The importance of family roles

A family is an organized system as well as the basic nucleus of society. This means that it is a group in which there are norms, values ​​and behavioral patterns. Also hierarchies and family roles that give a specific place to each of the members that compose it. And all this is reflected in society.

The way family members relate to each other is a determining factor in how they end up relating to the rest of society. Each family points out in practice what is good and what is not. Also how each member is expected to act. That is what is called family roles: the role that each member plays within this nucleus..

The definition and implementation of each of the family roles is very important, both for health mental of its components, as well as for the establishment of clear and healthy links. This seems obvious, but in today’s world it is not so obvious. The result is a society in which hierarchies, authority relationships, and ego boundaries are not very clear.

The main family roles

Within family roles, the most basic and determining is the marital role. It is also one of those that over time it gets more confusing. It is made up of the couple and includes the set of spaces in which the children do not intervene, such as sexuality, decisions regarding the family, the emotional encounter of the two, etc.

Then there are the maternal role and the paternal role. Both family roles depend greatly on the cultural environment. However, there are some elements that are common in virtually all cultures.

The maternal role is fundamentally affective and its function is to provide protection and support to the child.The paternal role, for its part, mediates that dyad mother sonexpanding the limits of the latter and pointing out the limits of what is permitted.

The other two family roles are the fraternal role and the filial role. The first is the one that occurs between siblings and serves the function of laying the foundations for a cooperative relationship between peers. The second corresponds to the bond that children establish with their parents and has to do with respect for hierarchies and the internalization of the sense of authority.

Problems with the marital role

What we have described so far is the theoretical outline of family roles. However, in practice these are not always assumed and respected as theory indicates. When the couple breaks their marital role and allows children to enter their sphere, consequences arise that can be serious.

In general, Children who witness marital conflicts between their parents experience it with guilt and anxiety. Depending on the intensity of the conflicts and the age of the child, the consequences may be more or less serious. In any case, one of the parents – or both – will lose part of her authority in these conflicts.

It is also not good for children to see their parents having sexual expressions or relationships. This can be very confusing for them. Depending again on their age and the information they have about it, this scares them, excites them or baffles them. The consequences can be very diverse, but, in general, they alter its normal development.

The maternal role and the paternal role

The decisive family roles are those played by parents. First the marital role and then the role as mother or father. All of these roles are closely related to each other. The ideal maternal role is that of the so-called “nurturing mother”: the one who cares, offers tenderness, and physically and emotionally caresses her child.

However, some women make their children the only objects of love. They despise and devalue the father and create possessive and overprotective bonds with their children. There are also absent mothers, who refuse to mother their children. In both cases the effect is similar to that of emotional mutilation.

The paternal function, or paternal role, establishes the normative prohibition. The father is that third party that regulates this symbiosis of mother and child. “Save” the child, so to speak, from being confined to the maternal universe exclusively.

Currently there is a great devaluation of the word and the paternal role. A father who is not there, or who exercises his role in a weak or seductive way, leads to great difficulty for his children in defining what is permitted and what is prohibited, what is licit and what is prohibited. It is very difficult for the children of these types of parents to know where the limit is.

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