special Issue Articles

Families and Individual Development:

Provocations from the Field of Family Therapy

Patricia Minuehin
Temple University

MINUCHIN, PATRICIA. Families and Individual Development: Provocations from the Field of Family
Therapy. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1985, 56, 289-302. Family therapy suggests a reformulation of
concept and method in studying the family and individual development: to regard the family as an
organized system and the individual as a contributing member, part of the process that creates and
maintains the pattems that regulate behavior. In this review, the theories and clinical experiences of
family therapists are regarded as a resource for developmental psychology, and particular attention
is paid to those aspects that challenge traditional formulations in the developmental field. The
review focuses on systems theory as the paradigm underlying family therapy and considers the
implications of this framework for conceptions of the individual, the study of parent-child interac-
tion, and new research formulations and areas of study. It also considers trends in the developmental
field that move toward such formulations.

Developmental psychology and family and for new research formulations and areas
therapy have a good deal in common. Both of study. It will also consider trends in the
disciplines regard the family as a primary developmental field that move toward such
focus for understanding human behavior and formulations.
must find some way of conceptualizing the
relationship between the family and the indi- The Systems Orientation
vidual. Because they share this territory, it isin Family Therapy
particularly interesting that their approaches
to the issues are differenta difference that ^ystems theory is a twentieth-century
stems not so much from their disparate goals scientific paradigm applied widely to physical
as from their underlying theories and assump- systems and extended to biological and social
tions. Family therapy is based on systems systems as well |see Ackoff & Emery, 1972;
theory. Although the field is characterized by Bateson, 1972;^Bertalanfry, 1968; Miller,
theoretical argument and a diversify of alter- 1978; Sutherland, 1973; Thomas, 1974). The
native techniques for creating change, the ideas of Bertalanffy (1968) are considered
systems view of human functioning is well seminal, but family therapists have drawn
established. It shapes the nature of clinical more directly from the work of Bateson and
work and generates data about children and other theoreticians in the family field who
families from a different perspective than that have applied the basic principles to living
of developmental psychologists. systems (Bateson, 1972,1979; Hofiman, 1981;
Jackson, 1957; Keeney, 1979; Minuchin,
It is the purpose of this review to con- 1974; Speer, 1970; Watzlawick, Jackson, &
sider the theories and clinical experiences of Beavin, 1967). These basic principles include
family therapists as a resource, emphasizing the following:
those aspects that challenge the familiar for-
mulations of developmental psychology. The 1. Any system is an organized whole, and
article will focus on systems theory as the elements within the system are necessarily
scientific paradigm underlying most family interdependent. This is the core of a systems
therapy, and \vill consider the implications of orientation. It challenges traditional scientific
this framework for conceptions of the individ- paradigms, maintaining that the consideration
ual, for the study of parent-child interaction. of elements out of context produces frag-

The author wishes to thank Salvador Minuchin, Edna Shapiro, and Alan Sroufe for their
comments on an earlier version of this article. Address for reprints: 70 East 10th Street, New York,
NY 10003.
[Child Development, 1985, 56, 289-302. 1985 by the Society for Research in Child-Development, Inc.
All rights reserved. 0009-3920/85/5602-0003$01.00]
290 Child Development
mented and invalid data. Of course, contexts creases family rigidity and handicaps the pos-
are nested inside each other like Russian sibilities for change. Resistance to change
dolls, and a complete system would theoreti- during therapy is seen as a homeostatic fea-
cally encompass the universe. In reality, how- ture of the family system, and a challenge to
ever, practitioners and researchers must the skills of the therapist.
punctuate the universe into meaningful sub-
systems. Family therapists have bracketed the The concept of homeostasis is familiar to
family as a particularly significant social sys- psychologists, but it is usually applied to indi-
tem for understanding human functioning vidual functioning. When the concept is ap-
and creating change. They focus on the pat- plied to systems of which the individual is a
tems that are developed and maintained in part, the mechanisms no longer reside in the
the family through time and that regulate the person. The regulation of a child's autonomy,
behavior of system members. In so doing, for instance, is a homeostatic feature of the
they are redressing a long-term emphasis on family system; a variety of actions by different
the individualan emphasis which, in their people maintain the child within certain limits.
view, has ignored powerful realities and ham- 4. Evolution and change are inherent in
pered therapeutic effectiveness. If the indi- open systems. The concept of homeostasis has
vidual is part of an organized family system, been so important in the family therapy field
he or she is never truly independent and can that it took some time to formalize a compan-
only be understood in context. ion principle about morphogenesis (change of
form), which must also characterize all living
2. Pattems in a system are circular systems (Dell, 1982; Hoffman, 1981; Maru-
rather than linear. The assumption that A yama, 1968; Speer, 1970). Theory here draws
causes B refiects a narrow perception of real- on Prigogine (1973; Elkaim, Prigogine, Guat-
ity. Rather, the model of interaction within a tari, Stengers, & Denenbourg, 1982), who de-
systems point of view involves a spiral of re- scribes the deviation-amplifying process in an
cursive feedback loopsAl * BI ^ A2 > open system when some "perturbation" dis-
B2 -^ A3, and so forthalthough the process rupts the established pattems and the system
is more properly diagramed as a spiral rather moves away from equilibrium until it is re-
than a straight line. From this perspective, the stabilized. In family terms, the process is one
concept of responsibility and blame must be of challenge to existing patterns, the explora-
recast. It is an epistemological error to state tion of alternatives, and the emergence of
that an overprotective mother is creating anx- new pattems that are more appropriate to
ieties in her child. Rather, mother and child changed circumstances and that are fre-
have created a pattern in which (starting any- quently more complex and differentiated. Re-
where) the child's fears trigger concerned be- current challenge and reorganization are an
havior in the mother, which exacerbates the inevitable part of the family life cycle, and
child's fears, which escalates the mother's families generally negotiate these transitions
concern, and so forth. The irreducible unit is on their own. When they cannot handle de-
the cycle of interaction. Change must be di- velopmental (or other) transitions by them-
rected toward that cycle, although the point of selves, however, therapists may serve as cata-
entry and the manner of interrupting the pat- lysts for change, helping the family to
tern are matters of choice. acknowledge the inadequacy of established
pattems, mobilize its resources, explore alter-
3. Systems have homeostatic features natives, tolerate anxiety, and consolidate new
that maintain the stability of their patterns. pattems.
Since Jackson's (1957) original article on fam-
ily homeostasis, the concept has been crucial Again, psychologists will recognize a ba-
for the therapist's understanding of how a sic conception of individual development in
family functions. The basic concept is of an this formulation (see the theories of Piaget
error-activated process by which behavior de- and Wemer), despite differences in terminol-
parting from the expected range of a family's ogy and theoretical source. However, the
pattems is controlled, via corrective feedback view of the individual within a changing fam-
loops, to reestablish familiar equilibrium. ily system has additional implications for the
Such processes form part of the family's self- understanding of transitions. Any member of
regulation and are, for the most part, adaptive. a system must participate in its reorganiza-
In dysfunctional families, however, the pro- tion, even if the trigger for change does not
cess of self-regulation may incorporate symp- come from the needs of that particular person
toms and maladaptive behavior as necessary at that time. The individual life cycle and the
aspects of the system. In such situations, the family life cycle cross-cut each other in com-
need to maintain established pattems in- plex ways.
 Patrieia Minuehin 291
5. Complex systems are composed of sub- riods, organizing data about life-span devel-
systems. With the total family assembled in opment, and reformulating the concepts of
front of them, family therapists automatically parent-child interaction.
read the composition of family subsystems.
Each individual is a subsystem, but therapists The Conception of the
pay particular attention to other, larger units:Individual in the Systein
the spouse subsystem, the parent subsystem (From a systems point of view, die indi-
(not the same individuals as the spouses, in vidual is conceptualized as an interdepen-
divorced or blended families), the parent- dent, contiibuting part of the systems that
child(ren) subsystem, the sibling subsystem, control his or her behavior. The focus is on
male and female subsystems, grandparents functioning within^ the system rather than on
and grandchildren, and others. From this per- internal processes^This viewpoint challenges
spective, it is difficult to miss the child's the validity of data gathered out of context,
simultaneous membership in varied subsys- maintaining that a child cannot meaningfully
tems, as psychologists have tended to do. be isolated for studya point with special
relevance, perhaps, to the study of social de-
6. The subsystems within a larger system velopment. The goal of lesearch would be the
are separated by boundaries, and interac- systematic description of recurrent pattems
tions across boundaries are governed by im- within which the child functions.
plicit rules and pattems. Each subsystem has
its own integrity, defined metaphorically by This has certainly not been the dominant
the boundaries that separate it from other sub- viewpoint in developmental psychology, but
systems. The interaction of people within and there are trends that move in this direction,
between subsystems is regulated by patterns even though they do not represent a full-
that are recurrent and stable, and that are blown change of paradigm. The work of sys-
maintained as well as created by all partici- temically oriented psychologists, such as
pants (Minuchin & Fishman, 1981). In all Bronfenbrenner and Sameroff, and the grow-
families, the boundaries and rules of^ interac- ing body of work on attachment illustrate the
tion must change their characteristics over progress and problems associated with these
time as a function of development or external trends. Sameroff and Bronfenbrenner have
factors. In dysfunctional families, however, placed the individual in context, in their de-
problems of boundary maintenance and velopmental models, yet seem to retain the
change may loom large. A family may have conception of a self-contained organism
difficulty establishing firm boundaries be- whose internalized learnings are the focus of
tween the spouse system and the two young interest. Sameroff (1983) describes a changing
children; or may not respond fiexibly to the organism in a changing environment, each
changing needs of older children for more pri- with structural properties of its own (see also
vacy (i.e., for firmer boundaries between par- Riegel, 1976). He uses embryology to illus-
ents and themselves); or may be unable to trate the nature of organism-environment in-
contain confiict within the appropriate sub- terdependence, noting particularly the self-
system of husband and wife, so that children righting tendencies that bring the embryo
function as mediators or scapegoats. Thera- back from most deviations to the ordained
pists enter such situations with procedures path of developmenta familiar homeostatic
aimed at clarifying the implicit rules of in- concept in systems theory. Applying this con-
teraction and establishing boundaries that ception to social development, he views the
refiect developmental realities and subsystem environment, with its social norms, as regulat-
functions. ing the behavior of the individual and keep-
ing it within expected boundsa formulation
that is generally sound but may not ade-
Implieations for quately cover the complexity of a small sys-
Developmental Psyehology tem like the family, in which the individual is
How do such principles translate to the a far more powerful contributor to the orga-
developmental field? Although they may not nized pattems that regulate behavior than he
seem radical as general ideas or within the or she can be in relation to broad social
context of family therapy, they imply dramatic norms. Considering the development of high-
changes in the traditional ways of thinking risk children, Sameroff and Seifer (1983) take
about the developing child and the forms and careful account of multiple infiuential factors,
goals of adding to developmental knowledge. including aspects of both organism and envi-
We consider below the issues of concep- ronment (e.g., birth condition, socioeconomic
tualizing the individual, defining meaningful status, family perspectives and values). Yet
units of study, understanding transitional pe- they coordinate their data with conventional
292 Child Development
measures of "child outcome" such as IQ and
parent evaluations of the child's social skills.
They do not study the actual processes of reg-
ulation in the family system or the child's
functioning in context.
Bronfenbrenner (1979; Bronfenbrenner
& Crouter, 1983) has challenged traditional
conceptions by formulating a model of nested
systems within which the child functions and
develops (microsystem, mesosystem, mac-
rosystem, exosystem). His model provides an
important contextual perspective that has ex-
panded the field and has been applied to such
issues as child maltreatment (Belsky, 1980),
divorce (Kurdek, 1981), and development in
the school context (Minuchin & Shapiro,
1983). In their discussion of development,
Bronfenbrenner and Crouter describe "per-
son-process-context" as a complex interaction.
Yet the focus is always on child outcomes,
assuming, as developmental theory generally
does, that the locus of behavior is within the
child, that infiuential experience is inter-
nalized, and that our interest must be in these
child effects. The bottom line assesses the
status of the child's behavior and develop-
ment, employing familiar measures and
modes of analysis.
The study of attachment is a particularly
interesting area to consider in relation to the
individual and the system, since it embodies
changing conceptions, a continuing focus on
the infant as an individual in formation, and
the struggle to reconcile discrepancies in a
systematic way. Attachment is a relational
concept, different from the earlier concept of
dependency as a trait, but the research impli-
cations of this shift have been difficult to han-
dle. Hartup and Lempers (1973) pointed out a
decade ago that sequential studies of mother-
child interaction usually focused in the end
on the infant, though attachment is a property
of the interaction, and the appropriate unit of
study is the interaction itself. To an extent,
that criticism still applies. Most attachment
studies assess child behavior in the Ains-
worth Strange Situation, the consistency of
behavior over time and settings, and/or corre-
lations between attachment and other aspects
of the child's social behavior and competence
(Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978;
Bretherton, in press; Main & Weston, 1981;
Matas, Arend, & Sroufe, 1978; Sroufe &
Fleeson, in press). Still, most investigators ac-
cept the relational, bidirectional framework
that has become increasingly prevalent in de-
velopmental research (Maccoby & Martin,
1983). They view the two figures as each
Other's environment and assume that the
child has an active role in the interaction,
even if they do not focus their analysis on the
circular pattern. Their work also highlights
some issues that are particularly important for
conceptions of the individual in context, as
follows:
The locus and specificity of relation-
ships.What systems theorists take for
granted, psychologists have now demon-
strated to their own satisfaction: the father-
child subsystem is different from the mother-
child subsystem. Attachment behavior in the
Strange Situation is significantly different in
the presence of different parents, and the pat-
tems show stability over time (Bretherton, in
press; Crossmann, Crossmann, Huber, &
Wartner, 1981; Lamb, 1978; Main & Weston,
1981). For psychologists, these data answer
the question of whether attachment is in the
relationship or the infant, challenging as-
sumptions that attachment to the mother gov-
erns later relationships and raising a new set
of questions: How are "nonconcordant" rela-
tionships integrated into the internal working
model? Is one attachment pattern more in-
fiuential than another? (Bretherton, in press).
It is perhaps characteristic of psychologists to
focus on relative infiuence and the way dis-
crepant experiences are resolved internally
by the individual. However, another perspec-
tive is to regard the uniqueness of each im-
portant relationship as a givensince they
have different memberships, subsystems can-
not be clonedand to compare the processes
by which relational pattems are established
and changed in each major subsystem.
The individual's regulatory power in the
system.Having moved from unidirectional
to bidirectional and perhaps systemic con-
cepts, the field now entertains the question of
the relative power of different individuals in a
system. Kaye (1982) holds, for instance, that it
is the "parental frame" that organizes the in-
fant's behavior, taking account of the baby's
responses but carrying the major organizing
activity through the child's early apprentice-
ship until he or she can become a more fully
contributing member of a system. Is this
formulation inconsistent with a systems
fi-amework? No more so, probably, than the
conception of "complementary" and "sym-
metric" communication in family systems
theory (Bateson, 1972; Watzlawick et al.,
1967), which posits that in complementary re-
lationships people hold different positions
vis-a-vis each other, even though together
they balance the system. Nor is it very differ-
ent from the working assumptions of many
family therapists, who presume that parents

have more power than children, at least in
families with preadolescents, and who may
design their therapeutic leverage accordingly
(Haley, 1976; Minuchin & Fishman, 1981).
Sinc6 all members of a system are constant
(100%) participants, the quantification of rela-
tive input would be a meaningless activity.
However, ft is reasonable to explore qualita-
tive differences in the regulatory or instigat-
ing behavior of individual members at partic-
ular points, documenting both developmental
changes in the relative power of children and
individual differences among same-age chil-
dren in their respective family systems.
The internal concomitants of participa-
tion in a system.When the emphasis is on
relationship patterlis and the unfqueness of
each system, what is internalized and carried
by the individual? Are concepts of continuity
through the individual relevant in under-
standing social systems, which always involve
at least two people? Is it meaningful, or does
it blur important modifications, to predict in-
dividual behavior fn new social systems?
Sroufe and Fleeson (in press) maintain that
the child's attachment data capture aspects of
the relationship, since they predict both
mother and child behavior in other situations
and times, and that what is internalized and
carried forward by the child is the entire rela-
tionship pattem. The child seeks to recreate
familiar systems but is capable of acting out
different aspects of the internalized pattern
for example, abusive as well as victimized
roles.
It seems clear that the individual carries
templates of the pattems of which he or she
has been part, and that these provide the rep-
ertoire for input into new systems; such a for-
mulation is compatible with concepts of the
individual in context. What is more arguable
is the stress on continuity and on the predic-
tion of individual behavior. All participants
come to a new situation with their templates
and repertoires, making each new system a
fresh construction and the process of predic-
tion complex, at best. Sroufe and Fleeson
point out that the possibilities in particular
partnerships are not infinite, and consider that
the relationship of two individuals with
known histories should be predictable. Their
studies pairing toddlers with known attach-
ment ratings provide interesting, differ-
entiated data about new systems (e.g., the
cooperative, reciprocal interaction of two se-
cure toddlers vf s-a-vis the more aggressive in-
teraction, to which both partners contribute,
of a secure-avoidant pair). Such studies indi-
cate an important direction of research. It may
Patrieia Minuehin 293
be, however, that both theory and research of
this nature are most applicable to very young
children. Older children and adults are veter-
ans of multiple important subsystems, and
they carry complex templates and repertoires.
Attempts to know their histories or codify
their internal models may unduly simplify the
reality. An alternate direction of research is to
document the observable processes of fiux
and stabilization, as individuals enter new
systems together and stable pattems are
formed firom the circular explorations of the
participants. Further understanding of what is
Carried and modified, and of the level at
which such descriptions can be generalized,
may follow.
The individual in larger systems.The
literature establishes the importance of the
adult relationships and general social network
within which parent-child dyads function
(Cochran & Brassard, 1979; Crockenberg,
1981; Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1982; Ricks,
in press). Crockenberg (1981) found, for in-
stance, tliat the mother's perception of social
support was associated with the security of
the infant-mother attachment, and that this
support was particularly important when
babies were irritable and the dyad under
stress. Social support may be available to the
infant either indirectly through the mother or
by direct contact with other family members
and members of the parents' personal social
network (Cochran & Brassard, 1979). There
are some choices to be made in conceptualiz-
ing and studying this phenomenon. Support
systems can be seen as funneled through the
mother; members of the dyad can be seen as
simultaneous members of other dyads, which
support or stress them; or participants can be
seen as members of larger systems and
studied directly in these units, as suggested in
the following section. Mothers and siblings
have been placed together in the Strange
Situation (Stewart, 1983), and it should not be
long before mother, father, and infant are
studied in this way. A detailed analysis of
their interactions would allow a new level of
understanding about responses to stress in the
triad, as Well as differentiated information
about the individual in larger systems.
The Selection of Meaningful
Units for Research
Family therapists deal with a variety of
natural groupings: mother-father-child; sib-
lings in whatever numbers they occur; three-
generational subsystems; and the system of
parents and children, in \vhich the former are
usually two (although not always) and the
children are not only an assemblage of indi-
294 Child Development
viduals, each with a relationship to one parent
at a time, but a subsystem of their own to
which parents must sometimes relate as if to a
small group. The therapists' framework and
experience draw attention to dyads, triads,
and what Ricci and Selvini-Palazzoli (1984)
call "N-adic" models, as the realistic context
of development.
To what extent has developmental re-
search dealt with this reality? One can high-
light either the slowness of the advance or
the welcome evidence of recent expansion.
Child-oriented research has moved beyond
the individual and the tiaditional mother-
child dyad to studies of father and child (Cath,
Gui-witt, & Ross, 1982; Lamb, 1981; Lynn,
1974; Pedersen, 1980) and sibling dyads
(Bank & Kahn, 1982; Dunn, 1983; Dunn &
Kendrick, 1982; Lamb & Sutton-Smith, 1982),
though research on adults generally gathers
data from individual questionnaires and inter-
views, rather than in conjunction with
spouses, children, parents, or other members
of the multiple stable systems in which adults
participate (e.g., Levinson, 1978; Lowenthal,
Thurnher, & Chiriboga, 1975; Neugarten,
1979; Vaillant, 1977). The consideration of
units beyond the dyad at any stage is particu-
lairly cautious, though there ai-e recent impor-
tant additions to the literature (e.g., Bron-
fenbrenner & Crouter, 1983; Biyant &
Crockenberg, 1980; Clarke-Stewait, 1978;
Kendrick & Dunn, 1983; Kreppner, Paulsen,
& Schuetze, 1982; Lewis, Feiring, & Wein-
raub, 1981; Patterson, 1982; Pedersen, 1975,
1980). The accumulating body of research
comparing mother-child interactions when a
sibling is or is not present exemplifies the in-
crease in information that occurs \vhen dyads
and triads can be compared (see Dunn, 1983).
Since it is clear that people live in multi-
ple subsystems of varying size, what accounts
for the caution? Probably a mix of legitimate
methodological difficulties and a tendency to
protect prevailing scientific paradigms (Kuhn,
1962). Psychologists value elegant methodol-
ogy, and triadic or larger units introduce a
complexity greater than the sum of their parts.
The temptation is to go with the established
methodology and to avoid those structures we
cannot handle. But complex systems are inte-
gral to the understanding of child develop-
ment, and what is not tackled will not yield. It
is essential to probe the larger naturalistic
units, albeit clumsily, accepting the fact that
descriptive analyses of circular pattems may
be the most feasible point of entry, that
methods for studying social interaction se-
quences are evolving and can be adapted
(Cairns, 1979; Martin, Maccoby, Baran, &
Jacklin, 1981; Suomi, Lamb, & Stevenson,
1979), and that a variety of methodologies will
be worth exploring. In this respect, the recent
work of Kreppner et al. (1982) is particularly
interesting. These investigators combined a
family systems and developmental perspec-
tive with a "hermeoeutic" methodology,
which involves interpretative procedures for
the identification and description of recurrent
pattems. They observed four-person families
over a 2-year period, as the families incorpo-
rated a second child into the system, and
were able to generate differentiated descrip-
tions of family adaptations at critical points in
the second child's development. Their re-
search offers a bold and interesting model for
handling natural family units of any size. A
growing research literature on normal fami-
lies also offers some leads (see Walsh, 1982,
for summary articles).
The Conception of
Developmental Transitions
Within the framework of individual de-
velopment, the concept of transitions is famil-
iar to psychologists. Learning theories have
always focused on the laws of change, and
organismic-holistic theories, such as those of
Piaget and Werner, have been concerned not
only with the organization of the organism at
different stages of development but with the
processes by which the organism moves from
one stage to another. Concepts of disequilib-
rium, imbalance, and so forth refer to the ex-
periences and behavior of the individual at
those points when, in Prigogine's terms, the
system has been "perturbed" and established
pattems become inadequate (e.g., on entering
school, leaving home, retiring). What the field
of family therapy (and family sociology) con-
tributes is a perspective on the family system
and the family life cycle (Carter & McGol-
drick, 1980; Duvall, 1977; Hill, 1970; Walsh,
1982).
What is clear from this perspective is that
a transitional point for any family member is a
challenge for the entire system. When the
child goes to school or moves into adoles-
cence, the whole family must reorganize its
pattems. It is generally understood that par-
ents must be ready to let go of their adoles-
cent, who is seeking more autonomy, and it is
not difficult to follow the more systemic con-
cept of a circle of interaction, in which the
adolescent pushes, parents yield, the adoles-
cent becomes uneasy and escalates unaccept-
able behavior, the parents reinstate some con-
trols, the adolescent pushes again, and so
forth. What has been less explored are the re-

verberations throughout the system. When
adolescents gain more autonomy, younger
siblings may lose a companion, inherit more
household chores, gain new privileges; and
parents may need to rework not only the way
they support each other in matters of control
but the impact of budding adolescent sexual-
ity on their relationship with each other and
each parent's sense of self Transitions at
adult stages have the same implications. In an
interview with a femily that had moved over-
seas to further the husband's career develop-
ment, it was clear that the move was difficult
for other family members, who had recently
resolved transitional issues of their own.^ The
wife, who had found a satisfying job and ex-
panded her social horizons at home, was now
unemployed and friendless in a confusing
new city; the adolescent son, who had orga-
nized a job, an old car, and a new girlfriend in
the United States, found himself in a situation
where all three were hard to come by. Their
resilience, and the family's capacity to estab-
lish new pattems, defined the emotional qual-
ity of the man's career transition.
In the research of Kreppner et al. (1982),
critical transitions in the development of a
family member (in this case the infant) an-
chored the study, allowing an investigation of
family reorganization at transitional points.
The researchers were able to identify a se-
quence of salient family adaptations: the re-
distribution of attention, the establishment of
a sibling relationship, the differentiation of
parents and children as separate subsystems.
They also identified particular issues at each
point for the spouses, the older child in rela-
tion to parents and baby, and so forth.
It is not advisable to always anchor the
study of transitions in the nodal points of indi-
vidual development, even if the focus of in-
terest is the individual child. There are pe-
riods in the family life cycle when that child
is not the stimulus for change but must share
in the need to reorganize the system, either
because external events or other members
have rocked established patterns. In such
cases, the child must be studied within the
context of family change. Elder's (1979) work
is an example. He examined the effects of a
dramatic change in family living conditions
caused by the Depression of the 1930s, con-
sidering the short- and long-term impact on
children of different ages and gender, and tak-
ing into account aspects of family structure
and parental relationship that affected coping
' The interview was part of a pilot project on nonnal family development conducted by S.
Minuchin and the author.
Patrieia Minuehin 295
pattems. Studies of the impact of divorce on
children also start from the reality of a major
transition that originates outside the child,
and these studies are building a body of data
about the conditions that support reasonably
healthy transitions (Hetherington et al., 1982;
Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). If the child's real-
ity in situations of divorce is seen as the re-
vamping of former subsystems and the cre-
ation of new units, often including new
personnel when parents remarry, continuing
research can contribute considerably to the
understanding of transitional processes and
grovvi:h-supporting resolutions.
In studying transitional crises, time must
be a major variable. During periods of thera-
peutic challenge and exploration, therapists
find that the behavior of family members is
often chaotic and disturbed, settling later into
more stable pattems. In psychological re-
search, however, transitional and stable pe-
riods are usually not distinguished. Studies of
the relationship between matemal employ-
ment and child development, for instance,
seldom separate the initial period, when
mother first goes to work, from later periods
when the pattem is familiar (Lamb, 1982).
They treat child behavior as if it were firmly
established at any point and contribute little
to the understanding of transitional processes.
Studies of post-divorce adaptation exemplify
a more differentiated approach, providing de-
tailed information about changes over time
(e.g., Hetherington et al., 1982).
A Perspective for the Study
of Life-Span Development
Because therapists deal with the natural
family group, their experience suggests the
necessity of a horizontal as well as vertical
approach to the study of life-span develop-
ment. To this point, the conception of life-
span development has been almost synony-
mous with that of adult development. It
seems likely that there will be increasing ex-
ploration of the connecting links between
childhood and adulthood, but a systems
orientation suggests an equally vital direction
for research: the study of natural units com-
posed of people at different stages of develop-
ment whose lives are constantly interwoven.
The most important, though not exclusive,
locus of such units is the family. Young chil-
dren and adults in their twenties or thirties,
for instance, often form an ongoing system
with stable continuing pattems. How the
growth needs of young children and the early
296 Child Development
career, marriage, and self-definition needs of
young adults combine with each other has not
been well formulated or investigated, al-
though such phenomena as divorce and child
abuseoften analyzed in terms of distur-
bance in the adultsmight well be il-
luminated by greater understanding of the
nonnal pressures on a family system at this
stage. Other developmentally normative com-
binations are also unexplored, including not
only parent-child systems in the usual range
of developmental study, but systems com-
posed of elderly persons and their middle-
aged offspring, who must often handle deli-
cate issues in relation to autonomy and
decision making and who may need to adapt
together to serious illness and traumatic
change.
The issues for families at different stages
are pragmatically familiar to family therapists,
but therapists do not have the detailed knowl-
edge of established capacities and salient
frontiers, across the span of development, that
constitutes the core of developmental psy-
chology. It remains for psychologists to for-
mulate the differentiated research questions
and to study the meshing of the psychological
needs of family system members at different
stages of the life cycle.
Parent-Child Interaction
The most direct applications from the
field of family therapy apply to the study of
child life within the family. The following
points deal with new foci for research in this
area.
The parent-child triad.Psychological
researchers created the single-parent family
long before it was a characteristic of Ameri-
can society. Most of our ideas about child
rearing and its effects are based on data drawn
from one parent, who has been treated either
as the representative of parenting in the fam-
ily or as the primary source. Family therapists
would challenge that formulation, regarding
the system of mother, father, and child as cru-
cial.
Such a conception affects the core of
socialization research, which investigates
such issues as the degree of parental pressure
necessary for social control (Lepper, 1982),
the system of parent-child expectations (Bell
& Harper, 1977), or the syndrome of optimal
parenting (Maccoby & Martin, 1983) as if the
child were involved with only one parent in a
dyad. Yet the reality is that most children
have two parents, even if they are divorced,
and their experience of control is not additive
but systemic. Studies of the parent-child
dyad, though valid in themselves, are prop-
erly regarded as studies of subsystems. They
do not represent the child's significant reality,
especially after infancy, and they do not stand
in for the study of triadic parent-child sys-
tems.
Consider the following incident, ob-
served during an interview with a young fam-
ily:
The 2-year-old knocks over a box of chalks and
they spill out onto the carpet:
Mother (soft voice): "Brian, pick them up,
please." [She turns back to adult discussion.]
Father (voice raised slightly): "Brian, put the
chalks in the box." [Pause; voice stronger] "Brian,
put the chalks in the box!"
Mother: "Yeah, come on. Don't muck up the
carpet." [Adult discussion resumes. Child is exam-
ining the chalk.]
Father: "Brian, listen! You're not supposed to
have the chalk on the carpet. Now pick them up.
Come on."
Child: "I'm doing it."
Father: "You're not. You're playing. Come,
pick them up flrst. Quickly. If I get up, you know
you will! Now come on!"
Adult discussion resumes. Mother glances at
child, stands up and goes to him, kneeling and talk-
ing softly. As he dallies over the chalk, she says,
"Don't throw them. Put away all of them." Father,
seated, says, "Come on," and watches as the mother
tells the child he will have to sit on her lap and not
play if he doesn't pick them all up. The cfiild says,
"I want to play," and gathers the chalk up more
quickly. Father relaxes and mother returns to the
adults.
Analysis of this incident would require the
equal inclusion of all three participants. As
indicated earlier, there is a growing research
literature concerning the parent-child triad
(e.g., Belsky, 1981; Bronfenbrenner & Crou-
ter, 1983; Clarke-Stewart, 1978; Pedersen,
1975), but it should be noted that the concept
of "second-order effects" in that literature
(Belsky, 1981; Bronfenbrenner & Crouter,
1983) is not yet adequate to cover such an
incident, since it takes account of the father in
terms of his effect on the mother's interaction
with the child.vTherapists would diagram the
child in direct contact with each parent and in
contact with both as a parenting system. They
would postulate that the parents are effective
in the end because the child makes it possible
for them to be so, and that he responds this
way because of his direct experience that
father and mother support each other.^If
therapists perceive many such incidents, dif-

ferent in content but isomorphic, they regard
them as evidence of a recurrent family pattem
in relation to control, and would probably
consider this peirticular pattem relatively
healthy.
The level at which such pattems should
be described and generalized is an issue for
research psychologists. As noted earlier,
triads introduce a complexity not easily han-
dled by available methodology.
The function of child behavior in the
family system.Child psychologists and fam-
ily therapists focus on different aspects of
child behavior in the family. Psychologists
emphasize the antecedents of development.
In their "state of the art" review on parent-
child interaction, Maccoby and Martin (1983)
devote considerable space to variations in
child rearing and their effects. An example of
this genre is the work of Loeb, Horst, and
Horton (1980), which establishes an associa-
tion between directive parenting and low
self-esteem, as well as an external locus of
control, in the children. The investigators
posit that the directive style of control con-
veys an expectation to the chfld that he or she
will not be effective in independent activi-
ties, creating thereby a sense of incompe-
tence. For most researchers, such explana-
tions describe the relationship between the
family and the child's behavior.
Family therapists are more apt to track
the function of the child's behavior in the
family system. In their experience, that be-
havior may well be a necessary part of the
system, even if ft has negative implications for
the child's own growth. A child's physical
symptoms may keep the parents focused on
the child and abort their own confiicts
(Minuchin, Rosman, & Baker, 1978). Or the
child's incompetence, formulated as an inter-
nalized effect in the work of Loeb et al.
(1980), may be seen by therapists as part of a
complex reality in the family. The authoritar-
ian style of one parent, for instance, may
create stress for the spouse as well as the
child; the spouse may sabotage the directives
of the more authoritarian parent, becoming in
effect the child's ally. The child's incompe-
tence may preserve the family equilibrium,
short-circuiting parental confiict and cement-
ing a closeness between the child and one
parent that is both paralyzing and satisfying to
the child.
It is not at all clear that these different
ways of thinking about child behavior are
mutually exclusive, but the clinical perspec-
tive raises new questions about the function
Patrieia Minuehin 297
of negative behavior and even about the
meaning of positive behavior. Developmental
psychologists have documented the growth of
empathy, altruism, and the ability to take an-
other person's perspective with an implicit as-
sumption that more is better. While this is an
understandable assumption, the experience
of family therapists (like that of Freudians)
ceJls attention to the balance between con-
cern for others and an awareness of one's own
needs. The developmental psychologist sees
an 11-year-old whose empathy and ability to
take another perspective tests at a high
leveland considers the child's development
to be proceeding very well. The family
therapist sees an 11-year-old who has a hand-
kerchief in her mother's hand before the
mother's first tear fallsand considers it im-
portant to move the child out of situations that
should not be her concern, both for the good
of her own development and the health of the
husband-wife subsystem that has generated
the tears and must settle its own issues. It
may or may not be the same 11-year-old, and
both perspectives may be valid if it is. The
child's sensitivity may be both highly devel-
oped and co-opted by a system that needs the
child to function in this way, though that is
not necessarily so. The experience of family
therapists is an invitation to study the com-
plexity of prosocial development in context,
with particular attention to those aspects that
therapists seldom see and do not highlight:
the conditions and parameters of healthy pro-
social functioning in the family.
The parenting system as a focus of re-
search.If the parent-child system is seen as
a triad and the adults as a parenting system,
then direct study of the interaction between
parents is a legitimate area of child develop-
ment research, a point also made by Belsky
(1981) in his review of early human experi-
ence. Studies of the transmission of parenting
across generations would lead to the same
conclusion, though such studies begin with a
focus on the mother's history. Evidence is ac-
cumulating that the current spouse system
mediates history and shapes parent-child rela-
tionships; the mother's childhood experi-
ences relate not only to her caregiving but to
marital harmony, which is in tum associated
with parental behavior toward the child
(Ricks, in press). What has not yet been inves-
tigated, however, is the extent to which par-
ent interaction serves as a model of adult be-
havior for the child(nt is evident from family
sessions that the child is a constant observer
of adult relationships and negotiations^ Coch-
ran and Brassard (1979) point out that chil-
dren observe reciprocal exchange processes
298 Chad Development
between their parents and members of the
parents' socid network before they are them-
selves capable of reciprocal exchange, and
that they are developmentally infiuenced by
such observations.
For generating hypotheses about the par-
ents' mutual management of control, it is in-
structive to interview normal families, espe-
cially with a technique that allows both
discussion about child rearing and the han-
dling of spontaneous incidents as they arise.
In our pilot work we observed that the
spouses in every family differed from each
other in their style of socializing the children,
a mildly surprising fact to both the family
therapist and the developmental psychologist
on our team. Family therapists associate pa-
rental differences with negative pattems, and
developmental psychologists think of effec-
tive parents as agreed in their child-rearing
values and consistent in thefr behavior. Even
when they have similar goals and values,
however, each parent has a particular style;
one may be more patient while the other ex-
pects fast compliance (as in the case of Brian's
parents); or one may have the longer Rise but
blow up more explosively when provoked.
These styles are observable, and can be ar-
ticulately described in feunily interviews by
middle-years and adolescent children, who
seem to enjoy discussing how they handle
their two parents.
| l f parental differences are a given, creat-
ing me potential for parental confiict, it is im-
portant to study what makes some pattems
viable, providing a complementary and co-
operative resource for parenting rather than a
source of difficultiesTfThe way in which such
differences are integrated into the parenting
system must affect the child's understanding
of confiict-resolution. But we know little
about the processes involved, either in the
parents' negotiations or in terms of what the
child learns.
It is simply an extension of that point to
note that parents are models of adult interac-
tion (whether as an intact, divorced, or
blended system), demonstrating daily how
adults express affection and handle confiict.
In particular, they are models of male-female
relationships. There are many studies of par-
ents as single identification figures but little
research on the meaning of their interaction.
Maccoby and Martin (1983) point out that our
ideas about observation and modeling have
grown more sophisticated. We understand
diat children do not simply imitate, beyond
very young ages, but select and register as-
pects of what they observe. It is probable that
some aspects of parental interaction are stored
and serve as hypotheses for adequate behav-
ior in later years. It would be useful to tap
what children perceive of their parents' in-
teraction, and to interview adults not only
about their recall of childhood experiences
(see Ricks, in press), but about perceptions of
their parents' interaction during childhood
and their own interactions as mates and par-
ents.
Parents and the sibling subsystem.
From the viewpoint of family therapists, the
prevalence of interaction between parents
and siblings, as separate subsystems, is a pal-
pable reality. The incident involving Brfsui
and his parents has its counterpart in an inci-
dent involving Ben (31/2), Anna {IV2), and their
parents:
The children are playing with toys while their
parents talk with the interviewers. Anna tries to
place some blocks on Ben's building. He pushes
and pinches, she complains and keeps trying. In
the parents' intervention, they relate to the differ-
ent ages, honoring Ben's seniority and Anna's need
to participate ("Let her put it on, Ben; then you can
change it"). The parents' styles are different and
their process has a pattem: mother reasons quietly
with Ben, while father supports Anna in a jovial
and more physical way.
'^he system will change over time, as par-
ents and children alter the frequency with
which interventions are sought or offered (a
matter of increasing firmness of boundaries
between subsystems, as development pro-
ceeds), and the children will learn how au-
thority functions in relation to children's in-
terpersonal fssues.^They will also form
concepts of the self partly on the basis of par-
ent-sibling interactions. As we have long
known, self-image is shaped fi-om the
refiected appraisal of significant others (Bald-
win, 1906; Mead, 1934). When a family has
more than one child, the cycle of child behav-
ior, parental expectations, and refiected ap-
praisal involves the parents' perception of
each child vis-a-vis the others ("Mary is our
athletic child"; "Barry is shyer than the
others"). While such topics are of interest to
developmental psychologists, there is as yet
little research that includes mother, father,
and siblings, aside from the study of Kreppner
et al. (1982). The late arrival of father on the
scene and the difficulties of studying complex
systems are both accountable.
On the other hand, the recent expansion
of research on siblings has been remarkable,
and the first studies of mother and siblings
together have appeared (Dunn, 1983). Stewart
(1983) has studied the silaling's potential as an
 Patrieia Minuehin 299
attachment figure when mother, infant, and Some Comments on Research
sibling are in the Strange Situation; Bryant It is not the purpose of this article to de-
and Crockenberg (1980) have reported on the lineate a new research methodology. As Kaye
mother's helping behavior when school-aged (in press) points out, systems theory has not
siblings work together on assigned tasks; and yet been useful in explaining family pro-
Kendrick and Dunn (1983) have studied the cesses, and has not served the function of a
mother's interventions in the quarrels of scientific theory, which is to formulate and
young siblings. In all these studies, the funda- test hypotheses. His evaluation is basically
mental aim has been to study the conditions correct, but we can find some exemplars of
associated with positive or negative sibling sound research in the family literature and
interaction in current and future relation- some resources for developmental research-
ships, and it might be argued that neither the ers. An example of the former is the work of
aims nor the coding and analysis are strictly Minuchin et al. (1978) on psychosomatic
focused on the triadic system. Still, they pro- families, which has considerable scientific re-
vide interesting information about typical re- spectability. Proceeding firom systems as-
sponses and correlated events; for instance, sumptions, these therapists/researchers were
that mothers enter more frequently into able to predict recurrent pattems in families
"physical" than "protest" quarrels between who had children with psychosomatic symp-
siblings and are less apt to intervene when toms (anorexia, asthma, britde diabetes), dem-
the younger one is 14 rather than 8 months onstrate the link between physiological mark-
old (i.e., developmentally sturdier), or that, in ers of stress in diabetic children and conflict
families with firstborn males, the extent to in their families, and change the pattem of
which mother prohibits the older child's be- communication in conflict-avoiding families
havior when his sibling is 8 months old re- so that conflict resolution was at the level of
lates to that child's hostility toward his sib- direct communication, resulting in the allevi-
ling, both at that time and 6 months later ation of the individual child's physical symp-
(Kendrick & Dunn, 1983). toms. Their work offers a useful research
paradigm. Other leads for developmental psy-
What such studies do not provide is infor- chologists include the following:
mation about processes: detailed descriptions
of circular pattems that include all three 1. A small body of research on normal
members (or more, if father and other siblings and pathological families serves as a useful
are involved) and that focus on stable and source of stmctured family tasks, family-
changing pattems in each family. Correla- oriented dimensions of study (e.g., flexibility,
tional studies do not permit us to explore how coherence, conflict resolution), and examples
systems do or do not self-correct over time of efforts to handle methodological problems
how they process feedback and monitor im- (see Kantor & Lehr, 1977; Lewis, Beavers,
balances that are inevitable for a period but Gossett, & Phillips, 1976; Olson, Sprenkle, &
do damage if they freeze in place. When Russell, 1979; Reiss, 1981; Riskin, 1982; Ris-
young siblings quarrel, as in Kendrick and kfn & Faunce, 1972; Walsh, 1982).
Dunn's (1983) study, parents often ally them-
selves with the younger childa normal, al- 2. The family therapy literature high-
most inevitable response to unequal battles lights variables that are important for under-
but we know little about how that is done, standing development but are not generally
what roles the two parents play, if they are dealt with by developmental researchers,
both present (as in the case of Ben and Anna), principally because they do not appear when
or how the whole pattem changes over time. we consider individuals or dyads. Coalitions
The question is not only whether those al- gand subsystem boundaries are two examples.
liances are fiexible, shifting over time and |CoaIitions, involving some version of two
situation, but how healthy families monitor against one, appear in parent-child triads,
the cycle, correcting at some point for bur- sibling systems, and so forth, and take both
dens on the older child and protecting the normal and pathological forms. Boundaries
development of all its children. It would be concern the rules and flow of interchange be-
an important gain for the developmental field tween subsystems in the family, and are
to know how systems that are flexible differ thought to change their >characteristics as a
from those that freeze their patterns, at the function of development Such phenomena
expense of one or more siblings. For such are worth systematic investigation.
studies, we need detailed descriptions of pro- 3. A systems orientation supports certain
cesses over time, in different families, rather research emphases, such as the use of obser-
than summaries of behaviors that are gener- vational techniques and the description of re-
ally associated. current pattems, and challenges others. Ef-
300 Child Development
forts to determine the "direction of effects"
and to quantify the relative input of members
of a system are cornerstones of developmental
research, as indicated in reviews by Dunn
(1983) and Maccoby and Martin (1983), but
they do not make sense in a systems
framework. It is for developmental psycholo-
gists to reason out our position and to decide
what adaptations we will make.
Summary
family therapy suggests a reformulation
of concept and method in studying the family
and individual development: to regard the
family as an organized system and the indi-
vidual as a contributing member, part of the
process that creates and maintains the pat-
terns that regulate behavior'^he specific im-
plications for developmental psychology stem
from this paradigm: to focus on the recurrent
patterns within which the child functions; to
conceive of the triad as a crucial parent-child
unit; to study larger and more varied natural
units in the family than parent and child; to
adopt a complex systemic framework con-
cerning developmental transitions, taking ac-
count of the ways in which the family life
cycle cross-cuts individual trajectories; and to
track the function of child behavior within the
system, assuming that this may or may not be
consistent with healthy growth. A focus on
the family system also draws attention to new
areas of research that may broaden under-
standing of the child's experience, such as the
functioning of the parents vis-a-vis each other,
and the relationship between parents and the
several siblings as two interacting systems.
A systems orientation is not the prevail-
ing mode in developmental psychology, but
some trends have been noted that move in
this direction and would be supported by sys-
tems thinkers. These include the increasing
perception of the child as an active con-
tributor to his or her own socialization; the
interest in sequences of interaction, bidirec-
tional effects, and triadic concepts; the devel-
opment of ecological models; the growth of
research on fathers and on siblings; and the
exploration of methods to describe the state of
an interacting system, at least for dyads. Fam-
ily therapy has concentrated on diagnosing
and changing the patterns of interaction in
dysfunctional families. As developmental
psychology moves toward a systems para-
digm, the concentration will be different and
the potential contribution considerable. Psy-
chology will bring a much-needed emphasis
on normal functioning, a body of concepts
about parent-child interaction that can be
modified and integrated into a systems
framework, and skills to develop rigorous
methods for describing observable pattems in
complex systems. It may also refine our
understanding of the relationship between
personal development over the life course
and the individual's membership in intimate
organized systems.
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