Forms of Relationship Construction and the Power of the Child

The work by Goh and Kuczynski (2009) is important beyond the specific context of China. Using social relational theory, the authors examine family dynamics in the contemporary nursing practices of five families in Xiamen, China. While they succeed in identifying relations and patterns of interaction, they do not explain the mechanism that enables the emergence of these patterns. In this article, I suggest a complementary way, which does not exclude theirs, to show how developments and concepts derived from general systems theory and from the general perspective of dynamic systems could contribute to understanding the relations that are built in these families.