Defensive and Supportive Communications in Family Systems

To evaluate the application of Systems Theory concepts to family functioning, videotape recordings of 21 families performing two discussion tasks were analyzed for the frequency of defensive and supportive communications. The data demonstrated that normal families behaved as adaptive systems, both in generating and reciprocating high rates of supportiveness. Conversely, system disintegrating defensiveness occurred at a much lower rate, and was not reciprocated. As an additional focus, rates of parental defensive and supportive communications to son were related to rates of son 's aggressive behavior. As hypothesized, son's aggression was positively related to mother's defensiveness, and inversely related to mother's and father's supportiveness. It was concluded that although the data were correlational, they provided support for the hypothesis that the patterns of defensiveness, and supportiveness, of parents towards their son influences his tendency to act aggressively in other interpersonal contexts.