A couple of specific questions:
1. If you don't believe in GC's do is it possible to have a generational predisposition towards behaviors that transcend genetics alone? In other words can their be some sort of spiritual influence that runs in families and seems to manifest repeated in the same way from family to family and generation to generation?
2. If you subscribe to the GC's teachings how is the effectively applied in your life?
Here is something I found on this subject. I am not an advocate for this teaching personally but I am working through what I do and don't believe in a larger sense.
3. Generational sin patterns
When God gave the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel, He included a section indicating that the sins of the fathers can be visited upon the children for three or four generations. He said,
"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;" (Exodus 20:5 KJV)
Notice that He did not say He would punish the children for the sins of the fathers, nor did He say that they would have to follow after the sins of their fathers. He did say, however, that the sins of the fathers would be "visited" upon the children for three or four generations.
Sinful tendencies can be visited upon families. These might be called iniquities, or inherited weaknesses, or there might be demonic spirits assigned to work out the same sin for succeeding generations. These repeated patterns of sinful behavior often are the seat of satanic strongholds in people. These unwelcome iniquities can be resisted; however, because of their presence in parents they are so familiar that the child often gives in to them before he realizes what is happening. The child might condone and desire the behavior of the parent and receive it into himself. On the other hand, the child might condemn and judge the parent, vowing never to be like that, thereby reaping the consequence of his self-righteous judgment and following in the same behavior pattern, even though he hates it. There are various ways in which these iniquities are visited upon and received by succeeding generations in families.
We see these behavior patterns in the stories of men in the Bible. Abraham told the Egyptian Pharaoh that his wife Sarah was his sister, because he feared that the Pharaoh would kill him in order to take Sarah if he knew the truth (Genesis 12:10-14). In verses 1-7 of Genesis 26, we find Isaac doing the same thing. This pattern of deception continued, as Isaac was later deceived by his own son, Jacob (Genesis 27:21-35). Jacob, in turn, was deceived by his uncle, who gave him Leah instead of Rachel to marry, and by his sons concerning the status of their brother Joseph (Genesis 37:31-33). Thus the sinful pattern of deception was repeated for four generations.