Family: Legacies and Heredity

• Family is the basic unit of society and heavily influences individual development through genetics and environment.

Family Legacies

• Family legacies include social, emotional, and spiritual aspects passed from parent to child.
• Parents pass legacies to their children, which may be good, bad, or a combination of both.

Family Heredity

• Heredity is the sum of biological processes transmitting characteristics from parents to offspring.
• Environment also influences these characteristics.
• Influenced characteristics include physical traits (obesity/leanness), health-related genetics, and mental/cognitive abilities.
• Environmental factors like nutrition during pregnancy or childhood affect mental/cognitive development.
• Personality traits are 40-50% inherited.
• Temperament is an individual's manner and reaction to situations.
• Environmental factors influence personality traits, and these can be learned by observation.
• A healthy lifestyle and diet can offset genetic predispositions to diseases.

Observational Learning Factors

• Attention: Learner pays attention to what is being learned.
• Retention: Enhanced through repetition or application to real-life situations.
• Reproduction: Achieved through practice to sharpen skills.
• Motivation: Achieved through imitating behavior, affected by reinforcement and punishment.

Parenting Styles

• Authoritative parents have high but reasonable expectations, communicate warmly, and use reasoning.
• Considered key for adolescent psychosocial development.
• Helps raise children to make good decisions with respect and resilience.
• Permissive/Indulging parents show high support but have low expectations.
• Their children may rank low in happiness and self-regulation and have conflicts with authority.
• Uninvolved/Neglectful parents are low in both support and expectations.
• Their children tend to rank lowest in life skills, lack self-control and self-esteem, and are less competent.

Family Structures

• Family Structure: A family support system with married partners caring for offspring.
• Filipino Sociologist Belen T. G. Medina says the defintion of family includes all kinds of relational variation.
• This structure is made during birth ties across generations.
• Traditional/Nuclear Family: Father, mother, and dependent offspring.
• Father as provider, mother as homemaker are the traditional roles.
• Contemporary Lifestyles: There are now reversed traditional roles.
• Single Parent Family: A single parent raising a child.
• The family can be assisted financially by parents or relatives.
• Extended Family: Nuclear family plus parents, grandparents, and other relatives.
• Common in Asia, the husband is typically the head of the house, but decision-making disputes may arise due to opinions of older family members.
• Childless Family: Composed of a couple who either cannot or choose not to have children.
• Interracial Marriages: A family where the parents are members of different racial identity groups.
• Adoptive Families: A family wherein one or more of the children has been adopted.

Family Resilience Factors

• Positive Outlook: Helps to creatively deal with difficult situations and turn adversities into opportunities.
• Spiritual Values and Support Groups: Praying can calm the mind and bring peace, relating to resilience.
• Open, Supportive Communication: Facilitate understanding and collaborative coping.
• Adaptability: Willingness to adapt to crises and schedules reduces stress.
• Informal Social Support: Support from family and others makes individuals feel less alone and able to cope.

Spiritual Legacy

• Acknowledge and reinforce spiritual realities.
• Emphasize having a personal relationship with God, knowing God is loving and forgiving.
• View God as a personal, caring being.
• Make spiritual activities routine.
• Clarify timeless truths of what is right and wrong.
• Incorporate spiritual principles into everyday living.

Parental Guidance for Adolescents

• Openly discuss peer pressure, drugs, and alcohol.
• Be good role models about responsible relationships.
• Discuss love, sex, and relationships honestly.
• Help them understand body and emotional changes.
• Spend time with them.
• Support them at home and in school activities.
• Respect them.
• Be honest with them.
• Talk to them.
• Listen to them without judgment.

Social Influence

• Social influence is the effort of others that induces an effect on the attitudes and behaviors of people.
• People's attitudes or behaviors are affected by another person or group.

Principles of Social Influence

• Reciprocity/Mutuality: People tend to return favors and treat others as they are treated.
• Commitment, Obligation, and Consistency: People desire consistency, so they stick with commitments.
• Social Proof or Shared Evidence: People tend to do what others are doing.
• Authority or Power: People obey authority figures. They feel a sense of duty
• Liking or Fondness: People are influenced by individuals they like.
• Scarcity or Inadequacy: People want things that have limited availability.

Leadership

• Leadership is the ability to effect change in others to achieve desired goals, it is a relationship between leaders and followers.
• Requires collaborative efforts and coping with challenges.

Leadership Styles

• Autocratic/Authoritarian: Leaders vested with all aspects of leadership, make decisions themselves.
• Participative/Democratic: Leaders use consultative and participative styles for the welfare of the members.
• This leadership style is also known as “shared" or "group-centered leadership.
• Laissez-faire: Leaders give team members freedom to work and set deadlines.
• Teams are given autonomy and are challenged to generate novel ideas.

Effective Leadership

• Effective leaders adjust behaviors based on group circumstances.
• Autocratic style is adopted under time pressure.
• Democratic style is used when members can make wise decisions.
• Big five personality dimensions: extraversion/surgency, emotional stability, agreeableness, intellect/openness to experience, and conscientiousness.

Follower Types

• Conformist: Agrees with their leaders and commits to organizational goals.
• Exemplary: Optimistic, energetic, and thinks critically for decision-making.
• Passive: Does not exercise critical thinking, simply does what is instructed.
• Pragmatics: Remains in the background and express views after the majority has spoken.
• Alienated: Exudes negativism, challenges judgements and plays the devil's advocate.

Types of Relationships

• Parents and Family: Relationships based on birth, marriage, or adoption.
• Closeness, support, and communication within this family have an impact on romantic relationships.
• Friendship and Peers: Relationships based on shared interests, experiences, proximity, and bonding.
• Sources of relating to physical, emotional, psycho-social changes.
• Romantic Relationship: Relationships based on affection, trust, intimacy, and love.
• Essential in seeking a life longer partner.

Adolescent Relationships

• Adolescents experience attraction to the opposite sex and explore relationships.
• Attraction is the act of drawing or enticing.
• Commitment is binding oneself intellectually or emotionally to a course of action.
• Love is defined as strong affection or personalities attraction based on sexual desire or affection based on admiration.

Personal Relationships

• Personal Relationships: Relationships between friends, lovers, and family members.
• Personal relationships refer to close connections between people, formed by emotional bonds and interactions.
• Friendships become more important during adolescence and are characterized by mutual care and sharing.