No abstract

Rituals and routines are fundamental parts of the family dynamic and contribute to its organization across generations. However, studies on these variables in the context of urban Southern Angolan families are scarce. Thus, this article aims to identify the rituals and routines that organize the development of families in urban Southern Angola through different life stages, using semistructured interviews with 20 professionals from various social fields and 25 couples. Despite some discrepancies between the views of the two groups, they both reported a set of rituals and routines relevant to the organization of the families’ life trajectories.

In this study, we sought to empirically validate the model of development of urban families in Southern Angola. The study was carried out with a sample of 256 participants ( n = 130, 50.78% women; n = 126, 49.22% men) from urban centers of Southern Angola, aged between 18–79 years. We aimed, particularly, to identify women’s and men’s perceptions of their family functioning (SCORE-15), family vulnerability to stress (FILE), family strengths (FSQ), and family investment in rituals and routines (FRQ-R). The results from the structured additive regression models (STAR) demonstrated the adequacy of this model to explain and organize the data from the sample studied. Moreover, the results identified the perception of an adjusted family functioning, despite the high levels of family vulnerability to stress and low levels of family strength, compared with international studies. This study also showed a great investment in family rituals and routines. Results from STAR highlight the consistency of women throughout family evolution, and greater fluctuations in the results presented by men, particularly those who are in the stages of families with an adolescent or a young adult child and families in the “sandwich” generation. These results contribute to the enrichment of Simões and Alberto’s model and a better understanding of the family reality in urban Southern Angola.

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The aim of the present study was to explore and to understand how 36 urban Southern Angolan couples perceived their family’s development across the lifetime. The study sought to compare those results with three systemic approaches of family development, two Western and another indigenous. Through semi-structured interviews, the existence of two trajectories of family life, with similar life events, were identified. The life events of these two trajectories were organized in a different chronological order, based on the religious commitment of the individuals. The results showed discrepancies with the Western models on the composition of the household (i.e., big backyard families and families with a third element) as well as the type of events considered to be important milestones within the family trajectory (e.g., the inexistence of the empty nest). This study provides support for the indigenous framework proposed by Simões and Alberto (2015) and contributes to a better comprehension of the family functioning of the urban Southern Angolan families.