The witnesses in the cases are often people deeply damaged by their experiences in care and in dysfunctional families.

ECONOMIST: Sex-abuse cases

Fairness among siblings is the ideal, but in the real world of dysfunctional families, a lot of unfairness can happen.

FORBES: Aging, Siblings, and The War in Families

In publicising the "middle class parents on skiing holidays" issue, the department was just trying to make the point that it is not only dysfunctional families that are in the frame.

BBC: Q&A: Truancy 'fast track'

For Daphne and her friends, there was not much else to expect from their lives except broken and usually dysfunctional families and perhaps a passing romance or two with a man who would afterward promptly go on his way.

NPR: One Boy's Heroism in the Face of AIDS

Of course, family businesses, like families themselves, can be dysfunctional.

WSJ: Some Stock Pickers Seek Stocks With Family Ties

Chicago was home of the Gautreaux housing settlement in the 1970s, a social experiment on the value of breaking up dysfunctional neighborhoods and dispersing inhabitants to communities with intact families, intact schools, intact employment opportunities.

WSJ: Jenkins: Gun Control That Works

In many families, the holidays set the stage for a dysfunctional dance of drunk and disorderly conduct.

FORBES: Holidays: An Occasion for Crimes of the Heart

Kids from families that have the least are hurt the most by dysfunctional schools.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

The film depicts the moving and poignant struggles of real-life students and their families and the efforts of educators and reformers who are working to find viable solutions within a dysfunctional system.

ENGADGET: Waiting for Superman Blu-ray dated February 15th with HD special features & donation credit