Understanding Family and Inter-Family Conflicts Is Key to Resolving It
7th February 2022
Family and Inter-Family Conflicts are two kinds of conflicts that happen within and outside a family in any given society. A family is a small unit in a society. A family conflict is a conflict within a family. It is also known as an intra-family conflict. When conflict occurs between two or more families, it is called an inter-family conflict. In this article, we will look at both conflicts and how to resolve them.
What Is Family Conflict?
This is simply a conflict within a family. This is also called an intra-family conflict as stated above. Since family is made up of a husband, a wife, children, and other relatives, this means these are the characters involved in this kind of conflict. This is the opposite of the inter-family conflict. In short, this is a conflict in this small unit of society.
A family is a unit of society. It is made up of individuals. The size of a family depends on other conditions. For South Sudan and Africa, a family can be as big as possible. This is because a family is made up of a husband, a wife, biological children, and the husband’s relatives such as his parents, brothers, and cousins.
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This family structure may differ from place to place. Even in Africa, modern families are reducing their sizes at a very high speed due to some factors. Some of these factors are economic issues in urban areas, towns, and cities. But life in most African villages is relatively the same as it used to be.
What Is an Inter-Family Conflict?
This is the opposite of the family conflict discussed above. It is a conflict between two different families. It’s another name for clan conflict because families make up a clan in Africa at large, and in South Sudan in particular. But the conflict may occur between two families either from the same clan or from different clans.
Since humans are now living in towns and cities even in Africa, this means two families from different tribes or even from different countries might live next to each other. This means inter-family conflicts might extend beyond clans and tribes. But if the conflict is between two or more different families, it is an inter-family conflict.
What Causes Both Family and Inter-Family Conflicts?
The cause for any human conflict at any level of human society is complex. However, this doesn’t mean there are no known causes for such conflicts. The main cause of human conflict at any level of society is human nature itself. There are still both Abel and Cain types of humans living together in our modern world, today.
This means an individual can be the cause of both a family and an inter-family conflict at the same time or at different times. Also, a group of more than one person can be involved in causing a conflict inside and outside a family. Even if other things such as events and individual mistakes may be a cause of a conflict, they are all human errors based on human nature.
Personalities and desires are parts of the causes of the conflict. Leadership is not only an issue at the national level but also at the family level. It can be individuals in the two families or the entire families being the causes of conflict in these families. But whatever makes them be the cause of conflict, human error, and sinful nature is always the issue.
How Do We Resolve Both Family and Inter-Family Conflicts?
There are many ways in which we humans cause and then resolve our own conflicts on any human societal level. This includes law enforcement and peace and reconciliation processes. In those old days, Africa had its own ways to resolve these kinds of conflicts. This included the spiritual reverence of the people involved in a conflict of any kind.
But in modern Africa, there are brand new and foreign ways to deal with conflicts. These new ways include law enforcement as mentioned above, as well as ways to negotiate and come to the way forward in how to end the conflict inside and between families. Despite using all these modern techniques to resolve conflicts, conflicts in families and between families still happen.
Preventing the conflict at any level would have been the best way to resolve conflicts long before they could even escalate, but this is not just possible. As we said earlier, humans and animals have a natural tendency to create conflicts. We have to agree on the fact that where there are two people, there is some kind of conflict right there.
Why Do We Need to Resolve Both Family and Inter-Family Conflicts?
The reason why we need to resolve any human conflict is to maintain peace and harmony in a family and between the involved families. We, humans, love peace and harmony, but we also naturally love causing trouble to each other as mentioned earlier. Our love for peace is the first reason for us to look for a solution when conflict occurs.
We need to resolve conflicts as humans because it is our natural intention to do so. It just dawns on us to find a solution to such issues as conflicts inside and outside families. Even though we know conflicts may be resolved only to see them springing up again, we have this urge to resolve them as much and as soon as we can.
Personally, I love resolving conflicts as soon as I can. Remember, I do have conflicts more than you might think. I have conflicts with myself, as well as with other people. I have both internal and external conflicts. But as a man of peace, I naturally hate conflict, and I prefer peace and peaceful coexistence among humans.
This is true that if you are reading this, then you might be in love for peace. It may mean you also hate conflicts of all kinds though you find yourself there in it, time and time again. If this is true, then you have a reason why you always need peace and harmony. You surely have your own reasons why you promote peace in and outside your family.
What Is the Importance of Resolving Family and Inter-Family Conflicts?
The importance of resolving family conflicts is the fact that we humans don’t enjoy conflicts, at least not all of us enjoy them. Maybe Cain-like humans are the ones who love-hate speech, insults, lying, and hurting others, very often. But this doesn’t mean we who don’t like these things are holy on our own accounts.
This means we may err by mistake. There is a huge difference between loving hurting others and doing it by mistake. When I hurt you by mistake, I easily admit that I am wrong, and you then decide to forgive me or not. But when I hurt you intentionally, that’s a different story altogether. This is the difference between Abel-like and Cain-like humans. It seems there are natures or spirits that possess people and cause them to harm or hurt other creatures around them. This hurt includes hurting other humans, of course.
If you know how important it is to live in peace and harmony with yourself and with others around you, then you know for sure the importance of resolving conflict in and outside your biological family. You might have been adapted into that family, but that doesn’t matter how you got there. It matters how you treat others for the sake of peace and harmony.
As I said earlier, for me, peace is just part of me. Peace is not what I wish to achieve but my lifeline. It is a deed in my veins and arteries. It is there in every fiber of my being. It is my nature to love and seek my own personal peace. This may make me avoid troublesome humans and animals alike.
This nature makes me smile whenever I see innocent children, humans, or animals. It makes me smile at nature; plants, birds, fish, animals, insects, reptiles, and worms. Some animals and worms do scare me, but I still know that they are creatures just as I am.
This kind of knowledge is not part of any religious institution but part of my human nature. This also means that there are many other humans who think and behave just as I do.
My Final Words
Finally, we have come to the end of this article. And as usual, I want to give you some last words of wisdom and advice. I know that you already know a lot about conflicts at any level of any human society. What you have read about here is conflict within and outside a family.
My advice to you is that there are no rules that work. This means we can create laws and we break them. Simply live your life as you wish, and you will be fine. If you hate conflict, stay away from it. If you love peace, work for it and seek personal inner peace, all the time.
This means we humans are not made in the same way. Some or most of us love violence, and that’s okay for them. Focus on your heart’s desires and do what you love to enjoy life. Life is indeed short and meaningful, but only if we see it that way. You don’t need to be religious in order for you to come to such a conclusion about life. We don’t know what happens after we breathe our last. But we know about here and now. Therefore, let’s live for today and let tomorrow worry about itself.
I hope this article has been helpful to you, personally. Would you like to share your thoughts about it? I will be happy to hear from you in the comment section below. I also pray and know that God will protect and keep you safe during and after the global pandemic according to His will for you. Shalom!
Further Readings
- Factors Influencing Intra Family Conflicts (PDF)—UON.
- The 8 Keys to Resolving Family Conflict—Mediate.
- Intra-Family Conflict—IRDP.
