Family Ideals and Roles

During the week in class, we took time to talk about the marital and family ideals that we see in the world and taking more time talking about how those roles go along with those ideals. The typical ideal that we see in marital, parental, and subsystem is that in that system the married couple is at the center of the system being providers and caretakers of the children. In a way that I’d like to share this involves an example of using the Solar System idea. The parents have an essential role in teaching and preparing their children for the real world and for the independent life. And the children orbit around the parents, meaning they live with them and they are being taught by them to help them prepare when they have their own family and for the next phase of their lives in becoming independent.

The parents and the children are meant to have connections with each other to love each other, teach one another, and communicate together. Parents in the marital relationship are setting the example, working together to teach and prepare their children, and to create and maintain a safe environment for themselves and for their children at home. In that system, the parents also have a crucial role in communicating together about plans, concerns, and ideas they may have for each other and their children. In some family cultures, there are different ways that this is done, at times the children take up the roles of adult responsibilities in the household, such as young men are taking the role of the man in the house, and the young women are taking the role of the mother. This happens depending on the circumstances and the situations that change roles in the household.

We also spent time talking about the different family mapping. Some of them were interesting, here are three of them that we learned about. One of them that I saw involved being rigid. This is where boundaries are all over and protecting what is inside. The other one is poor, diffuse, this is where they still have boundaries but they are a little more open to what is inside the boundaries. The last one is clear, where there are boundaries, but they are clear and they have a clear idea of the circumstances and situations that go on within the boundaries.

In those systems and mapping, all of them may be different depending on the family, the roles that each member has, and the circumstances that they are in. As I explained before that each family functions differently in their household. But they all have a similar purpose in those roles. Which is to help each other and to work together as a family. The roles help define the ideal of the family relationships that the members have with each other.

But how can these ideals survive in a world that is becoming more bitter towards the idea of the family? It all depends on the families’ standards and values that they share together, Parents have an essential and crucial role of influencing and preparing their children of becoming what they want to become that will help them be independent. Communication also plays an essential role with parents having a relationship with their children and knowing how to help and nurture them. In that communication it is important for the child to be heard by their parents, but it is also important for the parents to know what the best thing is for the child that will help them. It was interesting to learn about those topics during the week, I also hope I have a better understanding on them when I am preparing to have my own family someday.