Five Characteristics of Healthy Families
Goals for developing a solid family system that also allows for change and development.
Our Holiday Horror Stories podcast series is, ultimately, a conversation about what happens when family systems become so rigid because of a strict adherence to religious (specifically, for our audience, Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal, or EMPish) values and practices that they cannot accept the different ways that a family member may choose to live or organize their lives, ruining the most wonderful time of the year for everyone involved.
In yesterday’s Relationship 101, we talked about the work of famed family therapist Murray Bowen, who worked with the National Institute of Health in the 1950s and 60s to explore how families communicate with each other and invite (or prevent) their family members to grow and evolve.
Check it out below:
I invited you to observe the presence of these seven characteristics in your family system this holiday season, and when you see them, to practice not responding, but just taking mental notes.
Today, let’s talk about the opposite of yesterday’s conversation: How do we know that family systems are working, allowing people to grow and evolve while also maintaining a sense of connectedness?
Dr. Daniel Papero, faculty member at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family in Washington DC, summarized five key characteristics of successful family functioning in his chapter “Developing a Systems Model for Family Assessment”.
(If you’re feeling super geeky, you can order the Handbook of Bowen Family Systems Theory and Research Methods: A Systems Model for Family Research, the book that hosts this chapter.
Or you can subscribe and donate to Relationship 101, where Julia and I will continue to synthesize research on relationship and sexual health, and how you can apply these to your own relationships.)
This holiday season, be aware of the following five characteristics in your family system:
Resourcefulness. A family shows its resourcefulness by engaging with a challenge rather than avoiding it, initiating and effectively navigating problem-solving conversations, the active involvement of family leaders, and the ability to develop resources outside of the primary family system. (The plural of leaders is key because resourcefulness gets modeled in relationships. The relationships that partnered parents and single parents make with other parties that are invested in the development of the children and family are significant.)
Connectedness and Integration. A family determines what both quantity and quality of relationships looks like for all family members. Family members have multiple relationships in which they can talk about important topics, understand how each person sees the world similarly and differently, and practices a high degree of respect for said differences.
Tension management. A family is able to recognize their own triggers for anxiety and stay calm, non-reactive, and thoughtful when discussing challenges and potential threats, avoiding criticism, defensiveness, or complete withdrawal.
Systems thinking. Papero describes systemic thinking as, “a focus on facts and a disciplined effort to recognize the emotionally based relationship processes of the family.” Family conversation emphasizes the how—how did this happen, how does this work—rather than the what or the why. (In therapy speak, they focus on the process of an interaction rather than the content.)
Goal structure. A family has the capacity to create individual and relational goals that both communicate a sense of family unity and support the adaptation needed to respond to natural changes. Papero explains that there are two types of goals. Achievement, or needs goals explain what an individual or relationship wants to accomplish during a certain window of time, such as providing basic support for young children, financial and occupational goals, and strategies for creating routines and rhythms. Process goals are like therapy goals; a person’s ability to understand the structure of their family, the values and principles of their families, and what they need to do individually and relationally to meet those goals.
What does this look like in real time, especially during the holiday season?
In this week’s episode, Kelley, one of the co-hosts of the podcast Woman Being, discusses how she and her partner are practicing the values that she learned in her religious family system:
“My Christian upbringing built my morals. It's built my value system. If you go back generations, it's my culture and family history. So learning to embrace the parts of Christianity that bring me joy or feel like a part of my tradition, that feel comforting to me, without necessarily having to fully believe everything is a practice that definitely comes up a lot in the holiday season.
I'm learning to engage with the Christian faith in ways that still feel true to my beliefs, but don't feel like I'm betraying them either.”
Listen more to Kelley’s story, and the experiences of Kelly Anne and Emma in this week’s episode of Sexvangelicals:
And share your own experiences of how your nuclear family, family of origin, and/or chosen family practices these five principles over the holiday season. Feel free to leave comments, or reach out to us on Instagram or Threads:
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia