Role theory is not one theory. Rather, it is a set of concepts and interrelated theories that are at the foundation of social science in general, and the study of the family in particular. The ideas and concepts formulated in the development of role theory continue to inform family theory and research more than half a century later. This is apparent in past and current research on the merging of f…
Families provide love and support to adults and children, but homes are also workplaces, and households are important parts of the larger economy. Even when families do not directly produce or market goods and services, they keep the economy running by supporting and maintaining adult workers, buying and consuming products, and reproducing the workforce by having babies and socializing children. T…
Friendship is a relationship with broad, ambiguous, and even shifting boundaries. The terms friend and friendship mean different things to different people and different things to the same people at different times. To think and communicate effectively about the topic, people find it necessary to use distinctions such as true friends, best friends, good friends, casual friends, work friends, socia…
In general, couples therapy has been shown in dozens of studies to be more effective than no treatment (for meta-analyses of these studies, see Baucom et al. 1998 and Shadish et al. 1993). Although most couples are helped by therapy, less than half end up in the nondistressed range (Shadish et al. 1993). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the therapies with the most support are behavior…
On September 11, 2001, four commercial airliners were deliberately crashed—two into the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and one into a field in Pennsylvania—and more than 4,000 families from over eighty countries were simultaneously plunged into uncertainty. Relatively few of these families knew with certainty whether their loved ones on …
Nagging and complaining are common features of family life. A complaint is a statement of grievance, discomfort, discontent, or dissatisfaction (Doelger 1984). Nagging refers to repeated or persistent complaints. Though complaint behavior is common, how couples and families manage their complaints is connected to their overall adjustment and satisfaction. To understand the role nagging and complai…
Boundary dissolution, also termed boundary confusion, distortion, diffusion, or violation, refers to a failure to recognize the psychological distinctiveness of individuals or a confusion of their interpersonal roles. The concept of boundaries has a rich history in family systems theory but also is important to psychodynamic explanations of childhood psychopathology. Indeed, the concept itself mig…
Gender is a dichotomous social category that prescribes behaviors, attitudes, feelings, and other characteristics as being appropriate for a male or a female. That is, knowing an individual's gender allows us to place him or her in a distinct social category (male or female) and then judge his or her behaviors based on our expectations for that category. This entry introduces the prominent …
Trust in an intimate partner or family member occupies a central place in a rewarding and successful relationship. Consistently, trust is regarded as one of, if not the, most important component of a loving relationship (Regan, Kocan, and Whitlock 1998), and international studies have found trust to be a critical factor in the success of long-term marriages (Roizblatt et al. 1999; Sharlin 1996). I…
Intimacy is a cornerstone of a good couple relationship and facilitates the health and well-being of the partners. In an intimate interaction, partners reveal their private selves to one another, sharing parts of themselves that are ordinarily hidden. Ideally, they receive one another's personal revelations with nonjudgmental acceptance and continued interest, attraction, and caring, and va…
Gender identity is the private experience of being male or female. Gender role is the public expression of gender, everything a person says or does that indicates a status as male or female. Gender role includes social and legal identification. Usually gender identity and gender role correspond like two sides of the same coin, with a unity of gender identity/role. Gender is a psychological and cul…
Disclosure as a phenomenon was first investigated by Sidney Jourard (1971). The process was originally defined as telling others about the self. Since then, an extensive amount of information about disclosure has been produced, leading to significant shifts in the way we think about this phenomenon (Derlega et al. 1993; Petronio in press). One change has been to consider disclosure as a process of…
Margaret Mahler (1897–1986) represents a group of ego psychologists whose interest focuses on the development of psychic structures, as outlined in Sigmund Freud's ([1923] 1990) structural theory, the id, ego, and superego. Mahler's interest in the developing ego centered on its development within the context of object relationships. Object relations refers to how experience w…
Often called the "green-eyed monster," jealousy has been a literary theme for centuries. However, it was not until the 1970s that jealousy became the focus of systematic, social science research. Most contemporary conceptualizations of jealousy define it by focusing on situational antecedents. This makes it possible to distinguish jealousy from envy because different situations evoke…
Think about your own family for a moment. Is it expected that you will eat dinner together as a family? Are there certain chores you must do? Are there topics you cannot talk about? These questions address specific rules your family may have. According to Virginia Satir (1996) every significant relationship develops rules. Most relationship rules can be identified by looking at the redundancies or…
The concept of codependency in the family system emerged from the study and treatment of alcoholism (Gorski and Miller 1984). In the alcoholic family system, codependency may be defined as a particular family relationship pattern in which the alcoholic is married to a spouse who, despite being a non-drinker, serves as a helper or facilitator to the alcoholic's problem behavior (Scaturo and …
Sexual orientation is defined by the sex of those to whom a person is attracted. In most societies, people are classified as homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual. Heterosexual is the term applied to those attracted to the other sex; homosexual covers those attracted to the same sex; bisexual applies to those attracted to both men and women; and asexual individuals profess to no sexual at…
Often, the terms sex difference and gender difference are used interchangeably. This collapsing of terms is somewhat in error. Specifically, sex differences refer to biological differences between men and women. Gender differences, on the other hand, refer to social expectations and stereotypes attributed to men and women by virtue of the biological sex. Similarly, the terms man and woman should b…
Family power is important to those who want to understand how families function as a unit to make decisions about how to manage money, about where to live, about occupational and educational choices, about parenting practices, about where to go on a vacation, and so on. Family scientists define power in terms of who is able to influence others to get their way in the family, and who is able to blo…
Housework is the term used to describe the physical and emotional labor performed in the household, generally in the service of family and typically accomplished by women. …
In the hit 1978 song, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand sing of two lovers' sadness over their dying relationship. The two lovers in this song notice that doing such things as bringing flowers, touching each other, and even chatting about the day's events, do not appear to be the priorities that they had once been. These expressions …
To shed light on Bertrand Russell's proposition that love is the principle means to escape from loneliness, this entry will examine the links between loneliness and the family. In thinking about loneliness in a family and life cycle perspective, several questions come to mind. What is the relationship between marriage and loneliness? Is loneliness passed from parents to their children and, …
When people are asked to rate or rank their life goals, having a happy marriage is usually among the most important. People in most other modern societies seem to be somewhat less enamored of marriage than those in the United States, but with the possible exception of Scandinavians, who have often chosen nonmarital cohabitation over marriage, most adults throughout the modern world devote much eff…
Relationship dissolution refers to the process of the breaking up of relationships (friendship, romantic, or marital relationships) by the voluntary activity of at least one partner. Such a definition excludes such eventualities as bereavement and refers to the conscious and intentional ending of relationships. Nonetheless, there is some dispute about the nature of "intentionality" a…
Romantic relationships and marriages have to start somewhere. People need to meet, find one another attractive and interesting, and decide to move further into a relationship. Why do people initiate relationships in the first place? Research suggests that four reasons are especially important. First, individuals initiate relationships with those they see as attractive. Physical appearance is a cri…
Marriage is a socially sanctioned long-term mating arrangement that typically involves economic, social, and reproductive cooperation between the partners. Although the norms that govern selection of a marriage partner and the customs surrounding the marriage ceremony vary from culture to culture, all known human societies practice and endorse this type of long-term pairing (Daly and Wilson 1983; …
Scholars define relational maintenance in various ways (Dindia and Canary 1993; Montgomery 1993). At the most basic level, relational maintenance refers to a variety of behaviors used by partners in an effort to stay together. Accordingly, researchers would examine relational longevity or stability. At a second level, relational maintenance means engaging in behaviors that help to sustain the qual…
Dating, from casual to serious, is likely to involve romance and sexual activity, which distinguishes it from social outings between people who consider themselves merely friends (Newman 1999). It is related to two broader processes—courtship and mate selection. Historically, the term courtship has been applied to situations where the intent to marry was explicit and referred to the sociali…
A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily applies to one kind of experience or phenomenon is applied to another, thereby suggesting a similarity or likeness between them. Metaphors have the general form A is B, in which A serves as the metaphor's tenor and B serves as the metaphor's vehicle. Tenors and vehicles can be related explicitly through a decl…
Most people have an implicit theory about how relationships work. Some people are more aware of or at least talk more about their viewpoint on relationships than others. Regardless of an individual's awareness or one's own theory of relationships, most people tend to treat their view of relationships as reality. Because of this egocentric view of reality, how one views Self and Other…
The institution of marriage is found in all societies. In the United States, marriage means stabilized patterns of norms and roles associated with the mutual relationship between husband and wife. It joins together a man (or men) and a woman (or women) in a special kind of social and legal arrangement that serves several purposes for a society. While this definition fits what is meant by marriage …
Marriage enrichment is a form of primary prevention in the area of human relationships. Begun in an organized way by David and Vera Mace in the mid-twentieth century, its objectives are to promote a mutual commitment to growth in the marital relationship; to develop and agree on a communication style of talking and listening that works for enhancement of the marital relationship; to learn how to u…
Attachment refers to a specific type of bond that has four defining features: Bonds of attachment are found in some, but not all, relationships of emotional significance— only those that are critical to an individual's sense of security and emotional stability (Weiss 1982). Adult pair bonds, in which sexual partners mutually provide security to one another, are presumed to be the pro…
The phrase marriage squeeze refers to the demographic imbalance in which the number of potential brides does not approximately equal the number of potential grooms. When not everyone has an opportunity to marry, some will be squeezed out of the marriage market. An excess of eligible women is called a female marriage squeeze; an excess of eligible men is called a male marriage squeeze. Three issues…
Infidelity is a breach of trust that signifies a lack of faithfulness to a moral obligation to one's partner. Infidelity usually implies sexual infidelity, although some people, particularly women, regard an intense emotional relationship as an unfaithful extramarital involvement, even when there is no physical component. In short, infidelity is feelings or behavior that go against a partne…
Choosing a mate is a problem that humans share with most other animals because successful reproduction is central to natural selection. Peahens choose among the most attractive peacocks, female elephant seals pick males who have already attracted large harems, and even promiscuous chimpanzees exercise choice about the other chimps with which they will be promiscuous. Among mammals, however, humans…
Attraction is an interactive process that involves one person who transmits verbal, visual, or other stimuli, and another who responds more or less positively to those stimuli. Early research viewed the attraction response as an attitude toward the target person that included favorable evaluations and the expectation that approach behaviors, such as a willingness to work with or date the person, w…
Long a topic of discussion and inquiry among theologians and philosophers, forgiveness has attracted the serious attention of scholars within counseling, family studies, and psychology as well. Those interested in understanding this concept, however, will find that there is nearly as much disagreement as agreement among experts about how best to define forgiveness. Numerous definitions of forgiven…
The term attribution refers to the interpretation of an event by inferring what caused the event to occur. This interpretation may also extend to inference of responsibility for an event and judgment about the trait qualities of another person, or of oneself. As an illustration of a common situation involving attribution activity, a husband may ask why his wife left the room with a sudden burst of…
