Introduction to Family Processes

Family life is exciting and interesting. Many of us want to know how to make our own families stronger and how to assist other families as they struggle with life's difficulties. Often, the lives of families are at the center of national news, political campaigns, movies, and heated congressional debates. We care about how families raise their children, spend money, decide where to live, and how they contribute to the economy. Much of the discussion about family life focuses on who people choose to marry, how many children they decide to have, and whether or not they divorce or stay married (or get remarried). Examining the family, this text's basic premise is that we can do a better job of understanding families when we know more about the inner life of families.

This book is an attempt to gather what is known about what goes on "behind closed doors" in families. The intent is to introduce the reader to family processes--strategies and daily sequences of behavior used by family members to achieve goals. Some time is spent discussing who families are, but the bulk of this text is concerned with what families do. That is, how does their communication style help or hinder their efforts to achieve what they believe to be important. In addition, the book addresses how families make decisions, allocate resources, design and execute rituals, and cope with stress and crises.