One of the things that I have learned this week as I studied about the family was just how important it is to look at the family through family systems theory.  Families operate according to the different roles that they fall into within the family system.  They do not necessarily get to choose what role they are going to fulfill, they just fill what is needed.  We can see this with the example of the good kid and the bad kid.  When the bad kid leaves the system and moves out, then his role is free and needs to be filled.  This is where the good kids comes into play.  Because there is a role that is not being filled, the good kid fills the void that has become.  The good kid starts to act out and to make trouble and this helps to fill the hole that has been created in the family.  We are able to learn so much about our families and other families when we look at different family systems.  There are tons of possibilities that can happen within a family and if we look for the different subsystems we can learn a lot about families.

One of the other things that I found to be very interesting was circular casualty.  This just basically means that we play different roles in different systems.  We play a different role when we are at home as opposed to when we are at work or with our friends.  I just thought that this was extremely interesting because it’s true.  When I look at my life I act differently in different situations, but I think that this is the case with lots of different people as well.  Everyone fulfills different roles according to what the system needs at that moment.