Resolving Family Conflict Essay Research Paper Families

Resolving Family Conflict Essay, Research Paper

Families provide people with an atmosphere in which to live, grow, and develop. A family culture is established by the parents and instilled in the children during their upbringing. A healthy family is a family which follows a set of strong morals, stays loyal to one another, cooperates, and works together to avoid conflict. An environment where there is openness amongst family members is ideal because minds that are open are more susceptible to avoiding conflict than minds that are closed. If conflict gets the best of a family, it has the potential to increase hostility and create remoteness between family members, however, if a family resolves conflict, it can strengthen and enforce the family relationships.

A family must establish a set of values and morals that the members should try to live and abide by. It does not mean writing them down on paper and following them as if they are laws, but it simply means taking a practical approach to raising a family. The best way to ensure that these morals are followed by the children is by having the parents follow them as well. Children learn by modeling the authorities and in every family, the authorities are the parents. The parents are ultimately responsible for their children s behavior because the children act accordingly to what they are taught and what they witness. If the parents set a bad example for behavior, chances are that the children justify any wrong behavior by arguing that that is how their parents act.

An important precept that any parent should follow is not to give into temptation. This means being loyal to their partner by not committing acts of adultery. Willy Loman gave into temptation. He did not follow proper morals when his exposure to loneliness got the best of him. His son, Biff, was devastated after he caught his father being disloyal and having an affair behind his mother s back. The incident scarred Biff for life and at the same time, caused great conflict between him and his father. If Willy would not have even become involved in an affair, his relationship with his son and family could have been more fulfilling. However, Willy was an impulsive, even selfish thinker and he went ahead with having an affair, giving in to temptation.

For a parent to have an affair is very risky because it jeopardizes his whole family relationship. If his actions continue, disloyalty can lead to greater conflict and eventually complete family dysfunction. That is why a person must choose a partner wisely. We must choose a partner with whom loyalty seems most likely and feelings of temptation seem absent. When there is loyalty in a family, there is less hostility between family members, which leads to less conflict.

However, conflict can take on many forms, so for a family to be fully prepared to deal with conflict, family members must be willing to cooperate with one another in a mature and civilized manner. Stubbornness is a mental blockade in people that can prevent families from resolving their differences. It causes people to be narrow-minded and prevents them from considering and visualizing other people s views, which makes it even harder for families to overcome conflict. No family or group is perfect; however, it should not be too much to ask from each person for a little cooperation and open-mindedness on most issues. Cooperating is one way to combat conflicts that arise. If a family succeeds in resolving conflict, then the process that they took resolving that conflict can strengthen their relationship and turn a negative situation into a positive one.

Willy Loman was a man who created conflict because of his stubbornness. His mind was closed to suggestions from people, and he did not want to be the first to admit that he was wrong. His family suffered because of this characteristic, and as a result, they were unable to resolve conflicts that festered over long periods and eventually developed into deep, emotional hurts which never healed.

Miscommunication was also a reason for why these deep, emotional hurts never healed. Willy was unwilling to talk with Biff about the affair incident that Willy created his own reasons for why Biff did not get along with him. Willy insisted that Biff was spiting him, but in reality, Biff had already come to accept the fact that his father was not perfect and that spiting him had worn off as a motive for retribution. It was not until the end of the play that Willy and Biff reconciled after they finally talked about their differences and their love for each other. It turned out, all they needed to do was just talk to each other, instead of fighting and refusing to confront one another.

A family should be willing to take risks and confront problems that pose as conflicts. Confronting every single issue is not healthy, but confronting those issues that significantly bother family members should be considered. Linda was an emotionally weak character who was unable to confront Willy about his thoughts of committing suicide. She was afraid of what might happen if he found out that she knew that he was emotionally unstable. Psychologically, she was powerless to talk him out of the state he was in, so each day she tried to sweep the problem under the rug, hoping that it would magically go away. Unfortunately, there came the day when she could no longer sweep the problem under