A family is a system organized as the core of society, that is, it is a collective in which there are norms, values and standards of behavior, there are also hierarchies and family roles that give a specific place to each member that integrates it. All of this is reflected in society.
The way they relate to other family members is critical for them to end up interacting with the rest of society, each family practically teaches what is good and what is not, and also shows how you expect each member to act. we call family roles: the role each member plays within this core.
- The definition and implementation of each family role is very important.
- Both for the mental health of its components and for the establishment of clear and healthy relationships.
- It sounds obvious.
- But in today’s world it is not so much.
- The result is a society in which hierarchies.
- Authority relations and the limits of the self are not very clear.
In family roles, the most fundamental and determining role is the role of marriage, it is also one of those roles that, over time, becomes more confusing, it consists of the couple and includes all the spaces in which the children do not intervene, such as sexuality, decisions in front of the family, the emotional encounter of the two, etc.
Then there’s the maternal and paternal role. These familiar roles depend heavily on the cultural environment. However, some elements are common to virtually all cultures.
The other two family roles are fraternal and the subsidiary, the first is between brothers and fulfills the function of defining the basis of a relationship of cooperation between equals, the second is the bond that children establish with their parents and refers to respect for hierarchies and the internalization of a sense of authority.
What we have described so far is the theoretical framework of family roles, however, in practice, these roles are not always assumed and respected as the theory points out, when the couple breaks their marital role and lets their children into their field, there are consequences that can become serious.
In general, children who witness marital conflict between their parents experience guilt and anxiety, depending on the intensity of the conflict and the child’s age, the consequences can be more or less severe, in any case one or both parents will lose some of their authority in these conflicts.
Nor is it good for children to see their parents have sexual expressions or sex, it’s very confusing for them. Depending on their age and the information they have about sexuality, it can scare, excite or confuse them, the consequences can be very varied, but they usually impair their normal development.
Decisive family roles are played by parents, first by the marital role and then by the role of the mother or father; all of these roles are closely related. The ideal maternal function is so-called “maternal nutrition”: who cares, offers love and physical and emotional care to their child.
However, some women make their children their only object of love, despise and devalue the father and create possessive and overprotective bonds with children, there are also absent mothers who refuse to be mothers of their children, in both cases the effect is similar to that of emotional mutilation.
The role or paternity establishes the prohibition of regulations. It is the father who regulates this mother-son symbiosis. “Registered” the son, so to speak, is confined exclusively to the maternal universe.
Today, there is a great devaluation of the discourse and role of the father, a father who is not present, or who plays his role weakly, poses great difficulties for children in defining what is allowed and what is forbidden, what is legal. or not. Children of this type of parent have a hard time perceiving the “limits”.