Family Systems Quotes

“All relationship systems become anxious. People put together and inevitably anxiety will arise. Anxiety can be infectious. We can give it to others or catch it from them. What precisely triggers anxiety is unique to each system. Common Activators are significant changes and losses. They upset the stable patterns and balance of the system.”
― Peter L. Steinke

“Attitudes and ignorance” about (any type of) abuse can be passed down through the generations. It is important to our healing that we sort out the belief systems we adopt; belief systems that were taught to us and because they are so full of lies, they lead to all kinds of depressions, addictions and other struggles while we try to cope with the manifestations of the problems instead of the roots of the problems.”
― Darlene Ouimet

“Anxious systems also fail to get a clear view of things. Embedded in their dread, they lose a sense of proportion. They have little awareness of what is happening and how it is being mutually maintained. Emotionally cramps the broader view.”
― Peter L. Steinke, How Your Church Family Works: Understanding Congregations as Emotional Systems

“In nineteenth century Europe (and later in other parts of the world) the transition from a subsistence to a market economy based on the use of wage labor caused a net loss of autonomy for kin-based groups and households. Individuals became more dependent on external political, economic, and ideological forces. A profound contradiction resulted from the increasing individuation of the labor force and the need to maintain collective mechanisms for the reproduction of the working class through preexisting but constantly evolving patterns of family, household, and kinship organization. In other words, the advance of capitalism created a dynamic opposition between productive and reproductive spheres.”
― Eleanor Burke Leacock, Women's Work: Development and the Division of Labor by Gender

“It was not until I did my family genogram as part of my Masters in Counseling Psychology training that I learned of some of the devastating, traumatic events that had impacted my family-of-origin. Many genograms my clients have done as part of their family systems exploration reveal sudden, unexpected deaths (including suicides); illness; stillbirths; divorce; abandonment; 'missing' relatives'; and profound financial setbacks and losses.”
― Rebecca C. Mandeville, Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Understanding Family Scapegoating Abuse

“The very first conception of a Socialistic State is such a relation of the sexes as shall prevent men and women from falling into selfish family groups. Family life is eternally at war with Socialistic life. When you have a private household, you must have private property to feed it, hence a community of goods; the first idea of a Socialistic State has been found in every case to imply a community of children and to promote a community of wives.”
― William Beanland, The Case Against Socialism, Plainly Stated for the Man in the Street