A School Is a Professional Workplace, Not a Family — And It's a Red Flag If Someone Calls It One
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why the 'we're like a family' metaphor in schools often signals boundary violations and unprofessional expectations from leadership.
Key Takeaways
- The 'family' metaphor is a professional red flag - Leaders may use family language to justify controlling behavior or excessive demands beyond contractual obligations
- Family metaphors can be harmful - For staff from dysfunctional family backgrounds, describing a workplace as 'family-like' creates negative associations
- Professional environments require clear boundaries - Schools should distinguish themselves from family relationships, including respect for contractual limits
- Common boundary crossings follow - Mandatory social activities, pressure for unpaid duties, and expectations to 'chip in' are often justified through family rhetoric
Transcript
A school is not a family, and it might sound nice to describe your school as a family, but I want to share why that's a bit of a red flag for me.
When somebody says, oh, we're like family here.
We treat everybody like family.
We're one big family.
Sometimes when people say that, they're perfectly wonderful people, they're perfectly appropriate, they're perfectly professional.
But it's a red flag for me because often the statement that our workplace is like a family is accompanied by some sort of missing boundary.
There's some sort of boundary that should be in place in a workplace like a school in a professional environment.
That's not there in a family.
And by calling the school or the workplace a family, the person who's doing that is trying to get away with not having that boundary again.
Not always, but I've seen this happen over and over again where maybe they want to see their employees as their extended family or as their kids that they can kind of control.
rather than treat as professionals.
Or maybe they want to demand more from you than they are supposed to really demand professionally and contractually.
And they're using that family language to kind of, I don't want to say exploit, but really to kind of go beyond what should be acceptable.
So I don't know if you have experienced this, and certainly there, again, are lots of people who use family language and there's absolutely nothing wrong with their leadership, but I really recommend that people stay away from that because I've seen so many people who have huge boundary issues, who have huge issues with what they ask of people and how they treat people that make me think maybe your family is not so healthy if that's the metaphor you're using and even if it was you have to remember the other side of the coin for a lot of people family is not a positive metaphor it is not a positive reference to say oh we're like a family well like if your family was abusive or dysfunctional in some way I probably you know would not invite you to work at a school that feels like family like that would be a net negative to say that our school is like a family so Let me know what you think about this language and how it's used to describe a professional environment.
I mean, at the very least, the fact that it is a professional environment should make us think about the big differences between a school and a family.
And that's even before we get to the boundary issues and the asking too much and the not respecting people's boundaries as far as kind of their business and their professionalism.
And I don't know.
Just let me know what you think about this.
especially when it comes to chipping in or mandatory fun or taking on additional duties.
I just think there are a lot of ways that calling a school a family can lead to crossing of boundaries.
Let me know what you think.