Conflict Management within Family by Tyler Roden

Conflict Management within Family by Tyler Roden

When I was growing up a constant conflict I had to face was arguing with my brother, Todd. My brother, who is seven years older than me and more than twice my size, used to pick on me. We used to fight about everything: who got to ride in the front seat of the car, who mom “loved more”, and who was “adopted”.  This felt like a para-conflict since as a participant of the conflict I felt it was detrimental to our relationship. Viewing this conflict from the prospective approach my brother and I had conflicting goals which led to us exhibiting conflicting behavior (fighting one another). Seeing the conflict from a retrospective view people who might see my brother and me from a distance might say we were loving siblings but once meeting us could see that we had problems with one another. I think it was easiest to see my conflict by the destructive approach. My brother and I exhibited aggressive behavior because we viewed our conflicts from a win or lose perspective. If we had really wanted to solve our problems we would have taken a constructive approach by focusing on the issues that we could resolve easily, like who could sit in the front seat. Our conflict was continuous but my brother and I refused to view it as such. If we would have accepted our conflict as a “continuous phenomenon, conflict to be condition to be managed to be managed and maintained” we might have gotten along more.

References:

Hawes, L.C., & Smith, D. H. (1973). A critique of assumptions underlying the study of communication in conflict. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 59, 425.