They also involve a conscious commitment to deal with these issues. Family tasks include provision of basic survival and shelter and safety, dealing with the sometimes competing needs of its members, and providing a framework for dealing with life transitions - growth, change and loss. A family's competence can be measured according to how well it is accomplishing these tasks and facing these challenges at a given time. An optimally functioning family is one that succeeds in family tasks and promotes the growth and well-being of its individual members. The model has five levels - at the lowest, the system is chaotic.
Control is often absent, or gained occasionally through threat or intimidation.
There are no rules, or rules change unpredictably. These families can't organize around goals, resolve ambivalent feelings or deal with loss or transition. Children in these families rarely experience or express any sense of individual identity, and are sometimes the object of physical and sexual abuse. Power resides in the head of the family, but this situation eventually leads to painful power struggles when someone else needs to express their autonomy. Not only are behaviors and choices rigidly suppressed to maintain control, individual feelings and thoughts are as well.