Family Conflict : The Conflict Between My Parents

Whether we like it or not, conflict is a part of everyday lives. It can happen to anyone, from your friends to your family.

As displayed in these stories, there is not always a mutual agreement within the family about several situations. Even I have faced conflict within my family, while I was growing up a time or two. Whether the issue involved something that you felt wasn’t fair or it was simply because you were told to do something in which you did not want to abide; the fact remains in every culture, family, life, or relationship, there will come a time where a conflict will arise.

The person in the family who usually has more access to the money, power and resources, usually the men in the family, they also have more control over the subordinate parts of the family in most cases the females. Conflict perspective has an idea that there is a power differential and the families themselves are constructed in an order to maintain this power differential. This concept means the children have less power, the females have more power than the children but less power than the males. This truly reinforces the power differentials and the values that are taught within the family and also stabilize the family. The family has the same conflicts that we all have in the greater society.

     How many people have conflicts with there parents? This is not a uncommon thing for young adults to show conflict with their parents. Conflicts are something that occur very often and it seems as though young adults have lots of conflicts with their parents. Some young adults feel as though, if they are eighteen, nineteen, or twenty that they are able to make their own decisions. Whether it be staying out past curfew, borrowing the car, or staying over a friends house, the young adult or teenager doesn’t see eye to eye with their parents and this is where the conflict comes into play.

My mom and her boyfriend at the time, would continue to argue nearly every day. It got to the point, to where I tried running away from the apartment multiple times, of course, I never succeeded. At the age of 10 I experienced fighting between my dad and step-mom. In the beginning I thought it was only a 1-time thing. But as it continued, I realized it wasn’t. Me, having to deal with fighting before, stepped- in to break up the fight to protect my siblings. The fights were always verbal, but I didn’t want my siblings to witness what I have had to many times before. I would take my siblings downstairs, my little sister being 3 years younger than me, and my brother by 10 years. I hoped it would at least help them, instead of developing a corrupted

With the example provided above, I got a glimpse as to how issues are handled in the household. Elina seems to talk about the issues in a way that overwhelms Carolyn. Carolyn on the other hand, seems to bottle up all her emotions and explodes into what could become verbally aggressive. Carolyn also seems to have been raised with different values than Elina. This combined with the difference in communication styles could make for a fiery argument. Finally, there seems to be an age difference between Carolyn and Elena that might be a contributing factor to the dynamic that is taking place. Often, a difference in communication styles and parenting could be a reflection of the generation a person is born

Whenever my family has an argument or conflict, we discuss it appropriately with those involved. There was never any serious problems in our household like mental illness, alcoholism, or infidelity. Handling conflicts were typically systematic after discussing the issue with the people involved. Once the matter was discussed, appropriate actions would follow whether it was a loss of privileges, being grounded, or a new way of doing something.

Martial conflict arises when tensions within the family increase. This increase in pressure results in one or more of the spouses to externalize anxiety and place emphasis on what the other person is doing and attempt to control his or her partner, resulting in resistance from the receiving partner (Kerr, 2000; Nichols, 2003).

Throughout this semester, we have learned a great deal about conflict styles in which we may encounter in our lives. Surely everyone has experienced conflict, but not everyone handles the situation the same way. This paper is an assessment on how I have dealt with and learned my own ways of dealing with conflict throughout my life, as well as how others close to me have dealt with conflicting situations with me. Created by William W. Wilmot, I was able to utilize these assessments in ways I have never been able to statistically see how conflict is handled in my inner circle of friends or family.

When deciding what prompt to write my term paper on, I couldn’t help but lean towards family conflict and dynamics because it’s an area that we as a society all have experience in. When someone thinks of conflict, we think about the strains or disagreements that can occur and how as a result that conflict can alter the relationships we have. Which is why within the two stories I decided on, the conflict between the characters scream through every written word and show how that conflict affects the family dynamics. More specifically, the stories are; I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen and Everyday Use by Alice Walker. The reason that I gravitated towards these two particular stories is that the family dynamic between the mother and her children

When I think of conflict I think of an unstable setting. This setting can be within a household, amongst a friend circle or classmates, or even at the workplace. The mere fact of conflict in my opinion is that there is either disagreement or someone is not aligned with the thought pattern/beliefs/understanding of the other person or group in a given situation. For example, growing up in a military family when my mother wanted to pursue her government career conflict stirred because we had to do a split household (my brother goes with either my dad or mom and vice versa for me). I recall a lot of back and forth arguments and eventually I ended up with my Mom in DC and my brother stayed with my dad in Ft. Bragg & Ft. Lauderdale. This conflict

Conflict in my family usually plays out with an issue that annoys someone. At that point they will either say something or someone will point out the fact that that person looks annoyed. We'll figure out

Conflicts in the family are usually considered as an undesirable symptom of a problem that need to be solved by family members. 1 In the family relationships, the parent-adolescent relationship represents an involuntary association, an imbalance of power and resources, and an obligation for the parent to function as caregiver.

Beaton, Norris, and Pratt (2003) support this by claiming that unresolved issues do not necessarily cause tension in the family. “From our perspective, conflict refers to those issues in relationships that couples overtly verbally or nonverbally express continually” (Beaton, Norris, & Pratt, 2003, p. 144). Although they focus on intergenerational communications within the family, they point out that unresolved issues concerning intergenerational differences can create problems in marital relationships. So it is more important to focus on reasons why individuals choose to create continuous conflict, and why it is so important to impose personal opinions and beliefs on other people. Understanding what determines human behavior is the only way to understand why

Devastated, I ran to my room gushing my eyes out. All these emotions going through my head of how my life would be without my parents in the same room or even house. From what I remember it all started about mid-June, the weeks before that were crucial. My parents would always argue over how to deal with a situation between me and my brother, Skyler. They hardly spoke to one another, but when they did they would just start bickering. I remember, one night after dinner they both went into ''their'' room with the door locked yelling at one another. Skyler and I didn’t know what to do, so we went downstairs and tried to figure out what was going to happen. With a scared tone I asked if mom and dad were going to get a divorce?" He answered back '' No, they love each other, they wouldn’t do that to us." That following night, was a school night everything was quiet except for my crying. I couldn’t sleep; all I was thinking about how it's going to affect my family.