The Dudley/Harris Family

A number of different concepts are relevant here, and may help to provide some sort of frame within which to consider what is going on in this family. A family systems perspective (HGD: 221, Chapter 10) helps you to avoid thinking about the problems in the family as being either experienced by, or created by, particular individuals on their own. Thus you might ask what keeps the family as a whole ticking over in the way that it does? Or: what purpose might be served by the behaviour of individuals for the family as a whole? Or: who is the identified problem in this family and why? (If you are not sure what we mean, look at Activity 10.1 (HGD: 226) where a boy called Ricky is the identified problem).

From the professionals’ point of view, Chloe is probably the most serious cause of concern right now, but we’d suggest that from the family’s point of view, Caitlin might be identified as the biggest problem because of her bedwetting, and perhaps Caitlin serves as a kind of scapegoat in the family: someone everyone can blame, a role which may a useful purpose for the family as a whole.

You might also want to look at this family from the point of view of horizontal and vertical stressors (HGD: 229). Horizontal stressors refer to challenges the family is encountering right now: adolescence for instance. Vertical stressors refer to things that the family finds challenging due to the legacy of the past. We don’t know anything at the moment about Lee’s and Lisa’s own histories, but it is a reasonable bet that her depression and lack of fight, and his need to dominate, put down and control, both have roots in the past.

Family systems perspectives on their own can overlook the issue of the power that individuals in the family derive, not just from the role that they play in the family but the roles assigned to them by society as a whole. Something would be missing from our understanding of this family if we did not acknowledge the significance of gender and sexism within a patriarchal society. Lee seems determined to train his children (HGD: 137) into a particular harsh and narrow version of traditional gender roles – the girls submissive, the boy aggressive – which they act out at school.

There is a good deal of literature on the impact of domestic violence on child development (see, for instance, Holt et al., 2008). There is also literature on the impact of parental depression on child development (for an overview, see, for instance, England and Sims (eds), 2009).

Attachment (Chapter 3, HGD: 57) is likely to be an issue in any family where one adult is often unavailable as a result of depression, and other adults have been abusive, frightening figures at worst, and more recently a source of put-downs and mockery rather than love and support. It is worth thinking what kind of internal working model (HGD, 67) each of these children might have developed. What understanding will they have acquired about what they can expect from others? Take Caitlin for instance. What messages will she have received from the adults in her life (her own father, Dan, her mother Lisa, and her stepfather Lee) about their reliability, their availability as sources of comfort, their potential to be a threat? What messages has she received about her own worth? What will she have learnt about what she can safely ask for, and what it would be better not to ask for in order to avoid rejection, abuse or disappointment? What aspects of her experience may she be shutting out by defensive exclusion (HGD, 69), in order to help her cope? Now take Josh and ask the same questions. Students often try to use attachment theory to shoehorn individuals they work with into the various attachment types (secure, anxious-avoidant, anxious-ambivalent, disorganised…), but that is a pretty blunt instrument. If you want to try and understand what’s going on for an individual, it can be more useful to think about the unique combination of messages they are internalising, or have internalised, as a result of their own unique experience (Activity 2.2 [HGD: 35] invites you to engage in just this kind of exercise).

A related idea is Winnicott’s mirroring (HGD: 44 – both internal working models and mirroring are discussed also in the Veloso case study [Case Study I]). You might ask yourself to what extent has each of these children been mirrored in Winnicott’s sense, by adult carers, and the extent to which they have been able to develop a sense of their own true selves.

Applying a behaviourist perspective (see Chapter 5, HGD: 103), and social learning theory (HGD, 118) is another way of thinking about how the experience of growing up in this family may impact on the development of these children. Josh and his sisters are learning about gender roles both by observing the behaviour of Lee and Lisa, and by the reinforcement or punishment that is elicited by their own behaviour (see HGD: 118 and 110).

Finally, it is worth thinking about stages of childhood development. Erikson spoke of a series of life crises (HGD: 47): you might like to look at the challenges he suggested children of these ages would currently be facing. Chloe and Hannah are adolescents. You might want to think about the particular challenges of adolescence (HGD: 153), which are to do with identity formation, and how their family experience is likely to impact on their ability to meet those challenges. Where do Lee and Lisa fit into Maccoby and Martin’s parenting types (1983, cited in HGD: 162), in relation to each of the four children, and how will this impact on their adolescent experience?

Tracey

We know (see Case Study J: Tracey Green) that Tracey finds visiting this family very difficult, and finds Lee in particular difficult to deal with, and this is may be because they remind her of aspects of her own experience (see discussion of countertransference, HGD: 38). On the one hand, this may make her sensitive to important aspects of the family that others overlook, but it could also mean that she will tend to impose her own experience on that of the family – and assume that she knows more than she does. A third possibility, when people are made very anxious, is that they suppress from consciousness observations that are heightening their distress, go into denial about what they are seeing, project their anxieties onto others, or engage in other defensive manoeuvres (HGD, 34).

References

England, M. and Sim, L. (2009) Depression in Parents, Parenting, and Children: Opportunities to Improve Identification, Treatment, and Prevention. Washington: National Academies Press. Available online at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK215116/ (Accessed July 2018).

Holt, S, Buckley, H., and Whelan, S. (2008). ‘The impact of exposure to domestic violence on children and young people: a review of the literature.’ Child Abuse & Neglect, 32 (8): 797–810.