What About the Parts?

I went to a Classical Education high school and we even had a house system like in Harry Potter. However, we had different scholars in history as our house names Euclid being one of them. I was drafted into Euclid my freshman year and quickly our motto became his theory, "The whole is greater than the part."

This week in my Family Relations class we went over different theories for the family. Some of these theories include Systems Theory, Symbolic Interaction Theory, Exchange Theory, and Conflict Theory. I want to focus on systems theory for this post in particular.

Systems theory is judging a group as it's whole but is made up of individual parts. Each part has a role and rules to obey. When compared to a family these rules can be implied, spoken, or just a mutual agreement. However, I can't help but wonder what happens when a part is suffering? Let's be honest here when a person is suffering?

Within the text from Lauer & Lauer, explains that there are usually subgroups and they may seem threatening but they maintain the system's balance most of the time. They give an example of a mother and child subgroup that supports each other against and abusive and alcoholic father/husband. This begs the question of this situation if the group is really greater than the part?

While I am a huge advocate for the family, I wonder at what point it would be better to separate and individualize. Obviously, the father is influencing the subgroup and is creating a situation in which the mother and child's relationship grows stronger but do we excuse his behavior as just that being his role?

Perhaps I should give a personal example as I might be reflecting feelings I have been having on my own lately. I am the eldest of 3 girls and both my parents are married still. However, there are 7 years between each child, and when I was an only child my parents separated and I lived primarily with my mother. Ever since I can remember she would always say, "It's you and me against the world" "You and me forever." Even after my sisters were born and my parents got back together would she tell me this. Life in my family just got harder and harder even though my parents never separated again, and it got to a point where I was helping provide and then switched with my mom and I would take care of the girls for hours at a time. Close family friends and even family members would tell me with pity in their voices about how I never had a childhood and how fast I had to grow up. My role was literally "Mama Duda" as my sister would call me.

Now my dad though I honestly believe he tried to be apart of our lives wasn't always there. He took his ROLE as provider too seriously at times. So here we are as a family with unconventional roles. An absent father, 2 disagreeing "mothers," and two girls who haven't had to deal with the trials of adulthood and hopefully enjoy their adolescence and childhood.

I am now married and out of the house, trying to start my own family with my husband. I feel like I finally have the opportunity to individualize and separate from the group even though I was subgrouped with my mom and sisters usually all against my dad even if that's not what we really wanted.

The point is this is just a theory but I can't help but think that the whole isn't that great when the parts are suffering and can't keep themselves great. So perhaps another theory would fit better for unconventional families.