A healthy family system pays attention to the principle of "Fond or Favor." It helps the family system stay healthy and get a family system on a better path. 

Most importantly, a healthy family system has a father and mother with a 3+ relationship using the principle of fond or favor.

Favor means the father has a 2+ relationship with the son(s), and the mother has a 2+ relationship with the daughter(s). When “favor” is used, it does not mean they are to care more for them but to help the children look more like their God-given design. Boys look like, even mimic, godly men, and girls look like or mimic godly women.

On the other hand, we want the father to be fond of the daughter and the mother to be fond of the son, which is a 1+ relationship instead of a 2+ relationship.

Fond or Favor respects the idea that God designed the mother to teach the daughter(s) feminine types of things. And the father is better equipped to teach a son masculine-type things than the mother.

Teaching Daughters

With that in mind, what is the role of the opposite-sex parent? What do they focus on teaching opposite-sex children?

The most critical skill or principle a mother needs to teach a daughter is how to respect, depend on, and trust a godly man. A healthy family system does not teach girls that all men are untrustworthy – indeed, many are. But a healthy family system starts with God’s design, not what Satan and the world say. At the same time, teach them how to recognize a respectable, dependable, godly man.

This is a critical part of a healthy family system - mothers and fathers who believe in and practice their God-given designs and what He asked them to do. The wife models the above behavior with her husband. Additionally, she teaches her daughter how to be a godly woman when the husband ISN’T respectable and dependable!

What would a father need to teach a daughter? What a respectable, trustworthy man looks like, what protection looks like, and how a man loves his wife when she does not respect him. 

Of course, this goes entirely against the world's portrayal of men and women. God designed His system, the healthy family system, with a man providing, protecting, and preserving women. A woman is not supposed to have to protect herself. Men are designed to protect women, not take advantage of them. A father teaches a daughter to look for that type of guy.

Again, this requires the father and mother to model godly behavior!

Teaching Sons

Cultures have specific issues to consider, but do not let culture diminish the healthy family system God has ordained for marriage and family.

Then, on the other hand, what is a mother to teach sons? What a respecting, trusting, depending godly woman looks like. “Son, here is the type of woman that respects and trusts godly men. Watch how I do this with your father. Watch how I respect him in both the good and bad times. That is the type of woman I want you to look for in the future, a woman with inner beauty, first and foremost.”

And what does a father teach his son? How to be a respectable, dependable, trustworthy, and godly man. How to protect a woman.

Those are the basics of the fond-or-favor issue that is going on. 

Without that system in place, there is an easy path to triangling.