Family Communication

Family interaction constructs and reflects family relationships and supports members' management of everyday life. In addition to creating families through blood and legal ties, many family members establish and manage their identity and relational ties, in whole or part, through their communication practices. As individuals live longer and experience varied family structures, these issues of meaning and identity become complex.

Change characterizes contemporary family life. No one majority family form exists in the United States. Although U.S. residents continue to marry, and wedded couples account for a slight majority of U.S. households, many of these relationships represent a second or third marriage for at least one partner. Whereas the divorce rate appears to have stabilized, almost half of all marriages still result in divorce; a high percentage of these divorced individuals choose to remarry one or more times, often creating stepfamilies. The percentage of single-parent families continues to rise, as does the number of cohabiting partners. Increasingly, families, including single parents and same-sex partners, are formed in whole or in part through the use of reproductive technologies, surrogacy, and adoption.

As more families reflect ethnic, religious, and class differences, as well as complex structural variation, members confront challenges in incorporating significant differences into their management of family identity. Many families are defining themselves, for themselves and others, through their interactions. The more complex the family [Page 614]membership, the more family identity becomes dependent on discourse or talk among family members and between family members and outsiders. Through such talk, family members coordinate their understandings of how their family is formed and maintained.

David Olson's research reveals three central dimensions of behavior that family members must manage: cohesion, adaptability, and communication. Cohesion involves emotional bonding as well as acceptable levels of autonomy that family members experience. Cohesion is represented in areas such as adult partner relationships, family members' involvement with each other, subgroups and coalitions, and internal and external family boundaries. Adaptability, or a family's capacity to alter rules, roles, and power in response to stress, is evidenced through dimensions such as leadership, discipline, and negotiation. Communication facilitates the maintenance or change of patterns within these two dimensions. This entry focuses on the role of communication patterns across all stages of family life.