ABSTRACT
The word “family” is laden with imagery. For some, it brings to mind warm, supportive thoughts-scenes of chatty dinners, laughter-filled holidays, and comforting embraces. For others, it elicits painful memories-visions of being left alone, feeling unwanted, or being abused at the hands of a loved one. For some, the term “family” suggests a motto or a call to action-family members work hard, they stick together, or they prioritize the well-being of the group over the individual. For yet others, the word “family” embodies a set of values-values that distinguish individuals who are normal from those who are abnormal and people who are right from those who are wrong. Although the images evoked by the term “family” vary widely, they tend to have one
thing in common: they are based on, formed, and maintained through communication. Indeed, our families, and our images of families, are constituted through social interaction (Fitzpatrick, 1988; Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993). When family members communicate, they enact their relationships. It is through communication that family members create mental models of family life and through communication that those models endure over time and across generations. The constitutive link between communication and families is one reason that studying
family communication is important. If families are created through social interaction, understanding family communication is essential to understanding family members and family relationships. This link, however, is not the only reason that scholars have focused their attention on family communication. The burgeoning literature on family interaction suggests at least three additional reasons that researchers and theorists have turned to this area as a focus of study. First, family communication is the mechanism for most early socialization experiences.
It is by observing and interacting with family members that most people learn to communicate and, perhaps more importantly, where they learn to think about communication (Bruner, 1990). From a very early age-some even argue before birth-infants engage in social interactions with their primary caregivers (Kisilevsky et al., 2003). These early interactions are the basis for what later become automated communication behaviors (Cappella, 1991). They also serve as a model for future interactions (Bowlby, 1973). By communicating with close family members, infants and children quickly learn what they should (and should not) anticipate from others. They learn how relationships function and they learn how they should behave in the context of those relationships. Indeed, communication is the means by which rules about social interaction and social relationships are established and maintained (Shimanoff, 1985). Parents use communication to teach children when they should speak, to whom they should speak, and what they should say. These rules shape the way children, and later adults, coordinate meaning with others (Pearce, 1976).
