The role of Family in Human Development

The role of Family in Human Development

By Sr. Sheela Joseph SSpS

Family is a unit typically consisting of father, mother and children. The family is profoundly important for development in all the areas of life. A child will learn about relationships, manners, self-esteem, worth and loyalty - all by watching and participating in family. Family life is where the child spends most of his or her learning time.Parents teach about values first by living those values particularly by setting boundaries,respecting others and by sharing family stories. Children learn much more from what they do than what they say.

The aim of the family is the total development of all. Development can be defined as the process of growing into maturity. Another way of putting it is:the process of enlarging people’s freedom and opportunities and improving their well-being at all levels. There are many factors that influence the development of the personality like the inherited temperamental qualities, parental practices and personality, quality of schools attended, relationships with peers, ordinal position in the family, the historical era in which late childhood and early adolescence are spent etc. All of this influence the development of the child; but the role the family plays is a very decisive one. It is in the family where we have our closest relationships and where we can express ourselves (for good or ill). Children need to learn in the family about disagreements and how to handle conflict. The most important support parents can give their children is to give them a secure base.

As a rule, all children grow up in a family and it is there that the most critical of all developments takes place. The environment in the family influences the child’s overall development more than any other- precisely because the most formative years of the child are when he/she is totally or almost totally dependent on the care givers.

I.One way of looking at the influence of the family on the development of the child is in terms of respect for boundaries. The father-mother unit will need to keep their boundary. Today, we come across many cases of boundary violations. For example, one of the parents becomes very close to a child and this parent despises,  scorns or ridicules his or her spouse. It can be due to one’s own need for affection which the partner does not satisfy or out of anger towards him / her. Or it could also be due to lack of certain qualities in the other. A child growing up witnessing such behavior will tend to violate ego-boundaries because that is what he or she has seen in the family. Every abuser / rapist is a boundary violator.

II.Let us take a look at the different aspects of human development: Development is a multifaceted reality: physical, emotional, intellectual, ego, moral and faith development.

Physical: It is the most basic of needs:  It is obvious that physical development does not take place if the family does not provide the needed nourishment. In most cases, parents do try to provide food as far as they are able.

Emotional: It is in the family that children learn the good use of emotions as well as the control of it. They learn a lot from the parents and siblings and the way emotions are expressed. If what they see in the family is acting out of emotions without any control, they tend to imitate the same. Capacity for delay of gratification is a sign of maturity. If this is not seen in the family, any amount of talking about it will not help. Another important aspect in modern families with one or two children is that parents try to provide all what the children ask for and hence they get immediate gratification. It is true that immediate satisfaction is possible today because things are available. Children growing up in this way will find it difficult to face any frustration and do not develop the ego strength that is necessary to persevere in times of difficulty. They will easily give up. Either over-gratification or deprivation leads to conflicts in the child.

Intellectual: Though most parents try to provide an education to their children, in many cases now a days, the absence of adequate personal attention and time spent with the children does not contribute to a healthy and balanced development. In such cases, especially school-going children tend to look for outside friendships as a substitute - which many times are not helpful for the over-all development of the child. Many able children tend to neglect their studies for they find no meaning in putting effort into it and the parents do not bother about their performance. On the other hand, there are also many cases where the parents want the children to over-achieve or choose a line of study which they themselves would have liked to take but were not able to – at the neglect of the child’s own interest.

Ego development:  In the normal process of growing up from babyhood, there is a stage called by Jane Loevinger, a specialist in Ego development, as impulsive stage. If favorable circumstances are not provided, development can get stuck at this stage. According to Loevinger, here the child asserts his growing sense of self' and views the world in ego-centric terms. At this stage the child is preoccupied with bodily impulses (age-appropriate), particularly sexual and aggressive ones. While this is a stage which is normal for toddlers, people can be in this stage for much longer, and in fact some people remain in this impulsive stage throughout their life. At this stage the ego continues to be focused on bodily feelings, basic impulses, and immediate needs. Not being particularly good at meeting these needs on their own, however, they are dependent and demanding. They are too immersed in the moment and in their own needs to think or care much about others or the consequences of their own behavior; instead, they experience the world in egocentric terms, in terms of how things are affecting them at the moment. If someone meets their needs, they are good; if someone frustrates their needs, they are bad.

Moral development: This aspect deals with the development of a sense of what is right and what is wrong, the development of a conscience. Again, the impact of lived witness of the parents and siblings is much weightier than what is told to them. If what they regularly witness in the family is abuse of any kind that would have more effect on the child than all the instructions given. Here also we encounter issues such as respecting and caring for others, having self-control etc. If the child is to have a good sense of what is right and wrong, it has to be witnessed, taught and learnt primarily in the family. For example, if the father tells the child to be honest while lying to the mother about what the child too has witnessed in the family, he / she will be more impressed by the lived life of the father than the expressed verbal command to be honest. The 7- year-old who was not chastised for aggressive behavior earlier or who had abusive or overly intrusive parents is likely to be aggressive with peers. It seems to me that in our culture, the permissiveness with which boys are brought up is one of the main reasons why some men have no qualms about abusing others –sexually and otherwise. The message given is that  everything is OK because you are a boy while for the same transgression, a girl would be punished and warned. A certain amount of discipline would be good for both boys and girls.

Religious/faith development: James Fowler defines “faith as an activity of trusting, committing, and relating to the world based on a set of assumptions of how one is related to others and the world”. And in our context, we would also include trusting, committing and relating to God. This is a gradual development in the child – especially depending on what the child has seen in the family. Family prayers, church-going etc. are meant to be expressions of it.  We are aware that these days, many families have given up all such practices and the young people find no meaning in these practices. Many times, the church is seen as an agent of control more than anything else.

III.Family influence on the children can be seen from the way parents affect their children. There are at least three different mechanisms.(Cf, Jerome Kagan)

(i) Direct interactions: This is the most obvious and involves the consequences of direct interactions with the child. For example, a mother praises a 3-year-old for eating properly; a father threatens the loss of a privilege because a child refuses to go to bed. Display of interest in a young child’s activities is correlated with greater levels of responsivity in the child. The 7-year-old who was not reprimanded for aggressive behavior earlier is likely to be aggressive with peers. A child who is abused tends to be an abuser.(Cf. Maccoby EE, Martin JA. Socialization in the context of the family)

According to attachment theorists - the relationships established between an infant and its caretakers during the first 2 years of life have a permanent effect on the child’s future.

(ii) Emotional identification: An emotional identification with either or both parents represents another way in which the family affects children. By age 4 to 5 years, children believe, unconsciously, that some of the attributes of their parents are part of their own qualities, even though this belief might have no objective basis. A girl whose mother is afraid of storms is tempted to assume that she, too, is afraid of storms; a girl with a relatively fearless mother will come to the opposite conclusion. A boy whose father is popular with friends and relatives, for example, will find it easier to conclude that he, too, has qualities that make him acceptable to others.

(iii) Narrating of family stories:

A third mechanism of family influence is related to identification, but is more symbolic. Some parents tell their children stories about relatives -uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins—who were, or are, especially accomplished in some domain. Perhaps an uncle made an important discovery, accumulated wealth, performed a courageous act, was a talented athlete or writer, or a respected public official. The child is likely to feel pride on hearing these stories because of the implication that if he or she is biologically related to this important family member, the child, too, must also possess some admirable characteristics.

(iv)Yet another way of seeing the influence of the family on Human development is in terms of the stages of development.

Of the 8 stages of psychosocial development as described by Erikson, at least five are generally lived in the family that one is born into. Each of the stages has a developmental task. If the child does not encounter favorable environment especially in the earlier stages when the child is totally or almost totally dependent on care-givers and important tasks like learning to trust, to develop a healthy autonomy, to take initiative and feel good about it etc. may never be learnt and thus, development may be locked.

Though there are several other factors which also contribute to the development of the personality, the role played by the family is unique and crucial.