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Family Communication Theories

Family communication theories are coherent accounts of family communication processes and family relationships that provide explanations for phenomena of interests, which frequently are the relationships or communication behaviors themselves or their outcomes for family members. As such, family communication theories are central to any investigation of family communication processes and of outcomes that might be affected by them. Family communication theories stem from a number of different academic disciplines and are based on a wide range of methodologies, ranging from critical to scientific. As a result, there is substantial disagreement about the very nature of theory, the role theory plays in research, and the appropriate methods for studying family communication. This entry provides an overview of the theoretical approaches that are most frequently found in family communication research and introduces a few of the more influential theories in some detail.

Divergent Origins

Research on family communication is not an exclusive domain of communication scholars. Rather, academic interest in families and their communication exists in a number of academic disciplines, including child development, family social sciences psychology, and sociology. As a result, there exist many very different theories related to family communication that create very divergent accounts of family communication. Contributing to this diversity is the fact that as a discipline, communication is a relative newcomer compared to other disciplines, which have much longer histories of interest in family communication processes, their antecedents, and outcomes. Thus, most theories of family communication originated outside the communication discipline and often share the particular assumptions and biases of the disciplines from which they originated. Even among those theories used in family communication research that originated from within the communication discipline, a majority was not developed explicitly with family communication in mind, but rather in regard to interpersonal communication more generally or in regard to specific communication processes that happen to also take place in the family context, such as self-disclosure or uncertainty reduction. As a consequence, family communication theories vary widely in the basic assumptions they make about what is important for family communication, what explains communication behaviors, and what effects communication has on other variables.

Divergent Epistemologies and Methods

The lack of coherence among family communication theories is amplified because family communication scholars employ a wide range of methods that are based on often conflicting epistemologies, from critical theory to quantitative social science. Consequently, there is significant disagreement among family communication scholars not only as to what exactly constitutes a theory of family communication, but also about the purposes and functions of theory in general and about the appropriate methods for studying family communication.

Critical Family Theory

The purpose of critical theory in general is to delineate the social processes and institutions by which individuals are oppressed and to suggest ways by which individuals can become emancipated. As such, applications of critical theory are contextually and historically specific, which necessarily limits their generalizability beyond the specific cases or time periods they address. A consequence of this lack of generalizability is that it is difficult to quantify the impact of any one application of critical theory on the field of family communication. Two recent reviews of scholarly articles in family communication, however, suggest that critical theory as an approach plays only a relatively minor role in published family communication research. Nonetheless, its impact on practical application, such as counseling or public policy, and to a lesser extent teaching, is significant.

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