Family Stone Conflict Theory

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The movie Family Stone takes place during the holiday season when all the children return home for Christmas. Everett Stone is bringing home his girlfriend Meredith whom he plans to ask to marry him on Christmas day. Upon arriving home Everett’s siblings Amy, Ben, Thad, and Susan and parents Kelly and Sybil were not excited that Meredith was there. Throughout the movie Meredith struggles to fit in with the family and her relationship with Everett starts to suffer. Amy gives Meredith the most grief and makes it hard for Meredith to fit in with the family. Meredith’s sister Julie ends up coming to the Stone residence to try to help Meredith form a relationship with Everett’s family. The Stone family loves Julie from the time they meet her …show more content…

This made Meredith mad because she believed to contribute to the relationship and Amy did not reciprocate. Meredith then stopped trying to make Amy like her because she did not receive a reward of friendship when she tried and considered trying to get along as a loss. The conflict theory goes along with how the Stone family saw Meredith as thinking she was superior to them and did not share interests or values with the family. This lead the family to not like her and caused conflict between Meredith and the Stone family. The symbolic internationalist theory pertains to how Ben came to like Meredith through experience with her and getting to know her. Ben shows he is a separate entity from his family and that through experience he could change is mind and like …show more content…

The Stone children find out that their mom is dying in the movie, which is a family crisis. The book states that the death of a parent is second on the severity of life stressor with only the death of a child above it. (Lauer, 2012, pg 290) The Stone family shows they are a resilient family and have developed this label from communicating well and have worked together to develop strengths that help them deal with stressors. (Lauer, 2012, pg 302) None of the family members avoid the problem or try to find blame in something or someone for their mom dying. Avoiding the problem and finding blame in others are two ineffective coping strategies that some individuals use. Avoidance can make individuals ignore the problem and turn to excessive drinking to help keep the problem off their mind. Scapegoating is when the individual acknowledges that there is a problem, but they turn on someone else and put the blame on him or her. The Stone family learns to cope with the crisis of their mom being sick in a way that brings them closer. They balance their concern with the concern of their mother and they work together to make a happy Christmas for her. They all realize it is hard to deal with there mom being sick, but they know that together they can handle it and they know their own worth and the worth of their family. In conclusion, the family realized the problem and worked

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