When studying families and marriages, I find the Ecological Perspective to be the most holistic approach because it takes intersectionality into consideration. Micro-systems incorporate symbolic interactionism: focusing on daily occurrences,individual relationships, and role expectations that affect individuals. The meso-system in particular recognizes that the intersections between immediate settings and identities create innumerable results. Thus...not one marital or familial relationship is experienced in the same way because people have intersecting identities and experiences that shape them uniquely. The external and macro systems take into account large-scale effects of society and culture on marriages and families that extend beyond an individual's identity. And, most importantly, the chrono system takes into consideration influences over time, a key measure in reaching valid and reliable theories. Instead of trying to homogenize all marriages and families into a set of norms or stages, the ecological approach considers internal and external factors (both positive and negative) that construct multi-faceted notions of and experiences with marriage and family.
The ecological perspective can be very helpful in explaining divorce, abuse, why different types of families exist, which factors make "successful" marriages "successful," decisions to have children or not, norms and values within families and marriages, and almost any other attribute of a particular family or marriage.
The picture above is symbolic of the aforementioned intersectionality. It is known as "Metatron's Cube" and contains an almost illusive number of circles, cubes, rectangles, triangles, hexagons, and hexagrams with multiple points of intersection and overlap. Individual lines can be seen spanning across the different shapes. The cube shows how complex familial and marriage entities are--interrelated but distinct, influencing one another from different vantage points.
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