Framework for Family Communication
Families are defined primarily through their interaction rather than through their structure
(Whitchurch & Dickson, 1999). “Through their communicative practices, parties construct their
social reality of who their family is and the meanings that organize it” (Baxter & Braithwaite,
2002). This belief places communication at the core of family experience.
Family Behavior: Cohesion, Adaptability, and Communication
Cohesion: the emotional bonding that family members have towards one another, and include
concepts of “emotional bonding, boundaries, time, space, friends, decision-making, interests and
recreation (Olson, 2000). “Distance regulation” is a major family function (Kantor and Lehr,
1976).
There are four levels of cohesion:
 Disengaged – family members maintain extreme separateness and little family loyalty
 Separated – family members experience emotional independence with some joint
involvement
 Connected – Family members strive for emotional closeness, loyalty, and join involvement
with some individuality
 Enmeshed – Family members experience extreme closeness, loyalty, and almost no
individuality
There are four levels of adaptability (change):
 Rigid – Family members operate under autocratic decision-making styles and strict roles and
rules.
 Structured – Family members experience authoritarian and some equalitarian leadership and
stable roles and rules.
 Flexible – Family members experience negotiation and decision making and easily changed
roles and rules.
 Chaotic – Family members have nonexistent leadership, confused decision making and
varied rules and roles.
Cohesion-Adaptability Axis: Most well-functioning families are found short of the extremes,
except when they are under high levels of stress. Also, families shift from one point to another
on the axis during different stages of development
“The family is a system constituted, defined, and managed through its communication.
Family members regulate cohesion and adaptability to develop a collective identity through
the flow of patterned, meaningful messages within a network of evolving interdependent
relationships located within a defined cultural context” (Family Communication 49).
Families…
 Establish a satisfactory congruence of images
 Evolve models of interaction into central family themes
 Establish the boundaries of the family’s world of experience
 Deal with significant biosocial issues of family life, such as gender, age, power, and
roles
The material for this lecture was excerpted from Chapter 2, Family Communication: Cohesion
and Change, Kathleen Galvin et al.