Family dynamics refers to the patterns of interactions among relatives, their roles and relationships, and the various factors that shape their interactions. Because family members rely on each other for emotional, physical, and economic support, they are one of the primary sources of relationship security or stress. Secure and supportive family relationships provide love, advice, and care, whereas stressful family relationships are burdened with arguments, constant critical feedback, and onerous demands.
Interpersonal interactions among family members have lasting impacts and influence the development and well-being of an individual via psychosocial, behavioral, and physiological pathways. Thus, family dynamics and the quality of family relationships can have either a positive or negative impact on health. Several factors can influence family dynamics. Some researchers have identified individuation, mutuality, flexibility, stability, clear communication, and role reciprocity as the primary factors contributing to healthy family dynamics.
In particular, mutuality, meaning a shared feeling of cohesion and warmth, has been identified as the strongest contributing factor. In contrast, factors contributing to unhealthy family dynamics include enmeshment, isolation, rigidity, disorganization, unclear communication, and role conflict. The definition of family itself has morphed over the years. In previous generations, families stayed close to each other, and multiple generations helped raise the children. It is now more common for families to be spread across the country and grandparents to have less involvement in their grandchildren’s lives.
Without family close by, some develop a core group of local families, which they consider their family. This family structure can change with moves so a person’s family can be a fluid situation. Another aspect of family that has changed over the years is the acknowledgment and acceptance of non-traditional families and the increase of blended families. Extensive research has demonstrated the importance of family dynamics to health, illness, and recovery outcomes. However, there is little scholarly consensus on the exact definition of family and family dynamics. For example, several studies of patients receiving treatment for mental illness have defined family strictly as the patient’s parents.
The lack of clarity on who should qualify as a family member makes it challenging to analyze the role of family dynamics in health outcomes. As a result, it is often too difficult to develop positive interventions. To introduce more consistency in future studies, some researchers have called for the establishment of a more precise definition and a classification scheme for identifying the members of a family unit.
One classification scheme proposes seven clearly defined family types: proton, electron, nuclear, atom, molecular, joint, and quasi-family. Although this sort of classification may have potential, it is not commonly used in current literature. Also, while clearly defined, the classification can be difficult to interpret. Other proposed solutions have challenged the notion of defining families in strict terms, their proponents taking the view that study participants and patients should be allowed to define their families independently. An alternative solution is to de-emphasize the centrality of family relationships in the context of health and disease and broadly study social relationships instead.
Family dynamics play a significant role in health outcomes and therefore, merit attention in clinical settings. Unhealthy family dynamics can cause children to experience trauma and stress as they grow up. This type of exposure, famously known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), is linked to an increased risk of developing physical and mental health problems. Specifically, ACEs increase an individual’s risk of developing heart, lung, and liver disease, depression, anxiety, and more.
Some of the many influences on family dynamics include:
- nature of the parents’ relationship
- having a particularly soft or strict parent
- number of children in the family
- personalities of family members
- an absent parent
- the ‘mix’ of members who are living in the same household
- level and type of influence from extended family or others
- a chronically sick or disabled child within the family
- events which have affected family members, such an affair, divorce, trauma, death, unemployment, homelessness
- other issues such as family violence, abuse, alcohol or other drug use, mental health difficulties, other disability
- family values, culture and ethnicity, including beliefs about gender roles, parenting practices, power or status of family members
- nature of attachments in family (i.e secure or insecure)
- dynamics in previous generations (parents and grandparents families)
- broader systems- social, economic, political including poverty
