The Circumplex Model: Adaptability and Flexibility Throughout On Golden Pond, it is apparent that Chelsea, Norman, and Ethel are rigidly enmeshed. According to Olson’s circumplex model, rigidly enmeshed families have authoritarian leadership, strict discipline, roles rarely change, there is too little change. Additionally, enmeshment in families is illustrated by very high closeness, very high loyalty, high dependency, and a lack of individuality (Sanders & Bell, 2011). Although Chelsea is distant with her family in the number of visits it is an artificial distance of time and space. They are strongly emotionally entangled as demonstrated through the ability of the family to emotionally affect one and other. Slightly like the characters in On Golden Pond, the family in Stepmom appear to be chaotically enmeshed. The circumplex model claims families who are chaotic present with a lack of leadership, erratic discipline, dramatic role shifts, and too much change (Sanders & Bell, 2011). Chaos is present in the structure of the two living environments of the children: one environment is structured and the other one is disorderly. This leads to confusion for the children because the system lacks consistency. Enmeshment is personified through the children's emotional fusion with their mother. When Jackie is upset with Isabel, the children are upset with Isabel. The children and the mother’s emotions are intertwined. On the other hand, Rita slightly contrasts the two families above as she appears to be rigidly disengaged instead of enmeshed. Rita and Denny are not intimately close. This is illustrated as Rita responds to a question by saying, “loyalty? I [have] you know, I [have] tried to explain it to my husband … I think he [is] thick” (Gilbert, 1983). Rita’s family lacks the flexibility to change. People get married and have kids. There is no self-exploration, enlightenment, and adaptability is absent. The Concrete Content and Abstract Process Norman characterized several content and process issues throughout On Golden Pond. The first part of the movie exposes Norman’s fixation on his age and pending death. From his confrontation with the kids, while refueling his boat to his efforts about getting a job,
The family entered into therapy by believing that Claudia was their entire problem and that her actions alone were the root of their problem. As noted before, she was just the perceived problem. And in order for the parents to see that Claudia was only the perceived problem the therapists reversed the blame that the parents had projected on to their daughter. I believe this technique was most striking. Through the art of helping the family to view their situation differently, the therapists initiated change allowing the family to step outside their norm and see that their failure in marriage was affecting their parenting abilities. The therapists then gave Claudia meaning in reducing her feeling of failure and at the same time proposed the more serious problem that the parents had slowly began drifting away from each other.
Poor or no communication creates intense barriers of misunderstanding and resentment between family members. Particularly between siblings who are rivals fighting for their mother’s love. Personal needs trump familial duties, though these selfish acts are masked with the pretense of devotion. The Bundren family’s journey to Jefferson is driven by familial duty, not by familial love.
While there are many strong relationships, there are also familial relationships as evidenced through Shelby and her mother, M’Lynn. Their relationship does a great job demonstrating the characteristic of responsibility in family relationships. M’Lynn constantly felt the need to protect Shelby. She also felt responsible for Shelby’s health and well being. Our text explains this same idea claiming, “Family members see themselves as having certain obligations and responsibilities to one another,” (DeVito, 2015). We found that Shelby and M’Lynn’s relationship is based off of this element of obligation and demonstrates how a family characteristic can dictate how members act. For example, because of Shelby’s diabetes, M’Lynn constantly watches after her. When Shelby’s blood sugar drops in the salon, her mother runs right over to her and feeds her juice demonstrating her duty to take care of her daughter. If she was not a family member of Shelby she may have just uncomfortably observed the whole incident like some of the other women. However, because they do have a familial bond, M’lynn knows more about Shelby and her condition than anyone else; she understands that she is the only one out of the women that knows how to take care of her daughter during a diabetic
Throughout this article Brady uses ethos, logos, and pathos to illustrate her opinion that the wife does too much in a family. Brady connects with her audience by relating to what was expected of them back in the 1970’s. She states reasons to why she wants a wife and lists what she says a wife would do for her. Lastly, Brady connects emotionally to her audience by
In paragraphs three through seven, Brady provides the reader with what she desires in a wife. Through repetition and tone, she shows the reader the unrealistic roles of a wife.
What is a family? As a young child, Kingsolver played in her room with a toy set called “The Family of Dolls”, which served as the perfect example of what a “real” family is: “four in number, who came with the factory-assigned names of Dad, Mom, Sis, and Junior.” She always ended up comparing her family to this perfect idea of a family that she played with. As a grown-up Kingsolver went through divorce herself, creating a “broken” home for her child. Kingsolver experienced the abnormalness and society’s ideals pushed through her head. But although her family was
Family dynamics and relationships in our younger years help shape our view of the world and how we fit into it. Whether you agree with Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, or Erik Erickson,
The family dynamics in Max Apple’s “Stepdaughters” and Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” displays some of the issues that parents, stepparents and teenagers may or may not experience. A mother’s relationship with her children has a very unique connection, especially when it comes our daughters. Being a mother or stepmother is a problematical and rewarding experience: nevertheless, a mother’s love is unconditional. How do you except someone for his or her choices on being different? Is it easier for a step-parent to see things more clearly that the biological parent? Every family has its issues. When it’s a blended family with mothers, fathers, stepchildren and other family member, those issues can become more complex to understand.
Her job and dialect optimize the way she grew up, and how the expectations of her upbringing limit her future, as being a working class woman she is expected to get married, have children and then become a housewife, ‘I should've had a baby by now. Everyone expects it.’ There were no further expectations for women and certainly no need for them to have an education, ‘Denny gets dead narked if I work at home’. Rita doesn’t like the housewife stereotype and decides to rebel against it by taking the pill and starting a formal education, ‘But I mean, I don't want a baby yet. No. I wanna discover meself first.’ Rita’s family refuse to see the benefits that this could give her and this leads her father to feel sorry for Denny and to feel annoyed at Rita’s lack of commitment to her family, ‘Denny, I'm sorry for you, lad. If she was a wife of mine I'd drown her.’ When Rita thinks about quitting the course to please her family, it’s her mother’s unintentional comment at the pub, ‘There must be better songs than this,’ which drives her forward in the course, ‘And I thought, ‘All I'm doing is getting an education. Just trying to learn. And I love it. It's not easy, I get it wrong half the time, I'm laughed at half the time but I love it because it makes me feel as
In Brian’s early years he was constantly family-oriented and struggled to detach himself from his siblings, Jeannette especially even after moving to New York because he felt they worked better as a family. As a grown-up he achieved his dream and became a police officer. Beginning at an early age Maureen spent utmost of her time with her friend’s families using
When you experience different families, you frequently take note of how their correspondence hones vary from others. Observing the film Little Miss Sunshine you will notice the way they communicate with each other depends all on their own personal identity and not collectively as a family. The Hoover’s represent some family dysfunction.
Every family functions in their own unique way, even if they attempt to model themselves after the social norms of what a family “should be”. Little Miss Sunshine gives insight into how individuals with their own variety of dysfunction manage to function within the family. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Little Miss Sunshine in the context of four different ways of communicating as explained in the textbook, Family Communication: Cohesion and Change. The following paragraphs, organized into sections by theme will explore the Hoover family’s system, the degree of adaptability and cohesion within the family, the productive or destructive ways they manage conflict, and their use of power or decision making processes. Each section will contain a brief review of each of the aforementioned topics that apply, concepts that exist within those topics that appeared in the movie, and examples taken from the movie.
Her mind is completely set on going to University to get the education she wants so she can become something more than just a stereotypical lady of this time. Not only does Rita receive a education within literature, but she also receives a mental education as she realises what is good for her and what isn’t, she sticks clearly to her ambition of not wanting to become a mother at a young age and made something of herself. It can clearly be seen that Rita has pulled away from being the Stereotypical quiet housewife and not sticking up for herself as when her dad states “Denny, I'm sorry for you, lad. If she was a wife of mine I'd drown her.” Rita responds with “If I was a wife of yours I would drown myself” showing she has picked up a mental education and can actually argue her own case and not back down.
In a similar way, just as Bowen sees differentiation in the context of the emotional capacity of the individual, Whitaker also takes an emotional approach when he posits that problems arise when individuals learn to suppress their emotions. As Bowen describes the individual’s struggle to define themselves and stand firmly amidst emotional pressures from others, Whitaker suggests that children can become estranged from themselves by learning to blunt their emotions to avoid criticism from their parents, who end up trying to curb bad behavior by inadvertently controlling or discouraging the child’s emotions (Nichols, 2013). Indeed, perhaps what both theorists are really describing is the struggle to be in touch with oneself and one’s feelings in the midst of pressures from the family unit. In addition, both these theorists address intimacy in their own ways in that the ultimate goal seems to be for individuals to be able to share safe and healthy intimacy with their family unit while maintaining and experiencing their own feelings. However, Whitaker distinguishes himself from the others in that he is less interested in interactional patterns as he is in experiencing and expressing emotions in the present. Though seemingly different in their approaches, it’s possible to make further connections between Haley and Minuchin’s focus on family structure and members’ ability to navigate these systems, and Bowen and Whitaker’s focus on
Educating Rita is the tale of one working class women 's struggle to find an escape to a boring, repetitive life and to find new things to conquer. To acheive this she begins university on a literature course despite the discouragement from family and baby-obsessed husband Denny. The play features only two characters, Rita and Frank. Frank- a middle class, well-educated, eloquent professor and Rita, an abrupt, crude excuse for a lady with no regard for or more precise, no knowing of social nouce. Throughout the play Rita 's character must reach two social extremities before she can learn to be true to herself. Arriving in Frank 's office loud and sarcastic