Turkish family structure and functioning

Abstract

A former student and a current colleague of Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı, I have found myself ever inspired by her character and her theoretical work. Originally a non-psychology major, the course of my professional life changed dramatically when Kağıtçıbaşı introduced me to social psychology and cultural influences on human behavior. Raised in a “family of psychological interdependence” with an autonomous-related self, I have been very much intrigued by her Model of Family Change, which guided the present chapter. Turkey is at the crossroads between the East and the West, characterized by much heterogeneity and social change. This has led to the emergence of many Turkish family prototypes (Ataca 2006; Sunar and Fişek 2005). In general, they could be categorized under two prototypes, namely, the traditional family of interdependence and the family of psychological (emotional) interdependence based on Kağıtçıbaşı's (1990, 1996, 2007) Model of Family Change. Kağıtçıbaşı's model distinguishes among three prototypical family patterns. The first, “family model of interdependence,” is more common in less developed, rural, agrarian contexts with “cultures of relatedness” or collectivism and is characterized by both psychological and material interdependencies in the family system. The contrasting pattern of “family model of independence” is more common in western industrial urban settings with individualistic cultures in which both dependencies are low. A third pattern, the “family model of psychological (emotional) interdependence,” is a synthesis of the first two patterns and characterizes the urban and more developed socio-economic contexts with cultures of relatedness, in which psychological interdependencies continue, while material interdependencies weaken.

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