Family in the opinion of children from dysfunctional families. Research report

Family is the basic environment of man’s life and his/her comprehensive development. However, family can also be an environment posing a threat to the proper development of a human being The research focused on the picture of family as seen by children from dysfunctional families, i.e. families that pose a certain danger to the abovementioned development. The picture of family as described by the author reflects the patterns of family life, as well as the model of family life (cf. Kłoskowska A., 1983). It is a subjective way of perceiving and defining features of an object, a phenomenon and a process, functioning in the human mind, used by the human being to express evaluative opinions. This is verbalisation of the state of psychological comfort, which is the effect of satisfaction of basic desires and needs - the desire o f acceptance, recognition and safety (Thomas W. J., in: Siemaszko A., 1993, p. 232). The opinions of the children who took part in the study were taken as the indicators of the picture o f family. In the article the author focuses on problems which are not only factors contributing to the dysfunctionality of family but which determine the picture o f family as presented by research participants. The problems include: family break-up (separation and divorce), death o f one spouse (including suicide), many children in the family, poverty, bad health of one spouse (chronic disease, disability, mental handicap), alcoholism