Philippine E-Journals

This paper reviews the current definition of Filipino families, starting from a sociological perspective to the challenge to Filipino psychologists. More recent research of sociologists on families recognize the changing structure and composition of Filipino families brought about by various issues, urban and global migration, changing role of women and other societal issues. Whereas many psychologists have done research on Filipino families, few have looked into non-traditional families. Important psychological variables and processes such as family relationships, emotional connection, and communication need to be integrated in the definition of Filipino families aside from family structure and composition. The challenges for the Filipino psychologists are to do more research on different types of families, and to take an active role in the reconstruction of the definition of Filipino families that will be more inclusive of different types of family and more responsive to the changing societal needs.