Linking micro- and macro-transitions: a case study on systemic family processes during adolescents’ transition to high school

The main goal of this paper is to observe how family interactive reorganizations (micro-transitions) are amplified by adolescent children’s transition to high school (macro-transition) and reverberates through the whole family system involving parents and siblings. In-home video-recorded interviews and interactive tasks were carried out with families during 1 year before and after adolescents entered high school. The collected material was transcribed and analyzed according to inductive and microanalytical procedures. Results document how families having different subsystem composition (with or without siblings) get reorganized in different ways when facing the school transition: Families having a second-born child do not get reorganized on that event, as changes revolved around the lives of first-borns. Starting from these observations, I discuss implications for a systemic and ecological approach to generate new ideas on the study of family processes during life-course changes.