Family disorganization can occur when there is a breakdown in the family system due to a lack of role models, support systems, or internal conflicts. Common causes include a lack of privacy, incompatibility between family members, interference from others, unemployment, poor communication, and abuse or neglect. Children from dysfunctional families often take on roles like the "good child" or "scapegoat" to cope. Consequences for children can include mental health issues, addiction, academic struggles, low self-esteem, delinquency, and continuing the cycle of dysfunction into their own relationships and families as adults.

1. Family
Disorganisation
Study Unit 12.1
By C Settley

2. Learning Outcomes
• Examine the nature of family
disorganisation
• Discuss the causes of family
disorganisation
• Discuss the consequences of family
disorganisation

3. The Nature of family
Disorganization
- A breakdown of a family system
-It may be associated with parental over burning or loss of significant
others who served as role models for children or as support systems
for family members
-Family disorganization can contribute
to the loss of social controls that families usually impose on their
members
-When misunderstandings and incompatibilities exist among family
members, disruption, disturbance and anxiety takes place

4. Causes of Family
Disorganization
• Research indicates that the following aspects contribute
to family disorganization.
• Lack of privacy.
• Incompatibility like age, mentality, personality and
culture.
• Interference of in-laws and other persons.
• Unemployment.
• Conflict.

5. Causes of Family
Disorganization
• Lack or poor resources and low income.
• Poor discipline.
• Lack of social control.
• Societal variations.
• Strength of communication
• Lack of mutual understanding.
• Misunderstanding.
• Psychological factors.
• Abuse
• Neglect

6. The Six basic Roles
• Children growing up in dysfunctional families are
known to adopt one or more of these roles:
• The good child (also known as the hero): a
child who assumes the parental role
• The problem child or rebel (also known as
the scapegoat): the child who is blamed for
most problems related to the family’s
dysfunction, despite often being the
only emotionally stable one in the
family

7. The Six basic Roles
• The care taker: the one who takes responsibility for the
emotional well being of the family
• The lost child: the inspicious, quiet one, whose needs
are usually ignored or hidden
• The mascot: uses comedy to divert attention away from
the increasingly dysfunctional family system
• The mastermind: the opportunist who capitalizes on the
other family members’ faults to get whatever she/he
wants.

8. Consequences/effects of Family
Disorganisation on children
• Lack the ability to be playful, or childlike, and may "grow
up too fast"; conversely they may grow up too slowly, or
be in a mixed mode (e.g. well-behaved, but unable to
care for themselves)
• Have moderate to severe mental health issues, including
possible depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
• Become addicted to smoking, alcohol and/or drugs,
especially if parents or friends have done the same

9. Consequences/effects of Family
Disorganisation on children
• Bully or harass others, or be an easy victim thereof
(possibly taking a dual role in different settings)
• Be in denial regarding the severity of the family's
situation
• Have mixed feelings of love–hate towards certain family
members
• Become a sex offender, possibly including pedophilia
• Have difficulty forming healthy relationships within
their peer group (usually due to shyness or
a personality disorder

10. Consequences/effects of Family
Disorganisation on children
• Spend an inordinate amount of time alone watching
television, playing video games, surfing the Internet,
listening to music, and other activities which lack in-
person social interaction
• Feel angry, anxious, depressed, isolated from others, or
unlovable
• Have a speech disorder (related to emotional abuse)
• Distrust others or even have paranoia
•

11. Consequences/effects of Family
Disorganisation on children
• Become a juvenile delinquent and turn to a life
of crime (with or without dropping out of school), and
possibly become a gang member as well
• Struggle academically at school or academic
performance declines unexpectedly
• Have low self-esteem or a poor self image with difficulty
expressing emotions
• Rebel against parental authority, or conversely, uphold
their family's values in the face of peer pressure,

12. Consequences/effects of Family
Disorganisation on children
• Think only of themselves to make up the difference of
their childhoods (as they are still learning the balance
of self-love)
• Have little self-discipline when parents are not around,
such as compulsive spending, procrastinating too close
to deadlines, etc.
• Find an (often abusive) spouse or partner at a young age
and/or run away from home

13. Consequences/effects of Family
Disorganisation on children
• Become pregnant and/or a parent of illegitimate children
• Be at risk of becoming poor or homeless, even if the family is
already wealthy or middle-class
• Have auto-destructive or potentially self-damaging behaviors
• Join a cult to find the acceptance they never had at home
• Strive (as young adults) to live far away from particular family
members or the family as a whole
• Perpetuate dysfunctional behaviors in other relationships
(especially their own children)

14. The Effects on Adults
• See Handouts