Families Structure Rippled Down Later Generation

Families Structure Rippled Down Later Generation

My initial reaction after watching The Joy Luck Club for the first time was that it was a story that illustrated the impact of a families structure and processes that rippled down to have a impacting affect on later generations. From a family systems perspective this is known as family feedback. The movie is about four women who grew up in China and later immigrated to the United States, where they would invest their past hopes and dreams into their American born daughters.
The movie shows the story of a woman, Suyuan, and her daughter June. The movie begins after Suyuan’s death, who was apart of what was called the Joy Luck Club prior to her passing. The remaining members of the club invite Suyuan’s daughter June, who is an adult, to take her place at their game table. Through a series of flashbacks, we see what Suyuan’s life’s was like in China. One of Suyuan’s dreams for June was for her to become a concert pianist. Even though June did not like to play the piano and performed poorly at her first piano recital, Suyuan continued to force June to practice. This was when I first remembered Murray Bowen’s concept of differentiation, which is the ability to balance ones intellectual and emotional functioning. June’s constant pressure to become the best piano player without her consent led me to believe that she was being raised to develop a low differentiation of self due to her pressures of being accepted and approved by her parents. In one scene, young June shouted at her mother that she wished she herself were dead “like the babies you killed in China.” The story of the twin babies was the family secret they had never talked about. When mothers are pressuring their children to do something that they have no desire to, it can not only create major tension between mother and daughter, but from other family members as well. Possibly though triangles (Bowen) and from what is known as family projection process. This is when parents pass on undifferentiating...

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