Eh, I'm a risk taker, so here goes the truth.
First, cohesion consists of four choices (it's a quadrant, remember?)
Disengaged: "Family members maintain extreme separateness and independence, experiencing little belonging or loyalty." (31) Um, nope. I've got six kids at home, two of them still climb into my bed - we are not disengaged.
Connected: "Family members experience emotional independence as well as some sense of involvement and belonging." (31) Emotional independence? Sure. Well, except for the fact that my toddler won't play with other children if I try to leave the room and my teenager takes EVERYTHING I say as a personal affront. I guess that kind of makes them emotionally dependent. Let's see what's behind door number 3.
Cohesive: "Family members strive for emotional closeness, loyalty, and togetherness with emphasis on some individuality." (31) Can't you just tell this is the "healthy" choice? I want to choose this one, I really do...
Enmeshed: "Family members experience extreme closeness, loyalty, dependence and almost no individuality." (Olson, DeFrain, & Skogard, 2008)
I'm going to choose cohesive because I want to, but I have to admit we're bordering enmeshed.
1. My husband is training to be a pastor. This fact provides our family with an identity that is different from most of the people we will meet.
2. We homeschool. This fact separates us from major parts of society; I don't meet their classmates parents, or make friends at the high school football game. In some ways that separation is a blessing.
These things push us toward each other in times of emotional need, because it is the people in this family who understand what it's like to live in this family.
I lean back towards cohesive though because even with all that we share, everyone has their own interests. Mom is taking college classes, S. is writing a book, C. is studying music, T. is conducting science experiments and so on. They all support each other's interests without feeling a need to pursue someone else's passion.
To complete the quadrant, I had to next plot my family on a Flexibility line, again with four choices.
Rigid: "Family members experience very low levels of change, as well as authoritarian leadership and strict roles and rules." (32) Absolutely! This fits us quite accurately. Mom's rules are absolutes, and no one is confused about their role in this family. Yes, I've read all the studies about how authoritarian parenting is bad... blah, blah, blah. This is my choice and I'm sticking to it.... except that part about change. I'd be lying if I said that our family has experienced low levels of change.
Structured: "Family members experience more moderate levels of change as well as limited shared decision making and leadership and relatively stable roles and rules." (32) You know this is the "healthy" one, right? And, it's the one I would like to choose. We did let the kids decide how to spend the extra babysitting money we made last year, but moderate still doesn't describe the change that we've experienced.
Flexible: "Family members experience high levels of change, shared decision making, and shifting rules and roles." (32) High change, some shared decisions, Yes! That's us! I don't really know what shifting rules and roles means though.
Chaotic: "Family members experience very high levels of change as well as nonexistent leadership, confused and variable rules and roles." (Olson, DeFrain, & Skogard, 2008) Well, very high change, yes, but no to the rest of the definition.
This is much to difficult to plot, as I would say that we are like a ping pong ball being volleyed between rigidity and chaos. We've moved every summer for the past three years and we will continue to move every summer for two more years. Our youngest child will celebrate his sixth birthday before we can say that he has lived in any one place for more than a year at a time.
This pattern feeds itself into chaos, but the leadership in our family is rigid - the rules and roles are unchanging. In fact, we thrive on the stability that homeschooling provides because our school materials are the last thing to pack and the first to be unpacked. Even if the rest of our lives have been thrown around in the back of a moving truck and resides in piles of boxes; even if the world outside our door is frightening and unknown; when we sit down to begin our day, everything is just as it has always been.
I'd be done there, but I have to answer one more question; how does communication fit into all of this? We were open and honest about the life we were entering into. We prayed about the decision and discussed it with our children. I've continued to pray with them and for them as we go through this journey. They never had a choice in the matter, but we did expect them to trust God and to trust their parents to look out for their best interests and to take care of them. We've encouraged our children to recognize what is coming in their future, understand that there are some things they can not change and to make the best of whatever situation God calls them into.
UPDATE: 02/02/2012 Next step, answer this reflection question:
Look at your class mate's webpages and find a family who functions in a different quadrant from yours. Would this work for your family? Why or why not? (You are not judging your class mate's responses, rather you are looking at how they function, comparing it to how you function and then analyzing whether or not this would work for your family.)
I chose Tom's family. He describes a family that is connected and flexible. The children are older (college age and high school) than mine and they are more independent. This would not work for our family right now because the changes that we are going through are emotionally difficult for everyone and having a rock solid foundation here at home helps everyone get through it. In two years, we will be settled into a home that we can call permanent, Dad will have a job and a regular paycheck (as opposed to student loans), the oldest child will be in her senior year of high school and the younger children will be growing more independent. I can see our family heading for a time when we can be connected, but less dependent on each other... we're just not there yet.
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