Examining Inherited Family Rules and Becoming Your Own Person
Updated: 20 hours ago
How curiosity and cultural responsiveness helps us choose what to keep and what to release
By Kyle Giblin MPA/MSW LCSW
Think about a familiar birthday celebration. Someone brings out a cake, lights the candles, and starts the song. The birthday person makes a wish and blows out the candles. Then everyone shares the cake.
Who taught you that this was the way to celebrate?
Perhaps a parent, grandparent, or someone else who cared for you. Someone probably taught them, too. Through repetition, one way of doing something can become the way we expect it to be done.
The same process can shape much more than celebrations. We inherit ideas about who should care for others, which emotions are acceptable, what success looks like, and what a good family member is supposed to do. Examining those ideas with curiosity can help us recognize the scripts guiding our lives and decide how they fit the person we are becoming.
How inherited expectations become adult scripts
Family rules describe what is expected: respect your elders, keep personal matters private, or put family first. Roles describe the parts people occupy: the dependable one, the caregiver, the peacemaker, or the achiever. Norms are the shared assumptions that make certain behaviors seem ordinary or appropriate. Some are spoken. Others become clear through praise, disapproval, silence, and the behavior we see repeated.
Family therapist John Byng-Hall (1985) used the idea of family scripts to describe familiar patterns of interaction, the roles within them, and the beliefs that give them meaning. His clinical paper described scripts as connecting generations and providing useful stability and coordination. He also treated them as open to revision. The framework invites us to examine what a pattern does in a particular context, without automatically judging it as unhealthy.
A role can gradually become a statement about identity. Being the person who helps may become, "I am only valuable when someone needs me." A norm of keeping the peace may become, "Disagreement threatens belonging." These are illustrative possibilities, not conclusions about every family. The question is whether an expectation has become so familiar that we experience it as who we are, rather than something we learned.
As adults, that distinction can affect whether we recognize our own preferences. Before deciding what we want, we may already be deciding what will earn approval, prevent conflict, or preserve our place in the family. Curiosity gives us a way to notice that sequence.
Becoming your own person while staying connected
Individuation is the process of developing a sense of yourself as a person with your own values, preferences, and judgment. In this article, it means becoming more able to recognize what you endorse and make choices that reflect it. Family connection can remain an important part of that identity.
Research on autonomy helps explain this distinction. Chirkov and colleagues (2003) studied 559 participants across South Korea, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. They distinguished acting from guilt, pressure, or the need for approval from acting because a practice has personal meaning and is willingly endorsed. Greater autonomous motivation was associated with better well-being across the four samples. Their study also distinguished autonomy from individualism and independence.
Kagitcibasi's (2005) cultural framework similarly separates having agency from being emotionally distant from others. It proposes that autonomy and relatedness can coexist. A person can value mutual responsibility, seek an elder's guidance, or participate closely in family life while having a meaningful say in those choices.
This brings us to a more useful question than simply asking whether a tradition is good or bad: "Am I choosing this because it matters to me, or following a script I have never examined?" The same action can express a chosen value for one person and feel compulsory to another.
Research also carries cultural assumptions
The standards used to judge family life deserve examination, too. Perez-Brena and colleagues (2022) reviewed 3,932 studies published in six leading family science journals between 2008 and 2018. About 85 percent included North American or Western European samples. White samples accounted for more than half of U.S.-based research, and fewer than 3 percent of the studies focused on LGBTQ families. The authors discussed how the field privileges Western, White, heteronormative, and nuclear family perspectives.
This review documents a specific research base and period. It helps explain why ideas about a "normal" family or successful adulthood may leave out important cultural context.
For therapy, the implication is that we should ask whose standard is being applied. Leaving home, reducing family obligations, or placing individual goals first may fit one person's values and circumstances. Shared housing or extensive involvement with relatives may fit another person's chosen commitments. We need to understand the person's experience of agency within those arrangements.
How culture shapes the expectations we examine
Research with diverse communities shows how inherited expectations can organize adult choices and how people participate in interpreting them. These studies examine particular groups and settings; each community also contains substantial differences across families and generations.
In Latino families, obligations may carry meanings of respect and reciprocal care. Fuligni and Pedersen (2002) followed an ethnically diverse group of 745 young people moving into adulthood. Participants from Latin American and Filipino families reported the strongest family duty, which partly explained living with and contributing financially to their families. The implications for employment and education varied with other circumstances. This study shows how family expectations enter decisions about adult life. A useful question in therapy is how a particular person understands those responsibilities and which forms of participation they want to carry forward.
In Black and African American families, some guidance responds to ongoing racism and danger. Wilson and colleagues (2026) interviewed 30 Black college students at historically Black colleges and universities about family conversations concerning racism and police encounters. Participants received protective messages from older relatives, but also contributed their own knowledge and passed guidance to siblings and parents. The study describes young adults as active participants in shaping family messages. Examining an inherited rule therefore includes understanding its protective purpose and the conditions that made it necessary.
In Pacific Islander communities, expectations can shape which subjects are open for discussion. DiStefano and colleagues (2012) studied 95 young adults, parents, community leaders, and providers in Chamorro and Tongan communities in Southern California. In this study of sexual health, themes included restricted communication between generations, family privacy, gendered religious and cultural expectations, and family and ethnic pride. Its relevance here is specific: shared norms can influence what people feel able to ask or discuss. Applying that insight in therapy means exploring how a person can make room for their questions while deciding how they wish to honor family and community.
For LGBTQ+ individuals, inherited scripts may also contain assumptions about whom they will love or how they will express gender. Buttitta and colleagues (2024) offered a conceptual framework, with case illustrations, showing how dominant social messages can become internalized narratives affecting LGBTQ+ emerging adults' identity development. Their narrative therapy approach explores those messages and the possibility of developing more affirming accounts of the self. This is directly relevant to asking, "Which expectations reflect my own values, and which require me to edit parts of myself?"
These identities overlap. An LGBTQ+ person may also be Latino, Black, or Pacific Islander. Understanding their script requires listening to how family, culture, faith, and wider society meet in their particular life.
Understanding the history behind a rule
Some family expectations developed amid hardship or trauma. Yehuda and Lehrner's (2018) review discusses several possible pathways through which parental trauma can affect children, including parenting and the family environment. It also cautions that epigenetic inheritance of trauma effects had not been demonstrated in humans. An inherited expectation alone cannot tell us whether trauma occurred.
In therapy, that history can become a question rather than a verdict: "What might this rule have helped my family protect or preserve?" Understanding its origin can deepen compassion while helping you evaluate its place in your life now.
How therapy can help you examine an inherited script
One way to explore this is through narrative therapy. The therapist and client examine the stories a person has learned about who they are and what is possible for them. The approach described by Buttitta and colleagues (2024) offers a framework for questioning dominant messages and developing narratives that make more room for the person's own identity and values.
Consider a hypothetical person who has always been the dependable family helper. Whenever they consider declining a request, they think, "I am selfish." A therapist might help them describe this as a learned rule: "In my family, being dependable meant being available whenever someone needed me." Naming the rule makes it easier to examine.
Together, they might explore:
Where did I learn this expectation, and how was it reinforced?
What did this role give me, and what does it ask of me now?
Which part reflects something I value, such as generosity or loyalty?
What do I fear would happen if I responded differently?
What would I choose to keep, adapt, or release if my needs also had a place?
The person may discover that caring for family still matters deeply. They might keep that value, adapt the expectation by agreeing to help at specific times, and release the belief that a limit makes them a bad person. Another person might choose a greater level of involvement because it aligns with their values. Therapy helps clarify the meaning and choice behind the commitment.
Curiosity also creates space to explore mixed feelings. You can appreciate a tradition and question one part of it. You can recognize an elder's intentions and acknowledge an impact that hurt. A therapist can help you consider changes that account for your circumstances and important relationships. Reflection can happen privately before you decide what to share with anyone else.
Choosing what you carry forward
Family traditions, rules, and roles can offer belonging, continuity, and meaning. They deserve attention to their cultural context and to the individual's experience of living them.
When a script becomes visible, you can examine whether it still aligns with your values and spirit. You may choose to keep it, participate differently, or release an expectation that no longer fits. Respect can take different forms and levels of involvement.
Return to the birthday cake. You might love the song, the gathering, and the wish. You might change one part of the ritual while preserving what makes it meaningful to you. The same opportunity can exist in more consequential parts of life.
You have a say in what you carry forward. Curiosity can help you begin to hear your own voice.
Sources and Further Reading
Buttitta, D. J., Alonzo, D. J., Paez, J. M., Stone, D. J., & Sobel, C. E. (2024). Window of hope: Helping LGBTQ+ emerging adults create liberating narratives. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 43(2), 59–76. https://doi.org/10.1521/jsyt.2024.43.2.59
Byng-Hall, J. (1985). The family script: A useful bridge between theory and practice. Journal of Family Therapy, 7(3), 301–305. https://doi.org/10.1046/j..1985.00688.x
Chirkov, V., Ryan, R. M., Kim, Y., & Kaplan, U. (2003). Differentiating autonomy from individualism and independence: A self-determination theory perspective on internalization of cultural orientations and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(1), 97–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.1.97
DiStefano, A. S., Hui, B., Barrera-Ng, A., Quitugua, L. F., Peters, R., Dimaculangan, J., Vunileva, I., Tui'one, V., Takahashi, L. M., & Tanjasiri, S. P. (2012). Contextualization of HIV and HPV risk and prevention among Pacific Islander young adults in Southern California. Social Science & Medicine, 75(4), 699–708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.04.011
Fuligni, A. J., & Pedersen, S. (2002). Family obligation and the transition to young adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 38(5), 856–868. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.38.5.856
Kagitcibasi, C. (2005). Autonomy and relatedness in cultural context: Implications for self and family. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 36(4), 403–422. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022105275959
Perez-Brena, N. J., Duncan, J. C., Bámaca, M. Y., & Perez, R. (2022). Progress and gaps: A systematic review of the family demographics and family subsystems represented in top family science journals 2008–2018. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 14(1), 59–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12446
Wilson, B. L., Jackson, A., Brantley, M., & Tindall, J. (2026). "The talk I received from my parents, I gave to my little brother": Black emerging adults' experiences of intergenerational and bidirectional racial socialization. Journal of Black Psychology, 52(4), 490–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/00957984251386525
Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: Putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry, 17(3), 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20568
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