Assessment And Analysis Of Harrington's Family: Structural Patterns, Communication, Health Promotion Essay.

Select one (1) family based on personal/professional acquaintance, to complete a comprehensive, written assessment/analysis using the criteria listed below (based on class notes and readings). DO NOT use your family of orientation (family of origin) or your nuclear (conjugal) family. (For definitions, see the Glossary of Terms in Friedman et al, Family Nursing textbook.

Objectives

• Examinetheimpact of functional patterns and role structure on the family.
• Examinefamilyrelationships and communication patterns.
• Identifyinfluenceson family health promotion.

Objectives

Several authors have come up with different definitions of family. A family is a characteristic group of more than two people whose interaction is characterized by special terms. A family relates to birth, marriage, adoption, and choice (Fine and Fincham, 2013). This essay focuses on Harrington’s family with the aim of identifying the effect of structural patterns and the role structure to the family. It also examines the family relationships and patterns of communication and the impact on the family health promotion. This study looks into the sociocultural information and environment of the family, role structure, values, power structure, spiritual activities, healthcare, adaptations to conflict and changes.

Harrington’s family is a nuclear family consisting of the father, mother and three children, one son and two daughters. This family’s unity depends on their closeness. Both parents work outside home hence collectively providing income. The father works as a lawyer, and the mother has a home-based business, running a consignment shop in particular. They are 45 years and 38years old respectively. Their children are aged 25 years, 20years and 18years respectively. They all graduated from Huntington High school and later joined the University of Houston to pursue different courses. The father is a Japanese while the mother is a black American. Despite their cultural differences, the parents try their best to socialize with other families of the same culture with the intention of exposing their children to the behaviors and values of their cultures. The mother stands in for the father whenever he is not available. Due to the physical distance between the parents (Sarkisian and Gerstel, 2012).

Both the mother and father are of an upper middle class which means that the family is financially stable. The parents are highly educated and are employed. The ethnic socialization efforts of the parents have positively impacted on the children’s lives (Harris, 2008). The family has their meals together in the family room to improve their connection. The family values honesty, kindness, and sincerity.

The genogram indicates that the relationship between Aurelia and Harrington produced children, one male, Liam, and two females, Caren and Sophie when they were in an enduring adult marriage and living together. The line connecting the connecting the parents to the children indicates that they are born of the same parents (Platt and Skowron, 2013). The family has a strong relationship which is clear from the solid lines in the genogram.

Background Information

Both Aurelia and Harrington have strictly followed their culture and also have strong religious backgrounds. Caren has difficulty in socialization despite her parent’s efforts to encourage her to socialize. Caren, Liam, and Sophie enjoy going to school and are serious about their studies. They also take Healthcare seriously and seek both preventive and curative measures. Harrington and Liam have strong relationships with their friends as indicated in the ecogram.

The family is comfortable with both its privacy and the housing arrangements. The home has good hygiene practices and no presence of vermin. The Harrington’s family lives in a nine-room house with proper furnishing and enough toilet facilities in a clean state. They have a large compound and adequate waste disposal services. The people in the neighborhood live in two-roomed houses with small compound due to the congestion of houses (Friedman, Bowden and Jones, 2003).

Family communication is the exchange of verbal and nonverbal information in a family setting (Epstein, 2016). The Harrington’s family has open and honest communication. The parents are open to their children on all matters. They contact each other in cases of emergency which is essential for survival. Whenever there is a problem in the family, they immediately discuss their issues.

The family involves every member of the family whenever there is a crisis or in decision-making processes. Whenever there is conflict, they settle it through rational discussion which categorizes them as a healthy family. The concept of understanding one another in the family is proof that there is no discrimination regarding power in the family (Sutphin, McDonough and Schrenkel, 2013). The parents in the family are the executives, and though the father is considered the most superior in the family for being the breadwinner, he still acknowledges the importance of negotiation within the family. The family has learned how to form good relationships, handle and deal with power, maintaining personal boundaries hence developing the feeling of being an important member of the family.

Different families have specific roles for different family members depending on the agreements made. Traditionally, the father was always the one to financially provide for the family and the mother be the one to babysit the children back home whereas nowadays this is never the case because both parents come with pay slips and pay cheques home after toiling back at work. Harrington’s family has always distributed the roles in a way that everyone is satisfied.  For instance, in this family, parents have the role of telling their kids why they made certain judgments over the others and for the mother, she has always been responsible for the primary responsibilities such as acting as the caretaker and being responsible for the emotional side of the family. The father has the partial responsibility for the day to day activities of parental decisions. He has always assumed the larger role in household duties and raiding the children. The oldest son has since had the parental role of taking care of his siblings, and at some point, the grandparents used to visit their place and play a child-rearing role when the parents were at work.

Family Structure and Environment

The Harrington’s family has norms and rules which determine the values of the family. The parents instill which include treating people and their property with respect. They are advised to always knock on doors anytime they need to enter their home or their friend’s place. They are encouraged to be truthful to anyone regardless of their age. The children are motivated by their parents to improve their abilities which indicates that this is a healthy (Bell, 2009). The family is keen on spiritual matters. They attend the Catholic Church every Sunday. This routine that they follow to the latter without failure. The family always gathers after dinner to have a spiritual session of prayer together. Prayer sessions ensure that the family members grow closer to God.

The Harrington’s family instills cultural competences and continuity in their children. They have always allowed and encouraged their children to interact and socialize with other children of the same culture hence spreading and continuing the culture. They train their children to be independent. The parents have always acted as their children’s agent of socialization. They have also created a foundation for changes in future as the children interact with other people in the world beyond the family.

Different families have different ways of adapting to their role conflicts, handling overloads, coping strategies and problem-solving skills. The Harrington’s family handles their conflicts by negotiating with each other. The coping strategies they use include having emotional talks or visiting the psychologists and exercising to reduce stress. This family expresses high-quality negotiation skills during problem-solving which indicates that this is a healthy family (Maurer and Smith, 2013)

The Harrington’s family believes that illnesses are a result of carelessness, poor hygiene, lifestyle, climate change and even poverty. They believe that for one to be healthy, he or she has to avoid the negative causes of disease contact. They perform practices such as good eating habits, good sleeping habits, reduced or no alcohol intake, increased exercises and frequent checkups, screening among others. They also advise their children to attend several meetings on health promotion, read books on health promotion and watch videos on disease illnesses and health promotion.

For Harrington’s family to be healthy, they should prioritize preventive care. They should embrace preventive care by ensuring that they always go for screening services. They should also take note of their body changes. Observing changes in their bodies will ensure that diseases are timely detected and treated. They should always eat a balanced diet to achieve a healthy and required body shape. They should avoid smoking or passive smoking, and they also get their heart rate up to the aerobic levels (McCormack and McCance, 2011).

The family should practice safe driving and biking. Safe practices will prevent them from getting injuries which may inflict to much pain. They should avoid stress and always strive to make the most out of each day. They should adopt behaviors that promote their health through several ways such as changing prior related behavior such as smoking and personal factors such as biological, sociocultural and psychological factors. They should visit health care providers such as Nurses to increase their commitment to engaging in activities that improve their health (Nutbeam, Harris and Wise, 2010). Attaining this is possible by committing oneself to an action plan to help reduce and curb the effects.

In conclusion, Harrington’s family is of relatively good health. Despite this, there are some changes and practices they should put in place to improve their health. The sociocultural data, spiritual activities, healthcare, socialization, adaptation, and values are those that improve and promote their health a great deal.

References

Bell, J. M. (2009). Family systems nursing: re-examined. 

Epstein, J. L. (2016). School, family, and community partnerships.

Few-Demo, A. L., Lloyd, S. A., & Allen, K. R. (2014). It's all about power: Integrating feminist family studies and family communication. Journal of Family Communication, 14(2), 85-

Fine, M. A., & Fincham, F. D. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of family theories: A content-based approach. Routledge.

Friedman, M. M,. Bowden, V. R., and Jones (2003). Family Nursing: Research, theory, and practice (5^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Harris, S. R. (2008). What is family diversity? Objective and interpretive approaches. Journal of family issues, 29(11), 1407-1425.

Maurer, F. A., & Smith, C. M. (2013). Community/public health nursing practice: Health for families and populations. Elsevier Health Sciences.

McCormack, B., & McCance, T. (2011). Person-centered nursing: theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Nutbeam, D., Harris, E., & Wise, W. (2010). Theory in a nutshell: a practical guide to health promotion theories. McGraw-Hill.

Platt, L. F., & Skowron, E. A. (2013). The family genogram interview: Reliability and validity of a new interview protocol. The Family Journal 21(1), 35-45.

Sarkisian, N., & Gerstel, N. (2012). Nuclear family values, extended family lives: The power of race, class, and gender. Routledge, 2012

 Saveman, B. I. (2010). Family nursing research for practice: The Swedish perspective. Journal of Family Nursing, 16(1), 26-44.

Sutphin, S. T., McDonough, S., & Schrenkel, A. (2013). The role of formal theory in social work research: Formalizing family systems theory. Advances in Social Work, 14(2),