ABSTRACT
Family conflicts were for a long time of little interest to sociologists, who considered that their main responsibility was to address the contribution of the nuclear family to social integration. Family conflicts were left to psychologists or social workers, as personality disorders, poverty or social exclusion were supposed to explain their occurrence. German sociologist Georg Simmel emphasized in the early years of the twentieth century that competition and fights are social interactions in their own right. This chapter explains that interdependencies in Betty's family configuration follow a complex pattern with many supportive relationships. Individuals with supportive ties and no conflict belong to family configurations in which there is an emphasis on the group solidarity rather than on individuals. Family support often leads to conflict as it makes individual autonomy and the primacy of couples over other family relationships decrease. Ambivalences, the configuration perspective sustains, are embedded in family interdependencies. In terms of support, the beanpole family configurations are above average.
