This theory emerged from General Systems Theory by scholars who found it had many applications to families and other social systems. Any system is defined as a bounded set of interrelated elements exhibiting coherent behavior as a trait. (Constantine, 1986). Another definition is an assemblage of objects related to each other by some regular interaction or interdependence (Webster). Families are considered systems because they are made up of interrelated elements or objectives, they exhibit coherent behaviors, they have regular interactions, and they are interdependent on one another. The Components of Family Systems Theory are as follows: Family Systems… • have interrelated elements and structure. The elements of a system are the members of the family. Each element has characteristics; there are relationships between the elements; the relationships function in an interdependent manner. All of these create a structure, or the sum total of the interrelationships among the elements, including membership in a system and the boundary between the system and its environment. • interact in patterns. There are predictable patterns of interaction that emerge in a family system. These repetitive cycles help maintain the family's equilibrium and provide clues to the elements about how they should function. • have boundaries and can be viewed on a continuum from open to closed. Every system has ways of including and excluding elements so that the line between those within the system and those outside of the system is clear to all. If a family is permeable and vague boundaries it is considered \" open. \" Open boundary systems allows elements and situations outside the family to influence it. It may even welcome external influences. Closed boundary systems isolate its members from the environment and seems isolated and self-contained. No family system is completely closed or completely open. • function by the Composition Law: the Whole is More than the Sum of Its Parts. Every family system, even though it is made up of individual elements, results in an organic whole. Overall family images and themes are reflected in this wholistic quality. Unique behaviors may be ascribed to the entire system that do not appropriately describe individual elements. • use messages and rules to shape members. Messages and rules are relationships agreements which prescribe and limit a family members' behavior over time. They are repetitive and redundant. They are rarely, if ever, explicit or written down. They give power; they induce guilt; they …

Family Systems Theory

/pdf/family-and-its-problems-52rba53w4z.pdf

Family and its problems

From Cave Art to Hubble: A History of Astronomical Record Keeping

Nnedi Okorafor is one of the best-known speculative fiction writers who has centred African perspectives and delinked from Western models. In her trilogy, Binti (2015), Binti Home (2017) and Binti the Night Masquerade (2017a), Okorafor disrupts the dominant white-masculine supremacist convention and traditions for a more diverse and inclusive narrative. In this article, I use decolonial thinking and the lens of Sankofa, a decolonial and African knowledge philosophy and worldview, to explore how Okorafor uses settings, characterisation, and ancient African traditional knowledge to achieve a decolonial turn in speculative fiction. By centring Sankofa, Okorafor sets her fantastic stories in Namibia among the indigenous and marginalised Himba people. She creates strong female characters who embody a multiplicity of beings operating intricately in a complex earthly, spatial and spirit world, and she exploits ancient African traditional culture and knowledge systems to create her 'organic fantasy' and a world of speculative fiction that transforms Western understandings of the genre.

Exploring Nnedi Okorafor's decolonial turn in the Binti Trilogy

Fathers occupy a serious role in adolescents’ development. The psychological effect of a father’s absence to his family deters development of offspring from early childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood. Thus, the present paper is concerned with one type of the disrupted families, the father-absent family. This plentiful and complicated theme, in relation to the psychological and behavioral development of children and adolescents, is central in Anne Tyler’s most legendary novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982). Accordingly, the aim of this study is to probe the dynamics of the dysfunctional family in Tyler’s novel focusing on the psychological aftermaths of the sudden abandonment of the father and living in a mother-headed family on the development of the adolescent son, Cody. A contextual understanding of family-systems theory (FST), literature on sudden, unexpected events, father-absence and mother-headed families guided this study. Accordingly, the case study provides the opportunity to answer the following questions: To what extent father absence has any unique behavioral and psychological effects upon adolescents in this family and what are the psychological outcomes of the sudden, unexpected departure of a father on the solo mother.

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/article_75616_1edd585518b291c9fa3a71d2db71b577.pdf

Father-Absence in Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Afrofuturism is a flourishing contemporary movement in African and African American studies. It has attracted black diasporic writers, artists, musicians, and theorists. Afrofuturism has been described by cultural critics as a way of looking, navigating and imagining future conditions of life through a black lens. Afrofuturists illuminate up-to-date issues by placing them in fantastical contexts; more specifically, they address themes and concerns of the black people that have been otherwise neglected in the western futurist canon. One of the most prominent afrofuturist authors, with a close connection to Africa, is Nnedi Okorafor. Her novella Binti (2015), a space travel adventure through an Afrocentric lens, deftly explores questions about the cultural identity in a futuristic world. Accrodingly, the study aims to explore the theme of the African identity in Okorafor’s novella, focusing on selected visionary references rooted in African culture to signify a new image for the African in a new environment, where blackness is technologically managed. In so doing, the paper highlights the mix between the incredible myths of the Himba people and technoculture, which make it possible for Okorafor to challenge the stereotypical view of the African identity, put a black face on the future, and mark the novella as an African-inspired futuristic work.

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/article_160892_7646974b0e4eca9b578b13dfe8f6c122.pdf

(Reimagining African Identity through Afrofuturism: A reading of Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti (2015

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Father-Absence in Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

(Reimagining African Identity through Afrofuturism: A reading of Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti (2015