Family is the basic unit of social operation, an institution and group form established by human beings on the basis of marriage, blood relationship or adoption relationship. Family members in the traditional sense mainly include parents and children. With the socio-economic and cultural development and the coexistence of multiple cultures, family composition is also diversified to present, such as butch family, singlism, single father or mother, and homosexual family. This requires us to respond to the diverse process of family with a more inclusive and variable attitude. Normal Family Process What then is a normal family? The early view of the normal family process was that it was free of problems or symptoms. This argument was based on a traditional pathological deficit orientation that emphasized the pathological component of the family process and ignored the positive resources of the interactive process. In fact, there is still a long way to go between “no problems” and “happiness”. Another view is that “normal families” are normal, i.e., the mode of operation of most families in the same socio-cultural context. In fact, common family patterns may not be healthy, such as patriarchy and domestic violence at certain times, which are destructive to families and individuals. Other scholars have proposed the concept of “healthy families,” which defines normal family processes in terms of the ideal qualities of optimal family functioning. People may follow mainstream social values or specific ethical and religious beliefs that certain modes of functioning are optimal, correct, or important for marriage and the education of children. Mainstream sociologists and psychiatrists have supported this theoretical model for the past several decades, defining families that deviate from the norm as pathologized and would discriminate against those that are not mainstream, such as divorced or widowed families, homosexual families, etc. All three models of normal families are based on the traditional linear causal assumption that a phenomenon or problem in a family process is inevitably caused by a corresponding cause, and often aim to identify the causal factors and culprits of the family. A well-known example is the “schizophrenic mother”, which suggests that schizophrenics are caused by a controlling and highly emotionally expressive mother. As the Chinese saying goes, “Every family has its own problems”, it is not so easy to find out who is right and who is wrong about family problems. In clinical observations, it has been found that what is surprisingly often behind problematic families is the criticism, blame, coldness, and control between members, and that these uncomfortable expressions are causally intertwined among family members. Thus, a family systems theory-based perspective rejects the concepts of “normal” and “abnormal” and emphasizes patterns of integration and maintenance in family processes that are conducive to maintaining family functioning. For some specific families, the abnormal mode of functioning can, in turn, maintain good family functioning. For example, in couples facing emotional breakdown, separation or divorce may be more conducive to the psychosomatic development of family members. According to the renowned psychologist Minooking, the composition of family members is far less important than the patterns of interaction in the family. The most important characteristic of families with good adaptive interactions is adaptability. Adaptive families have a sufficient number of alternative patterns of interaction and can mobilize the flexibility of these patterns when necessary. Adaptive families have clear and resilient boundaries that allow for rules and appropriate punishments, as well as a protective function in the face of difficulties, making adaptations as the family develops. Families that are rigid often have difficulty responding to changes in their environment and tend to be dysfunctional at points in the family life cycle. After well-behaved teenagers with excellent grades enter college and leave home, nonadaptive symptoms such as Internet addiction, anorexia, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, and anxiety follow. The couple system is established when two people meet, get to know each other, fall in love, and step into marriage, from me to us, and a new family is born. The important task facing the newly married couple is to complement and adapt to each other. The traditional culture of male-dominated and female-dominated is a complementary function of couples differentiated in a specific culture. It is difficult for a girl from a male-dominated family to fall in love with a boy from a male-dominated family. Human psychological activity originates in the family of origin, and couple adaptation is a test of the adaptability of two family models. Newlywed couples are often caught in the debate of whether to squeeze the toothpaste from the front or from the back, and the “toothpaste theory” reflects the maladaptive nature of the family of origin interaction model. An interesting little survey shows that the most common reason for fighting among British couples is that men don’t flip the toilet lid when they urinate, and the second most common reason is that one partner doesn’t turn off the light. The point of conflict is not the toilet lid or turning off the lights, but the ability to adapt to new patterns in the home when new ones are added. Another important function of the couple system is to form a refuge from external stress. A good couple interaction requires comfort, understanding and support from the wife to get through the difficult time together, even if she takes on more financial support for a period of time, and vice versa. A recently married couple came to counseling because the wife, who had started her own business, felt that her husband often picked on her and always poured cold water on her projects, while the husband thought his wife was stubborn and never took his advice, and they found it impossible to get by. Further exploration of factors outside the couple’s system revealed that the wife’s father became seriously ill a year ago and needed nearly a million dollars for an organ transplant. The husband believes that the family should face difficulties together, and the wife always bears alone, as if he is an outsider. The wife’s stubbornness is a strategy to cope with the pressure, while the husband’s pickiness is actually a desire to be valued and attention. Couples who have not long formed are often accustomed to interpreting each other in their old patterns and are more adept at using familiar coping methods when faced with stress, when conflicts and contradictions often arise. Conflict resolution is an opportunity to optimize the couple’s system. Looking beyond the original stereotypes to see the true motivations and feelings behind each other’s expressions may be an important step in creating a warm haven. Family members often have multiple roles; a man may be a father, grandfather, son, husband, brother, and a woman may be a daughter, mother, wife, grandmother, sister, and the functions of the roles in different relationships are completely different. The wife in the above case was in a way that she had not yet reconciled the role functions of daughter and wife, and a conflict arose between the two. Clear boundaries are the key to ensuring specific role functions in a relationship. If the husband does what he is told in front of his parents and represses caution, and if he takes these repressions and discomforts out on his wife, or if he takes the excuse that his wife is disrespectful to the elderly and lashes out, we say that the husband’s boundaries are unclear and the couple system is not well maintained. In a family, the core of all relationships is the husband-wife relationship. With clear boundaries and well-functioning roles in the husband-wife system, the family will be healthy and well run. The parental system extends with the family life cycle, children are born, and the couple expands into parents. The parent system is very different from the couple system, the two-person world becomes a multi-person world, and there may be other systems involved (grandparents, grandparents, etc.), and the family system is more complex to run. The primary function of parents is nurturing, and children’s access to their parents is fundamental to the establishment of attachment relationships. Mental and physical contact between parents and children is a basic prerequisite for human survival and development. The inability of parents to have adequate contact with their children is now the most important issue for society to contemplate. The wave of part-time jobs that began in the 1990s created tens of millions of left-behind children who were separated from their parents from a few months to a few years old, losing the opportunity to have full contact with them. Remember the tragic suicide of the three siblings in Bijie, where their father worked abroad for years and their mother ran away from home. The fear of being neglected and abandoned by their nurturers gripped their young minds for years, and they eventually chose to destroy themselves – a most extreme form of anger expression. In urban life, the pace of society is so fast that young parents have no time to care for their young children. Many parents choose to give their children to the elderly, and while raising a replacement will compensate for some of the trauma of separation and loss, the deprivation of maternal attachment can have devastating effects on the child’s brain development and psycho-psychological behavior. Recently, scientists in the United States and Norway have studied the importance of the mother-infant bond by observing early weaned piglets. Sows typically begin weaning piglets at 14-16 weeks, and researchers separated piglets from their mothers for 2-3 weeks and switched to hand-feeding. Piglets weaned early and separated from their mothers grew up to show more aggression, lack of exploration, and significantly impaired cognitive and memory functions. It has also been found in clinical treatment that a much higher percentage of patients with mental disorders are separated from their mothers at an early age and suffer from trauma than the general population. As with other systems, the parenting system needs to be given clear boundaries. There is a certain hierarchy of power in the family, with parents at the upper end of the power hierarchy and children at the lower end, which is the laboratory in which children learn how to deal with future authority. When children are young, parents perform functions such as guidance, protection, and rule-making. As children grow up and acquire sufficient physical and mental abilities to develop themselves and function independently, parental functions shift from nurturing and authoritative guidance to shaping the autonomy of children. At present, some parents and even scholars emphasize giving full autonomy and equality to their children. I believe that this needs to be formulated according to the psycho-physiological developmental characteristics of children at different stages and cannot be generalized. A child who is not physically and psychologically sound cannot be equal and autonomous with adults, and a child who assumes parental functions too early is prone to imbalance in personality and psychological activities. Very often, a child who is too well behaved or knowledgeable is taking on tasks that do not belong to him or her, such as a sad or disabled mother, parental discord, or family poverty, which can easily “parentalize” the child. When parents have a low level of personal differentiation and are unable to deal with conflicts in themselves or in their relationships, they usually pass it on to their children who have a weaker hierarchy of power. Children who are pro-vocational are often repressed, inferior, withdrawn, and have difficulty achieving greater success. Family conflict It is difficult to have no conflict in a family. Conflict is an expression and optimization process of the family’s mode of operation. But in the family, conflict can easily cross boundaries and interfere with other systems. A wife after a fight with her husband is full of aggression or anger when her son comes home. Because the mother is in a bad mood, the son may be careful in what he does or deliberately try to please his mother, and the conflict between husband and wife has by now affected the mother-son relationship dynamics. The more common situation is that the mother repeatedly complains about all the things the child’s father is not, intentionally or unintentionally pulling the child and himself to stand on the battlefield of evaluating the father. The conflict between two people in the family becomes a three-person matter, which is called “family relationship triangulation”. There are two common types of triangulation in family relationships. One type of triangulation is when one spouse shifts the focus from the relationship conflict to the negative aspects of the child or parent-child conflict, which is called “bypassing. This triangulation is called “bypassing. Families who pay too much attention to their children’s learning, ignore their other strengths and talents, and criticize, blame, and even scold their children are using the “bypassing” pattern. Another model of triangulation is “intergenerational association,” in which one or both parents try to gain the support of the child against the other parent. Unlike “bypassing,” children in “intergenerational coalitions” receive more support, encouragement and closeness from one parent, and can easily form secret alliances or invisible coalitions. A typical example is the “mommy and daddy”, when the wife can’t get enough love and support from her husband, she has to hold on to the child and put all her expectations on the son. This close relationship between mother and son is not true love and support, but compensation for the mother’s disappointment, anxiety and sorrow, anger at the husband’s inability to do his job, and compensation for the imbalance in the relationship between husband and wife. Such children grow up to have difficulty establishing intimate relationships and are prone to psychosexual or sexual functioning problems. Children in triangularized families grow up to be prone to personality disorders, mood disorders, and somatization, expressing relational conflicts in the form of illness. Family conflicts should be resolved by the two parties that create them, trying to contain them within the subsystem that created them. “It is often difficult to resolve conflicts that are pulled into multiple subsystems, especially in cross-generational and cross-systemic involvement patterns, which are often fatal to the family. Whether you have a conflict with your spouse, a conflict with your parents, or a dissatisfaction with your children, remember: our conflicts, conflicts and dissatisfaction need to be resolved on our own. A quarreling couple should squat down and calmly say to their child: Daddy and I are fighting because we don’t agree on something, it’s not your fault, our love is the same for you! All battles have casualties, and it’s the family that gets hurt fighting with them; what we need is not to fight with ourselves or our families, but to learn how to care for ourselves and our families! The core of the family is the husband and wife, in order to family happiness, women have to love their husbands well, men have to take care of their wives with all their hearts. Husband and wife together, in order to better love their parents and children, ignore the husband or wife of the family, the desire for happiness forever may only be a myth!