Family contexts as cognitive networks: A structural approach of family relationships

Abstract

With the permanence of strong emotional bonds between adults and their siblings and parents, with the rise of divorce, with the extension of remarriage, and with the development of pseudo‐kinship ties, complex family groupings have emerged. Orientational family members (Kuhn, 1964) are likely to be perceived as being included in relatively large and unbounded family contexts. To deal with the complexity of those contexts, one needs to develop an approach that makes it possible to analyze many relationships in a single model. Such an approach is presented in this article, which considers family contexts as cognitive networks (Marsden, 1990). To illustrate how statistical and graphical network methods can be applied empirically to those contexts, perceived relationships among orientational family members of 25 female students were analyzed in relation to balance theory (Heider, 1958).

From support to overload: Patterns of positive and negative family relationships of adults with mental illness over time

“…Every 3 months over a year and a half, the respondents filled out the family network method (FNM) questionnaire, an egocentric network collection tool (Widmer, 1999;Widmer and La Farga, 2000;Widmer et al, 2005). At each interview wave, the participants also completed the Symptom Check-List-90-R (SCL-90-R, Derogatis, 1983;Pellet, 1997), an inventory commonly used by both clinicians and researchers to evaluate psychological problems and symptoms.…”

Types of Conjugal Networks, Conjugal Conflict and Conjugal Quality

“…It is important to emphasize that kinship networks are not only characterized by support and caring but also by problems and conflicts among relatives (Adams, 1970;Coenen-Huther et al, 1994). Some relationships, such as in-law relationships, are known to often be problematic (Fischer, 1983;Widmer, 1999). Those problems might stimulate and contribute to conflict between spouses, especially when interdependence among relatives is strong.…”

“…Capturing the most central and relevant features of social networks for conjugal functioning is, however, not straightforward. Most research interested in the effects of social networks on conjugal interactions has focused on specific variables, such as network composition (Burger and Milardo, 1995), network interference (Klein and Milardo, 2000), spouses' network overlap (Stein et al, 1992;Bryant and Conger, 1999), network transitivity (Widmer, 1999), or perceived support from the network (Cohen and Wills, 1985).…”

Social Capital in Wide Family Contexts: An Empirical Assessment Using Social Network Methods

“…Since the 1970s, however, scholars of various horizons have underlined the pluralization of family structures. They have challenged this assumption and proposed that the definition of a significant family context should be considered as an empirical question rather than defined by such a priori criteria such as marriage or household membership (Bernardes, 1993;Firth et al, 1970;Levin, 1993;Scanzoni & Marsiglio, 1991;Widmer, 1999;Wilson & Pahl, 1988). This paper proposes the hypothesis that family contexts that include friends, stepparents and in-laws are associated with bridging social capital, i.e.…”