Family Contexts of Child Development

1. HCS321
Family Contexts of
Child Development

2. Overview
Review
The importance of Family
Family Structure and its significance
Family Resources and Capacity

3. Review
Theories of child development try to explain either how children
develop normally OR why they do not
Consistently the best theories we have identify the importance of
strong parental relationships as a base for child development
But strong relationships are not enough, and if they are not
positive, or are threatening or stressful they will have adverse
impacts on a child’s development
The other observation to make is that ideally the relationships
encourage and expose the child safely to a widening range of
connections and experiences, and stimulate learning.

4. The importance of Family

5. The importance of Children
to Families
Generational
Continuity
Social -
Emotional
Stability
Externalisation
of Focus
Economic
Participation
and Regulation

6. Family Typology (Adapted from Malinowski 1929)

7. Family Structures
 Nuclear
 Foster/ Adoptive
 Sibling group
 Single parent
 Shared care
 Intergenerational
 Extended
Can you think
of others?

8. Genograms
 Developed by McGoldrick and Gerson in 1985
 A genogram is a pictorial display of a persons
family relationships using coded symbols
 In addition to showing familial connections it
also displays information about the participants
to inform professional understanding

9. These are the basic symbols used to denote people in a family structure from McGoldrick and
Gerson (1985);
Square = Male Circle = Female Some systems use the triangle to indicate a person of
unknown gender inclusive of unborn children
Genograms

10. Relationship Symbols
The basic descriptors of relationships from McGoldrick and Gerson 1985 are lines,
in some adaptions the use of dotted and dashed lines to indicate informal or
terminated relationships along with the forward and back slash.

11. Emotional Symbols
These are some examples of how relationships are indicated on a genogram. Its important to
have a key and to conform to general expectations to prevent mis-interpretation

12. Family Needs
Resources Capacities
Internal Emotional and Social bonds between members Engenders trust and reciprocity
Members have Social or Economic worth Facilitates provision of material need
Access to information external to members Enables generational acquisition of knowledge

13. Summary
 Families are structurally important to most societies but how they are structured is quite
diverse.
 Children are valuable to families for a number of reasons, emotional and social connection
are important, but so are social-biological convention (generational continuity) and
economics.
 Families are a formed for a range of formal and informal biological and social imperatives
but sometimes emerge more loosely for manufactured purposes (i.e. Cults)
 Genograms are pictorial/diagrammatic tools that represent relationships in a number of
ways.
 Family capacities and resources are interlinked. More capable families have more resources.