struggling to cope with our pain we might also become a bit more irritable
with our family and less able to handle frustrations.

What issues are affecting families today?

Broken Family- A family in which parents are divorced.
Being an OFW- an overseas Filipino is a person of Philippine origin who work outside
the country.

Violence and Abuse

Violence and abuse are among the most disconcerting of the challenges that today’s
families face. Abuse can occur between spouses, between parent and child, as well
as between other family members. The frequency of violence among families is a
difficult to determine because many cases of spousal abuse and child abuse go
unreported.

Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is a significant social problem in the United States. It is often

characterized as violence between household or family members, specifically
spouses.

Child Abuse

Children are among the most helpless victims of abuse. Child abuse may come in
several forms, the most common being neglect (78.3 percent), followed by physical
abuse (10.8 percent), sexual abuse (7.6 percent), psychological maltreatment (7.6
percent), and medical neglect (2.4 percent) (Child Help 2011). Some children suffer
from a combination of these forms of abuse.
Summary
There are many kinds of families. Some have two parents, while others have a single
parent. Sometimes there is no parent and grandparents raise grandchildren. Some
children live in foster families, adoptive families, or in step families. Families are
much more than groups of people who share the same genes or the same address.
They should be a source of love and support. This does not mean that everyone gets
along all the time. Conflicts are a part of family life. Many things can lead to conflict,
such as illness, disability, addiction, job loss, school problems, and marital issues.
Listening to each other and working to resolve conflicts are important in
strengthening the family.

Family Life Cycle and Family System Theory

https://www.peacehealth.org/medical-topics/id/ty6171#:~:text=Family%20life
%20cycle%20theory%20suggests,are%20and%20who%20you%20become.

What is a family life cycle?

The emotional and intellectual stages you pass through from childhood to your
retirement years as a member of a family are called the family life cycle. In each
stage, you face challenges in your family life that allow you to build or gain new
skills. Gaining these skills helps you work through the changes that nearly every
family goes through.

Not everyone passes through these stages smoothly. Situations such as severe
illness, financial problems, or the death of a loved one can have an effect on how
well you pass through the stages. Fortunately, if you miss skills in one stage, you can
learn them in later stages.
The stages of the family life cycle are:
 Independence.
 Coupling or marriage.
 Parenting: babies through adolescents.
 Launching adult children.
 Retirement or senior years.
Why is it important to understand the family life cycle?
Mastering the skills and milestones of each stage allows you to successfully move
from one stage of development to the next. If you don't master the skills, you may
still move on to the next phase of the cycle, but you are more likely to have difficulty
with relationships and future transitions. Family life cycle theory suggests that
successful transitioning may also help to prevent disease and emotional or stress-
related disorders.
Whether you are a parent or child, brother or sister, bonded by blood or love, your
experiences through the family life cycle will affect who you are and who you
become. The more you understand about the challenges of each stage of the cycle,
the more likely you are to successfully move on.

Family System Theory

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/family-systems-
theory#:~:text=According%20to%20Murray%20Bowen%20%5B101,rather%20than
%20as%20individual%20elements.

Family systems theory demonstrated that children's and adolescents' dysfunctional

behavior often serves important functions within a larger system.

Family Systems Theory

Family systems theory is an approach to understand human functioning that focuses
on interactions between people in a family and between the family and the contexts
in which that family is embedded. Family systems theory has been applied to a wide
variety of areas including psychotherapy in general and family therapy in particular
(working from a systems framework with emotional, behavioral, or relational
symptoms in individual, couples, and families); school systems; community
problems, organizations and health care (medical family therapy – tracking the
emotional dynamics of illness and facilitating collaboration among patients, families,
providers, and health care systems).
A thorough understanding of family systems theory requires an elucidation of the
foundational contributions of systems theory itself.
Systems theory is a field that informed and inspired the founders of the family
therapy field and upon which family systems theory is based in many important
respects. Unfortunately, as the field of family therapy has developed, the important
contributions of systems theory to the theoretical foundations of the field have too
often been neglected, undervalued, or only dimly understood. The following
discussion will review the key concepts of systems theory that are most relevant to
family systems theory and family therapy, followed by a description of the primary
schools of family therapy and enduring family systems concepts and family therapy
techniques.

Maintaining Harmonious Relationship with Family

https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/news/2009/08/25/harmony-at-home-essential-to-
kids%E2%80%99-well-being/
tips to help build a happier home. 
1. Make family your top priority. Close, strong families make a conscious decision to
keep family life their number one responsibility.

 2. Invest your time doing things with family members together or separately. In a
large national study, children and young adults were asked, “What makes a happy
family?” The overwhelming response was “Doing things together.”

 3. Don’t neglect saying some important words. Close families know the power of “I
forgive you,” “Let’s try again,” and “I love you.”

 4. Establish and maintain family rituals. Rituals and traditions are the glue of family
life. They are especially important today as family time becomes more limited. As
often as possible, share meals with family members. Stepfamilies especially need to
respect pre-existing traditions and create new ones.

 5. Stay connected. Be available and keep in touch with your partner and children–no
matter how busy you are. Children, especially, need to know you are available.

 6. Teach your children how to love and be loved. Nothing is more important to a
child’s feeling of self-worth as the experience of being loved. Your children need to
know beyond any doubt that they are lovable, that you love them and that you love
each other.

 7. Use words wisely. Speak to your partner and children in ways that affirm and
assure-not attack or abuse. Choose your words carefully. “Words can echo forever,”
says Wood.

8. Speak positively about your partner and kids-both in public and in private. The
things we say about and to family members can have a powerful impact.

“By working to cultivate trust, affection and respect, parents and other adults in the
home can create a place where family members feel safe, loved and supported-a
refuge from the storms of life,” says Wood. “There is no better lifelong legacy to give
a child.”