Dysfunctional Families: Types, Signs, & Systems​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Dysfunctional families experience abuse or neglect, conflict, or other kinds of misbehavior. How do families end up this way? Let’s see what the science says.
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As a child, I instinctively knew which of my friends’ families were really struggling. I could hear it in the way the parents talked to each other; I could see it when my friends didn’t want to invite me over; I could hear it when a friend said it was better that their parents didn’t show up for the track meet or the concert anyway. As an adult and as a therapist, I can now see more subtle signs of dysfunction in family systems—and I see some degree of it almost everywhere. 
Most families, if not nearly all, face some differences of opinion and bumps in the road. My own family is no exception, although I could not see this at first.

At the same time, some families might be said to cross a threshold into truly dysfunctional—the point where challenges become pathological and real harm might happen to family members. Why do families get to this point? What are the signs that a family is truly in distress? Let’s see what the science says.
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What Are Dysfunctional Families? (A Definition)​

Dysfunctional families are sometimes defined as those where abusive behaviors are present, or substance use impacts the family, or there is emotional, physical, or sexual abuse present (Kolko & Kazdin, 1990). In dysfunctional families, interpersonal conflict is often frequent and intense, leaving the whole family in a state of chronic stress. Or the children in the family may be engaged in dangerous or risky behaviors that put a strain on their parents and the whole family dynamic. Families in which one or more members have an especially impairing mental illness may also be considered dysfunctional if the mental illness has a strong impact on the family’s overall functioning.
 
You might be thinking, “Wow, a whole lot of families could fall under this umbrella.” And you would be right. If you consider all the characteristics I listed above, you might see how many of them are dimensional, meaning they exist on a spectrum of intensity. Parents who yell at each other once a month might not be raising a dysfunctional family, but parents who have screaming matches most nights of the week probably are. A family that occasionally has to deal with a parent coming home drunk might not be dysfunctional, but a family without income because the working parent is too intoxicated to hold a steady job probably is. 

In other words, some traits of dysfunctional families are possessed by more functional families too, just to a lesser degree. At the same time, any family in which physical, emotional, or sexual abuse occurs even rarely would likely be considered a dysfunctional one.

Causes of Dysfunctional Families​

A dysfunctional family results from dysfunctional relationships within the family (Minuchin, 1985). Having one dysfunctional relationship within a family can be enough to stress the whole family system if the other family members get involved to try to resolve the dispute. For example, a child may be triangulated into trying to resolve their parents’ arguments, and this triangulation can easily bring the child into conflict with both parents. As a result, many dysfunctional families likely have multiple problematic relationships within the family.

Why are these relationships dysfunctional in the first place? We can look to a socioecological model to understand this. Socioecological models suggest that factors at multiple levels of society can and do impact most outcomes in our lives (Tudge et al., 2009). Things can go wrong at the individual, interpersonal, familial, and societal levels to cause family dysfunction. For example, a parent’s diagnosis with schizophrenia may mean that they struggle to meet their parenting responsibilities. At the interpersonal level, incompatibilities of personality between parents can decrease their ability to run a household together. At the societal level, lacking money or other resources, or being in the minority in terms of race or ethnicity, can cause an otherwise well-functioning family to struggle.

Examples of Dysfunctional Families

Here’s one example of how a dysfunctional family may come into existence. Imagine a family where both parents have regular high levels of anxiety. The parents may try to reduce their own anxiety by controlling their children, may avoid important parenting responsibilities because of their anxiety, or may fight with each other because of their anxiety. All of this could explain why families with at least one anxious parent are more likely to be dysfunctional than families without anxious parents (Ben-Noun, 1998).

Another common example is a family with a substance-abusing parent. Whether it is alcohol or another drug, the rest of the family often has to compensate for the ways a parent with an addiction will struggle to meet their responsibilities. I have a friend whose mother’s alcoholism meant that she often had to take care of her younger siblings, even though a five-year-old had no business trying to console a crying sister or make the younger siblings sandwiches. Children in this situation sometimes end up going to the grocery store in place of their parents, or are even sent into the neighborhood bar to try to convince their parent to come home. Obviously, these are not responsibilities a young child should have to carry.

Dysfunctional Family Systems

From a family systems perspective, as previously noted, dysfunctional families result from painful or ineffective dynamics between the family members (Minuchin, 1985). One difficult dynamic can spill over to affect the rest of the family. From this perspective, the family system starts to become dysfunctional when it experiences stressors that it cannot handle effectively. For example, I have a close friend whose parents have always cared for her very much but did not understand how to support her in her challenges with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The family was dysfunctional in the sense that she felt shame and sadness about her difficulties with attention and believed that she was a bad person, and in the sense that her parents did little to change those thoughts and feelings.

Dysfunctional Family Types

We can differentiate among dysfunctional families according to the specific challenges they face, although many families face multiple stressors. For example, one type of dysfunctional family is the family in which one or both parents are emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive. However, in many of these families, the children will end up having challenges of their own—either internalizing all the pain they experience in the family or externalizing it by getting into trouble outside the home (Parke & Clarke-Stewart, 2003). As they get older, these children may end up involved in drug use or criminal activity themselves (Buelow, 1995; Johnston, 1995).
 
Another type of dysfunctional family is the type where one or both parents have an addiction, and this can have consequences for the children in the family even into adulthood (Harrington & Metzler, 1997). Some dysfunctional families end up having a parent removed from the home, and this can sometimes reduce the stress on the family system (Uggen et al., 2005).

Dysfunctional Family Signs​

Often, if any member of the family seems to be having psychological challenges such as depression or anxiety, this may mean that there is family dysfunction going on as well (Wang et al., 2020). For example, many children react to family dysfunction by trying to behave as perfectly as possible, reasoning that this way they can reduce the stress in the family.
 
Other signs of a dysfunctional family include high levels of stress, conflict, and punishment (MacPherson et al., 2018). Parents in dysfunctional families often express few positive emotions and plenty of negative emotions. Children who struggle greatly in building and maintaining successful relationships with their peers may have family problems at home. In general, dysfunctional families often seem disorganized and a bit chaotic, and things that most families can handle with ease are often very challenging and upsetting for them.

Dysfunctional Family Dynamics

Dysfunctional families struggle with at least six different dynamics (Epstein et al., 1978). These are behavior control, affective involvement, affective responsiveness, roles, communication, and problem solving. Let’s look at a couple of these in more detail. “Affect” in this context means emotions, so in dysfunctional families, parents may be too involved, or not involved enough, in helping their children manage their emotions. They may also ignore or discount their children’s emotions instead of validating them. Parents may also be far too controlling, or not nearly controlling enough, of their children’s behaviors. In terms of roles, many dysfunctional families have parentified children—children who have stepped into the responsibilities of a parent because their actual parents are not meeting those responsibilities.

Dysfunctional family dynamics can also be understood through the lens of trying and failing to find the right balance between independence and attachment within each family relationship (Wang et al., 2020). While this is most relevant for families with teenagers, most dysfunctional families will have difficulty with family members either being too close to each other or too distant from each other. These dynamics can easily lead to greater tension in the family.​

If you’d like to learn more about what most dysfunctional families have in common, I recommend watching this video:

Video: 8 Common Characteristics of a Dysfunctional Family

Dysfunctional Families and Keeping Secrets

Children and adults alike in dysfunctional families may hesitate to share with the rest of the world how difficult things are at home. There is frequently shame attached to how one’s family just doesn’t seem to function as well as other families do (Newman, 1993). Often, children will assume that the dysfunction is driven by their own behaviors, which makes it especially shameful and hard to tell teachers or other trusted adults about what’s going on.

Dysfunctional Family Rules

Dysfunctional families will often have too few or too many rules. For example, research has linked one’s likelihood of having an eating disorder to experiencing lots of strict rules and regulations around eating in the home (Crowther et al., 2002). At the same time, parents who provide no structure or rules around food may put their children at risk of being overweight (Sleddens et al., 2011).

​Dysfunctional Family Roles in Addiction

Much has been written about how children in families with addiction end up taking on extreme roles to survive (Black, 2013). Some become high-achieving perfectionists while others fade into the background. Still others become caretakers for their parents or engage in delinquent behaviors. In a more functional family, these children would not feel compelled to behave in these ways in order to feel safe, get attention, or avoid negative interactions with other family members.

Dysfunctional Families in Adulthood

Perhaps you won’t be surprised at this point to hear that children who grow up in dysfunctional families have increased rates of mental health disorders in adulthood (Higgins & McCabe, 2003). They are also more likely to show personality traits that could lead them to become dysfunctional parents themselves (Gumbiner et al., 1996).

Quotes on Dysfunctional Families

  • “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” — Leo Tolstoy
  • “A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” — Mary Karr
  • “In my family, as in all dysfunctional families, instead of parents who act as strong and nurturing role models for their children, you get these needy people who use their children. I was the kid who tried to take on the marriage.” — John Bradshaw
  • “Family dysfunction rolls down from generation to generation, like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children that follow.” — Terry Real

Articles Related to Dysfunctional Families​

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Dysfunctional Families​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Dysfunctional Families​

As I said before, every family has its issues. For those families whose issues are severe enough that we could consider them dysfunctional, many forms of help are available. If you know of a family like this, or are living in a family like this, I encourage you to investigate the kinds of social services and psychotherapy that are known to help struggling families. When members of a family move past the stigma of admitting their family is struggling, there is often far more help available than they may have realized.

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