Chapter Overview

Every marriage is influenced by both partners' family background, and in turn every married couple will influence the family relationships of their children. Children are socialized chiefly by their families through generational transmission; however, they are influenced differently depending on frequency, duration, intensity, and priority of social contacts with their parents as well as by individual differences in children. The alcoholic family is an example of a particularly troubled type of family. There can be many severe, negative effects of growing up in this kind of family. Understanding our family of origin background and its influences on us can be important in our subsequent family life-styles; roles and relationships; gender roles; values; attitudes toward sex and the opposite sex, work, and marriage and divorce; patterns of communication; self-understanding; self-image and self-esteem.