Jay A. Mancini

Families and Communities: A Social Organization Theory of Action and Change

Families and the community structures and processes that surround them are the focus of this chapter. A social organization theoretical framework is employed as a means of understanding prior work on how families and their communities intersect, and is also invoked to suggest new directions in this area of family science. As backdrop to presenting a theory of action and change, major works in family science, from the 1960s through the present, are analyzed regarding discussions of the families/communities interface. These major works include all sourcebooks and theory compilations centered on families. In addition, three principal journals in family science are analyzed for the period of 2000–2009, with a focus on family research centered on community contexts. This analysis provides a clear roadmap for directions future research might take. The chapter concludes by presenting the essential elements of a social organization theory of action and change, including its assumptions about families and their communities. Community antecedents (the social and physical infrastructures), social organizational processes (networks, social capital, and community capacity), intermediate results (sense of community), and important outcomes for individuals and their families are then elaborated.

Familias Fuertes: Family Resilience Among Latinos

Family life is vital to most Latinos. Family resilience thus is an important perspective for family scholars working with Latino families to adopt because of its focus on wellness and adaptability, in effect, punctuating the strengths common among Latino families. Toward the latter part of the twentieth century, conversations among family scientists and family therapists more and more included the concept of resilience. Researchers began examining family dynamics that provided a more accurate portrayal of family life, as well as in terms of providing professional support to families. Wolin and Wolin (1993) discussed both the “damage model” and the “challenge model” as they pertained to prevention and intervention, highlighting the significance of identifying and extracting the strengths families possess. Elevating aspects of strength and resilience is particularly important for working with families, who at first glance may be viewed as characterized mainly by needs and deficits, often an inaccurate and skewed portrayal. A strengths perspective views the glass as “half-full” rather than “half-empty.” This is significant because families may present themselves in clinical settings as primarily having deficits rather than as possessing strengths and assets and living everyday life where negative and positive elements intersect.

The Willingness of Military Members to Seek Help: The Role of Social Involvement and Social Responsibility.

Anchored in the social organization theory of action and change, we use data from a large sample of active-duty Air Force members to examine the direct and indirect influence of social involvement and social responsibility on willingness to seek help in times of need via trust in formal systems and informal supports. Group comparisons are conducted between junior male, junior female, senior male, and senior female service members. The key mediational path in the model for all groups is the connection between social involvement and willingness to seek help via trust in formal systems. These results can inform both unit- and community-level interventions intended to increase the likelihood that active-duty AF members will seek help in times of need.

Resilient family processes, personal reintegration, and subjective well-being outcomes for military personnel and their family members.

Deployment affects not just the service members, but also their family members back home. Accordingly, this study examined how resilient family processes during a deployment (i.e., frequency of communication and household management) were related to the personal reintegration of each family member (i.e., how well each family member begins to “feel like oneself again” after a deployment), as well as several indicators of subjective well-being. Drawing from the family attachment network model (Riggs & Riggs, 2011), the present study collected survey data from 273 service members, their partners, and their adolescent children. Resilient family processes during the deployment itself (i.e., frequency of communication, household management), postdeployment positive and negative personal reintegration, and several indicators of well-being were assessed. Frequency of communication was related to personal reintegration for service members, while household management was related to personal reintegration for nondeployed partners; both factors were related to personal reintegration for adolescents. Negative and positive personal reintegration related to a variety of subjective well-being outcomes for each individual family member. Interindividual (i.e., crossover) effects were also found, particularly between adolescents and nondeployed partners.

Contextualizing the Psychosocial Well‐being of Military Members and Their Partners: The Importance of Community and Relationship Provisions

Evidence of the impact of communities has been documented for a variety of individual and relational outcomes, including mental and physical health as well as the quality of romantic and parent-child relationships. The military represents a rather unique work context; in that, it is generally considered a lifestyle with a distinct culture and community. Yet, military families are also members of their broader, comprehensive community. Drawing from the social organizational theory of action and change (SOC) (Mancini & Bowen, 2013), and relationship provisions theory (Weiss, 1969) and utilizing a sample of 266 active duty military families, this study examined connectedness with the military community and the broader, comprehensive community. A dyadic model was evaluated whereby each partners perspective of their comprehensive and military community was hypothesized to influence their own psychosocial well-being as well as their partners psychosocial well-being. The role of relationship provisions (that is, having relationship needs met) as a mechanism linking community connections to psychosocial well-being was also examined. Overall, the findings supported the hypothesized model, particularly for intra-individual effects and military members. Findings emphasize the importance of considering what is gained from connections within a community rather than a focus solely on the connections themselves.

Relational Tourism: Observations on Families and Travel

Experiences with travel and tourism can often be described as relational tourism because of the interpersonal and familial context in which these activities occur. There are two very general approaches to understanding relational tourism, one involving a life cycle orientation and the other focused on family interaction and transaction. Five elements of the relational tourism life cycle are described, beginning with formal organization opportunities and ending with over-the-horizon planning. Individual and family experiences are presented within each element. Then three primary ways of viewing family dynamics are presented, including social exchange, symbolic interaction, and family systems perspectives. The combination of these life cycle and family dynamics approaches provide a more informed method for understanding the quality of family life as it relates to relational tourism.

Community capacity and the psychological well-being of married U.S. air force members

This book focuses on the key issues that affect military families when soldiers are deployed overseas, focusing on the support given to military personnel and families before, during and after missions. Todays postmodern armies are expected to provide social-psychological support both to their personnel in military operations abroad and to their families at home. Since the end of the Cold War and even more so after 9/11, separations between military personnel and their families have become more frequent as there has been a multitude of missions carried out by multinational task forces all over the world. The book focuses on three central questions affecting military families. First, how do changing missions and tasks of the military affect soldiers and families? Second, what is the effect of deployments on the ones left behind? Third, what is the national structure of family support systems and its evolution?. The book employs a multidisciplinary approach, with contributions from psychology, sociology, history, anthropology and others. In addition, it covers all the services, Army, Navy/Marines, Air Force, spanning a wide range of countries, including UK, USA, Belgium, Turkey, Australia and Japan. At the same time it takes a multitude of perspectives such as the theoretical, empirical, reflective, life events (narrative) approach, national and the global, and uses approaches from different disciplines and perspectives, combining them to produce a volume that enhances our knowledge and understanding of military families. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, sociology, war and conflict studies and IR/political science in general.