Family Re-Organisation

The family stays a family after divorce, albeit a family that is organised in a different manner. It seems that some families manage re-organisation with an effortless ease where others find it very difficult to adjust to new ways of relating after separation and divorce.

Let us illustrate the re-organisation of the family after divorce with the following example of a family with a father, mother and two children. Prior to separating or divorce the family system could be described in the following manner.

Example 1

In this diagram you could see that the adults form a system, the children form a system and the family form a system. In the adult system two relationships exist simultaneously. They have a relationship as spouses and they have a relationship as parents. The children have relationships as siblings and the parents have parent-child relationships with their children. They are all family.

Once there is a separation, the family re-organises itself. The re-organisation could be something as set out in diagram two.

Example 2

In the re-organised family the spousal relationship between the parents cease to exist. The parental relationship between them continues. The children sustain their sibling relationship and now have to develop a distinctly separate relationship with each parent. The family is still a family.

As mentioned previously not all families re-organise with the same ease. Here are some reasons why families experience difficulties in this regard:

• The parents cannot separate their spousal and parental relationships
• The parents did not develop a parental relationship
• The parents cannot sustain an independent relationship with one or more children
• The children refuse contact with a parent
• One or both parents resist change and get locked into a high-conflict pattern of relating.
• One parent alienates the children from the other parent.