From a structural family systems perspective, a client who lives near her parents and shows helplessness would most likely have the clinician focus on...

From a structural family systems perspective, a client who lives near her parents and shows helplessness would most likely have the clinician focus on...

• A. increasing family meals together
• B. strengthening the intergenerational boundary between the client's family of origin and her new family.
• C. moving away from parents
• D. intensive group therapy with extended family

Answer: (B)

In structural family therapy, the focus is on how families are organized—subsystems, alliances, and especially boundaries between generations. When a client lives near her parents and shows helplessness, it suggests enmeshment and a lack of differentiation between the client’s family of origin and her own new family. The best approach is to strengthen the intergenerational boundary between these two systems, creating clearer, more appropriate limits so the client can function with greater autonomy while maintaining healthy connection. This helps reduce parental overinvolvement and shifts the family structure toward a more balanced hierarchy and healthier subsystems. Increasing family meals might boost cohesion but wouldn’t directly address the boundary issues that keep the client dependent. Moving away or broad group therapy with extended family don’t specifically target rebalancing these boundaries in the way structural work does.

In structural family therapy, the focus is on how families are organized—subsystems, alliances, and especially boundaries between generations. When a client lives near her parents and shows helplessness, it suggests enmeshment and a lack of differentiation between the client’s family of origin and her own new family. The best approach is to strengthen the intergenerational boundary between these two systems, creating clearer, more appropriate limits so the client can function with greater autonomy while maintaining healthy connection. This helps reduce parental overinvolvement and shifts the family structure toward a more balanced hierarchy and healthier subsystems. Increasing family meals might boost cohesion but wouldn’t directly address the boundary issues that keep the client dependent. Moving away or broad group therapy with extended family don’t specifically target rebalancing these boundaries in the way structural work does.