In a recent family meeting, Matt asked people to boil down the role they played in the family to one word. One sibling identified herself as the “glue”, another as the “doer”, one was the “thinker”, another was the “barometer”. Spouses and partners had roles as well: the “catalyst”, the “hostess”, the “moral compass”. Identifying these roles took a matter of a few minutes.
The power of roles in families is fascinating. Every family member can identify his or her role with unerring ease. With the dizzying and often paralyzing complexity of family dynamics, it is startling that this one aspect is so crystal clear to every person involved. People can not only identify their roles, they can immediately describe – in detail – the routines and actions that they perform to fulfill them. They simply know – at a visceral level – what they are supposed to “be” and “do” when they are with their family. Each person reflexively knows how to enact his or her own role. Even more staggering is the wholehearted and universal agreement by everyone involved. Every family member instinctively knows the role of every other person in the family system with eerie precision. Families that agree on nothing else, agree on this matrix of roles almost instantaneously. It would be spooky if it wasn’t so universal.
It turns out that these roles are highly scripted. Various family situations call for certain roles to be enacted and everyone knows what his or her “job” is within the family structure when particular triggers occur. On cue, individual roles spring into action as if bidden by some secret and immutable force. Whenever the family gathers, the roles simply start to show up automatically and people start doing what they do. Some of this role-play is very prosaic and some is quite dramatic. The process is unthinking and wholly reactive. It is so subtle no one is even aware that it is happening except for the disorienting ennui it creates. To the participants it feels as though they are in a form of light trance – a vaguely dissociated state. Mature adults who function with great flexibility in their ordinarily lives often seem to flip a switch and start narrowly and inflexibly playing out their assigned roles as soon as they are with their extended families. Spouses are dumbstruck (at least at first), friends and colleagues would be astounded at the regression, and the family members are thoroughly vexed with themselves for so quickly reverting to these older, much more constrained versions of themselves.
This functionality of roles plays a significant part of what makes it difficult to change family systems. The entire system is structured – with multiple, complex and very powerful feedback loops – to “snap back” to everyone playing their assigned role. When people attempt to step out of their roles, the anxiety created by people who aren’t doing what is expected of them is often too much for the system to handle. The internal and external pressure to revert becomes intense. In truly disturbed family systems, the only choices available are to abandon a sense of self and comply to the point of personal damage or leave the family system to preserve any shred of personal coherence.
As it turns out, these roles reflect an underlying complex system for stress management. The system exists to reduce the stress points within the individual family members and the family as a whole. Whether functional or dysfunctional, these layered scripts exist to ameliorate tension and anxiety. To live in one’s role is a way to manage one’s own stress reactions. For the group as a whole, when one person becomes responsible for a particular role, it means that the others don’t have to worry about it or take responsibility. They are absolved of the dynamics that both give rise to the need that prompted the role response and even of the consequences of that role being activated. Whatever role is covered in the family means that “I” don’t have to take that on myself. I have outsourced my responsibility for that aspect of family function and, in the process, I can wash my hands of it. This abdication of responsibility often leads to pain, resentment, anger or depression in the person who is now carrying the collective responsibility solely on their shoulders for a significant portion of what “should” be – in a more perfect world – a collective responsibility.
A fundamental law of group dynamics is that these roles are ultimately not “personal”. This is often counter-intuitive to family members who have so identified the roles with personality structures that they cannot separate the two. (This is one place where family systems theory takes a slightly different tack than psychodynamic perspectives.) Who in the family system takes on each role is indeed affected by skill sets, temperament and personality; but these roles are actually functions that have evolved within the group system.
In one family meeting Matt was involved with there was a dramatic power shift from one generation to the next occurring in the family. Within about six hours (a very rapid change as these things go) it became clear that G4 (the fourth generation) was now calling the shots and G3 was not. The older generation (who as a collective had the role of “traditionalists”) was clearly moved gently but firmly from power. The shift was mostly merciful, but it was also unmistakable and undeniable. In the board meeting for the business held the following day, one of the leading proponents for change from this next generation of newly minted family leaders started to take positions that actually echoed the positions of the traditionalists. He was shocked. Matt was sitting next to him and three times during a two hour block this fellow turned to Matt completely flummoxed by what was coming out of his mouth and whispered “I cannot believe I am saying this.” He literally could make no sense of what he was saying nor why he was advocating quite strongly for things that he would have just as adamantly opposed only a mere day before. It seemed to him that he had lost a sense of his own volition – that he was, in an important way, not himself.
He was also obviously disquieted by this sense that he was not in control. During a break Matt told him that it seemed obvious (at least to him) that the voice of tradition and legacy had been effectively silenced in the group, but that the traditionalist perspective was important to group function. By temperament and personality, he was apparently silently nominated by the group as whole through a host of very subtle dynamics to take on the role of those who had been silenced and he had apparently, at some level, accepted that nomination. If it had not been him, it would have almost certainly been someone else. Normally this process happens so slowly (often over years and even decades) that it is almost imperceptible to the participants. The rapidity of the change in this family allowed this role transference to become starkly visible.
This shift and transmission of roles comes to the fore in generational transitions. If there are multiple children, often a complex set of roles held by the parents have been divvied up among children in the next generation who will take on various aspects of those roles. Indeed the roles themselves become subdivided into “subroutines” and parts of roles held by mom and dad can be held by one person. For example, mom’s caretaking and dad’s head for business land with one child while dad’s sense of fun and mom’s creativity are held by another. Thus function (and invariably dysfunction) gets distributed and re-distributed through the roles people play between generations, within sibling groups, and with the spouses and partners who enter the family system. Sometimes the structure of these role allocations is itself part of the tension that plays into sub-optimal family function.
From the perspective of family governance (i.e. how families decide to collaborate for their common good), roles have both substantial positive and negative impact.
On the positive side, roles can generate tremendous efficiencies. They play to individual strengths and to the overarching felt needs of the family as a whole. When people are acting in their role they are often in their comfort zone – it is familiar, even as it may be painful. When positively exercised, roles allow people to shine at what they are good at. This role playing also serves – at one important level – to decrease family stress and anxiety. The roles provide a structure that is predictable and a kind of stability results. The family system, no matter how dramatic or tumultuous, has its own “set point” that is supported by the roles people play. In this sense there is no dysfunctional family; every person is playing the role they are assigned and they are playing it to perfection. The system has evolved to the point it has to function as it does. Labeling the system as “dysfunctional” feeds a need for simple answers or facile labels, but overlooks the nuance of the complex game that is actually being played and why it is being played as it is. Oftentimes this means, from the point of view of facilitated change, that roles which are seen as negative must be reimagined and reframed within the family narrative so that the family as a whole can at last see what has been largely invisible to itself.
On the negative side, roles ultimately impede the growth and development of both the individuals within the family system and the family as a whole. Roles are always and invariably “too small” for the individuals who are cast in those roles. People are far more complex and multidimensional than their role would indicate. The result is that people cannot actually “see” each other apart from the role they and others play and the result is that people within the family feel unseen and disconnected. Family members are seen for their role, not for their broader selves. Moreover, families facing adaptive challenges must develop new skill sets and competencies. Staying stuck in roles impedes this development.
The other thing that roles perpetuate is a lack of personal responsibility and personal development. By splitting off the role to one person, and assigning that person responsibility for that role, every other person in the system is “off the hook” and allowed to take little responsibility for themselves in that area. The family exerts substantial pressure to lock each person in the role they have and everyone has a vested interest in keeping the system pinned where it is. This abdication of personal responsibility results in partial, inauthentic and even dishonest communication. It allows individuals to avoid playing outside of their comfort zones. For example, the “angry” one gets to express the anger of everyone so that those who are doing “anger by proxy” don’t have to express their own anger and thereby risk facing the anxiety provoking consequences and allowing them to be, for example, the “calm” or “reasonable” one. In some families, it gets to the point that all the negative stuff that no one really wants to admit to themselves ends up being carried by one person. In these families, that person becomes the scapegoat (which comes from the Jewish celebration of the Day of Atonement where the shortcomings of the entire nation were ritually laid on a goat that was then sent into the desert to die – an apt metaphor for what happens in many families).
One of the things that often occurs with roles is that they end up reflecting polarities that must be managed within the group or, in this case, within the family. Caretaking versus effectiveness. Feeling versus thinking. Stability versus change. Control versus spontaneity. Responsibility versus fun. When these natural polarities become polarized (i.e. the roles and the perspective they reflect become frozen in opposition), the family becomes stuck. So long as there is fluid movement within these polarities, a family tends to function reasonably well. Indeed, this flow between opposites is critical to group resilience, creativity, responsiveness, effectiveness, openness and peace.
So the trick in family governance becomes an interesting balancing act. Collectively, the family must begin to see one another beyond the roles people occupy. It is absolutely necessary that each person takes on more responsibility for themselves and the system as a whole. Individuals must take responsibility for showing up beyond their role. In short, the family members must be allowed to occupy more “space” in the family than their role currently allows them to. This requires both a kind of claiming by the person who wants to expand beyond their role and permission from the family not to unfairly fight that claim. This struggle for both individuation and connection is often not easy. The problem is that family “space” is often seen as circumscribed and therefore this kind of claiming and ceding is seen as a zero-sum game rather than as an opportunity to increase the size of the “space” of the family as a whole and each individual within it occupies. Failures of buy-in, commitment, and engagement arise from failures in this dance. Moving beyond these roles becomes a hallmark of maturity and adulthood within the family system. Because this work is potentially volatile, families often need a container – such as a facilitated family gathering – to actually do the work.
At the same time, the roles are there for a reason and they are, at root, healthy expressions of differentiation. When these roles are exercised well – which means consciously and with good boundaries – they are immeasurably useful to the family system. When people are operating in their roles with a kind of flexibility and conscious intention by all involved, the family benefits. Consequently, helping individuals develop their fuller range of motion and make choices to exercise their roles when appropriate and refrain when not becomes a critical skill for family governance.
Helping families address the roles in their family system is a necessary step in helping them figure out how to come to new agreements that will allow them to work together for the common good of the family. This work often requires education and skilled facilitation to be effective. Those families that allow individuals to shine in their roles while creating greater overall flexibility and flow in the polarities they deal with is key to solid family governance.
— July 1, 2013