Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

y social-construction or intra-psychically generated, but is habitual and rooted
in billions of years of evolutionary history. As such, to understand how someone
behaves or communicates today, it’s important to see how this behavior/
communication can be understood through generations of family members.
Exercises
• Reflect on your experiences as a family member. How does your own family
compare to other families in communication patterns and structure?
• Describe your idea of the ideal family. How would your ideal family communicate?
Is this different from your own family?
• Use conformity orientation and conversation orientation to describe two families
you know.
• Create your own genogram for your family, including at least three generations.
You can create this using a pen and paper, graphic arts software, or genogram
software. The genograms used in this book were created using Genogram Pro,
https://www.genopro.com/. There is also a paired down free version of this
software: https://www.genopro.com/free/.
11.2 Family Changes
Learning
Outcomes
2. Explain some of the common problems researchers have
One of the fascinating parts of the study of interpersonal relationships in families is that they are always
changing. As the dynamics of a family change, so do the communication networks. For example, a family
that starts with a pair of committed adults suddenly becomes a group when they either have their first
child, foster their first child, adopt their first child, etc. With the addition of one other life into the family
household, the nature and dynamics change almost overnight.
The notion that families go through systematic cycles that resemble other families is nothing new. 39 Early
research attempted to focus on the differences in families between those that existed in rural and urban
settings. One such researcher, Charles Loomis, broke families down into four general categories:
1. Childless couples of child-bearing age
2. Families with children under the age of 14
3. Families with at least one child over the age of 14 but under 36
4. Old families.
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Interpersonal Communication