The Stages of The Family Life Cycle

12 Key excerpts on "The Stages of The Family Life Cycle"

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  The Relational Systems Model for Family Therapy

  Living in the Four Realities

  • Carlton Munson, D Ray Bardill(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 10 CONTEXT: FAMILY DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES Roles: The Marker for Stage Changes in the Family Life Cycle The Multiple Life-Cycle Process Horizontal and Vertical Stressors Family Developmental Stages for Intact Families Stage I - Courtship Stage II - Early Marriage Stage III - First Child Stage IV - First Child in School Stage V - First Child into Adolescence Stage VI - First Child to Leave Home Stage VII - Last Child to Leave Home Stage VIII - Without Children at Home and Retirement Stage IX - Death The Family Life-Cycle Process

  The family unit is a naturally occurring social/emotional context that shifts and changes over time. The family unit constantly adapts to changes both within the unit and changes in the wider social environment. Each family unit has a life span that has a beginning and an end. A particular family unit has its beginning when an adult male and an adult female commit themselves to marriage. During its life, a family unit may expand through such events as the birth of children, children marrying, and the birth of grandchildren. The nuclear family unit also goes through a period of diminishing membership such as when children marry, go to school, or take employment in a new location. A particular family unit ends with the death of the original marital pair.

  Each family unit has a life span that has a beginning and an end.

  During the life span of a family unit, complex developmental dynamics unfold. There are average expectable phases or stages through which a family goes in its journey through life. The notion of family development stages comes from the observation that there are specific dynamics, complete with role changes and tasks to be completed, that emerge at particular transition points in the life of a family unit. This succession of predictable change points, or stages, is the essence of the concept of family developmental stages (Figure 10.1

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  Normal Family Processes

  Growing Diversity and Complexity

  • Froma Walsh(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • The Guilford Press

    (Publisher)

  In the following discussion, we present different stages of family life and what is required to accomplish the tasks at each stage. We remind readers that our schema is a mere approximation of complex processes, and not an affir- mation of a “normal” model of fixed stages or ordered progression over the life course. For example, a child with severe developmental disabilities may not be able to launch in young adulthood, and parents do not transition out of their caregiving roles (see Rolland, Chapter 19, this volume). Families are often marginalized when they do not fit normative life-cycle expectations and need to take more initiative in managing their lives and charting their own life course to compensate for the lack of social structuring and support (Wrosch & Freund, 2001). Generally speaking, major life-cycle transitions require a fundamental change in the system itself, rather than just incremental changes or rearrange- ments of the system, which go on continually throughout life. The central underlying processes to be negotiated are the expansion, contraction, and realignment of the relationship system to support the entry, exit, and devel- opment of family members in a functional way. We do not see individual or family stages as inherently age related (e.g., Levinson, 1978) or dependent on the structure of the traditional family (e.g., Duvall, 1977, and others). Nor do we view healthy maturation as requiring a single sequential pathway through marriage and childrearing. In contrast to the traditional view that not mar- rying is an “immature” choice, or that women who do not have children are unfulfilled, we hold a pluralistic view, recognizing many valid, healthy options and relationships over the life course. BETWEEN FAMILIES: YOUNG ADULTHOOD The primary tasks for young adults include coming to terms with their families of origin and entering the adult world of work and relationships.

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  Household Constitution and Family Relationships

  • Nancy F. Cott(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Saur

    (Publisher)

  HOUSEHOLD CONSTITUTION AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS 387 Updating the Life Cycle of the Family* PAUL C. G U C K · · Population Division. Bureau of the Census Changes from decade to decade in family life cycle patterns are analyzed for women who have married in the 20th Century. Longtime changes in the median age of women upon entering life cycle stages have occurred primarily because of fluctua-tions in birth rates and improvement in survival rates. A noteworthy recent develop-ment is the continuing postponement of marriage. Women entering marriage during the I970's are expected to have between one and two fewer children, to end child-bearing three years sooner, and to have 11 more years of married life after the last child marries than women who married during the first decade of the century. The life cycle of the family is a term that has been used for many years in reference to the succession of critical stages through which the typical family passes during its life span. 1 This concept provides a highly meaningful framework for the analysis of data on conjugal families as they pass through such stages as marriage, birth of children, children leaving home, the postchildren or empty nest period, and ultimate dissolution of the marriage through death of one of the spouses. The present study, as well as the one by Norton (1974), features the average ages at which married persons begin the several stages of the family life cycle. Other analyses of the family life cycle feature changes in the composition and economic characteristics of the family from its inception until its dissolution, as well as the range of variation in the ages of persons at the beginning of each stage of the cycle (Glick and Parke, 1965). Some new types of information have been used in the preparation of this paper. The most relevant of these new materials is the 'Among the early users of the concept were Loomis tad Hamilton (1936) and Glick (1947).

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  Families and Mental Retardation

  New Directions in Professional Practice

  • Diane Marsh(Author)
  • 1992(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  The family life cycle may be influenced by horizontal stressors, such as predictable life cycle transitions, and un- predictable illness and disability; by vertical stressors, such as transge- nerational family patterns, myths, secrets, and legacies; and by events in the larger ecological system. The second model is the family systems approach proposed by A. P. Turnbull, Summers, and Brotherson (1986). The model has four dimen- sions: (a) structure, which is defined as the resources or characteristics of the family and its individual members; (b) interaction, which is the process by which families fulfill their functions; (c) functions, which are the outputs of the family system; and (d) life cycle, which includes developmental stages and transitions, structural changes, functional changes, and sociohistorical changes. The model includes seven devel- opmental stages: (a) the couple; (b) childbearing; (c) school age; (d) Life-span Perspectives 97 adolescence; (e) launching; (f) postparental; and (g) aging. The authors describe these developmental stages as a series of relatively level pla- teaus that are characterized by specific functions, tasks, and responsi- bilities. Developmental transitions are periods of change and discontinuity that occur as families move from one stage to another; these periods are often accompanied by increased stress. These and other formulations of the family life cycle provide a nor- mative context for understanding families and for delineating their ex- pected developmental course. In contrast, families who have a member with mental retardation are dealing with a nonnormative event that results in a discrepancy between their internalized expectations and their own altered circumstances. The following accounts of two older mothers illustrate some of the potential consequences of this discrepancy. Now is when I feel it more, when I watch my friends' children going off to proms and getting married.

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  Methods of Family Research

  Biographies of Research Projects

  • Irving E. Sigel, Gene Brody, Irving E. Sigel, Gene Brody(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  p. 155 ).

  INTEGRATION OF INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY “STAGES”

  Although they are sometimes used interchangeably, there are logical distinctions inherent in the terms “period,” “phase,” “level,” and “stage” (Glaserfeld & Kelly, 1982). Specifically, stages, as distinct from these other concepts, are characterized as (1) relatively prolonged intervals of developmental time; (2) having form or structural constancy which may be described both in regards to things present and things absent, and (3) having differences vis a vis other points on the overall time continua which are not merely of a quantitative nature. Moreover, criteria for these qualitative differences are always questions of explanatory interpretation, not only descriptive observation (Flavell, 1985, pp. 291 –295 ; Glaserfeld & Kelly, 1982, p. 156 ).

  The use of concepts like stage, phase, and cycle in the family literature probably began with Roundtree’s (1901) survey of laboring families in York, England (Elder, 1984). Willard Waller in 1938 proposed a set of five sequential phases—(1) Dependency in the Family of Origin; (2) Courtship; (3) First years of Marriage; (4) Parenthood; (5) Empty Nest. Paul Glick was the first to employ both age and kinship designations in his descriptions of The Stages of The Family Life Cycle (Glick, 1947), and this was followed by Lansing and Kish (1957) who found for a sample of younger versus older parents that a stage typology was a better predictor than chronological age (Elder, 1984). Perhaps the best known family stage model is that of Reuben Hill (1964) who suggested a more finely grained nine-stage model. The primary classificatory criteria were father’s occupation, family size and composition, and major changes in the status of the youngest and oldest children. Thus, while ages of children were important, parents’ ages and individual developmental life trajectories were not. As Elder (1984) makes clear, the Hill model represents a normative order of phases or stages in the reproductive cycle of the target couple. Children mature and leave home all in relation to “timeless” parents. Of course no subsequent life stage for these conventional couples is postparental so long as their children continue to survive. “Overall, the static nature of stage models yields ‘snapshots’ of family development which tell us little about the actual course of a family’s history or experience. Families that march through an identical sequence of stages vary markedly in their respective life courses. Much of this variation is due to the variable timing, order, and duration of family events, as determined from age data” (Elder, 1984, p. 117

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  Family Stories and the Life Course

  Across Time and Generations

  • Michael W. Pratt, Barbara H. Fiese, Michael W. Pratt, Barbara H. Fiese(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Erikson’s (1963) well-known model of eight stages in the individual’s life course is closely keyed to the developmental history of the family. The initial five stages constitute a first, childhood act in this play of life, with scenes depicting the struggle of trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, and identity versus confusion. These are enacted typically within the family of our birth. The second act, consisting of scenes of intimacy versus alienation, generativity versus stagnation, and integrity versus despair, takes place within the context of a more extended and reconstituted family during the long period of human adulthood. Erikson (1963) described, with an anthropologist’s appreciative eye, the ways in which different cultures patterned these basic building blocks of the human life span differently, and sought to trace the possible implications of such differences.

  Interestingly, the ways in which these stages or periods of the life course are marked also appear to have been historically variable. In the past century, for example, the average human life span in technologically developed countries has increased substantially (perhaps 20–25 years), and this change, along with many other cultural and societal changes, has had a large influence on how scholars (and others) describe the life course. The terminology of development in later life has thus become increasingly differentiated as researchers have pursued these questions (e.g., into young-old versus old-old, Smith & Baltes, 1997). Similarly, the transition from adolescence to adulthood has been lengthening in modern societies, due to vocational and technological changes, and a new period of “emerging adulthood” has recently been suggested (Arnett, 2000).

  What are the implications of such historical changes for the intergenerational family? As adults live longer, family ties of course become more enduring as well as complex, but they generally do not seem to be weakening. Putney and Bengtson (2001), writing about midlife and the family, conclude: “Findings from empirical research show that while families are more diverse in structure and process, intergenerational attachments remain strong. Our review here suggests that individuals need the solidarity of the multigenerational family and will go to great efforts to preserve it” (pp. 562–563). We believe that stories can play a central role in establishing and maintaining these family bonds, and some of the chapters in this volume are testimony to the ways in which researchers are attempting to study these intergenerational issues (e.g., chapters 11 , 15 , and 16

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  Sociology of Personal Life

  • Vanessa May, Petra Nordqvist, Vanessa May, Petra Nordqvist(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  These stages of the life course are understood to derive not only from biology – for example, the way that children biologically develop and mature into adults – but to also be social in origin. In other words, what people take to be self-evident stages of the life course ‘are interpretations PERSONAL LIFE ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE VANESSA MAY 7 SOCIOLOGY OF PERSONAL LIFE 88 assigned to experience’ (Gubrium et al., 1994: 29), as discussed below. As a result, each culture will have its own way of understanding what biological development means. European life course scholars view the life course as a social institution; that is, ‘as a constructed social reality – with historically specific but socially plausible and normative meanings and definitions of the life course’ (Dannefer, 2012: 221) which come to define the ‘chronologically standardized “normative life course”’ (Kohli, 2007: 255). Much of the literature on life course focuses on transitions – such as the transition from youth to adulthood – and is quantitative , measuring the impact of one set of variables (e.g. education) on outcomes later in life (e.g. occupation, income, health). The approach taken in this chapter is somewhat different. Rather than trying to calibrate the different life stages and transitions between them, the focus is on the trajectories of individual lives, on ‘the personalised struggles of becoming, being and remaining “grown up”’ (Gilleard and Higgs, 2016: 310) and on how peo-ple ‘themselves make sense of their lives in time’ (McAdams, 2005: 238). Time thus lies at the centre of this chapter, as does an understanding of people as temporal beings who orient themselves with the help of their past, present, and projected future experiences. In doing so, as David Featherman and Richard Learner note, people are influenced by devel-opmental timetables that set expectations regarding the age at which par-ticular ‘developmental outcomes’ or life goals should be achieved (1985: 665).

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  Social Stress and the Family

  Advances and Developments in Family Stress Therapy and Research

  • Hamilton I Mc Cubbin, Marvin B Sussman(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This chapter addresses these issues of developmental change by reviewing recent work in family development theory and by drawing on the work in family stress and critical transition theories. The purpose of this chapter is to present a reworked model of family development which emphasizes the precipitators of transition in families, the phasing of critical transitions, the process of reorganization and the resultant changes in family role structures.

  A Review of Family Development Theory

  A Description of Traditional Family Development Theory

  Family development is the primary theory which deals with family change. This perspective has traditionally described family life over time as divided into a series of stages. Stages are defined as periods of relative structural stability which are qualitatively and quantitatively distinct from adjacent stages.

  The most frequently employed system currently for categorizing family life into stages was developed by Evelyn Duvall and Reuben Hill (1948). Using the criteria of (a) major change in family size, (b) the developmental stage of oldest child, and (c) the work status of the breadwinner, they identified eight stages of development:

  1. Establishment stage (childless, newly marrieds)
  2. First parenthood (infant to 3 years of age)
  3. Family with preschool child (oldest 3-6 years)
  4. Family with school child (oldest 6-12 years)
  5. Family with adolescents (oldest 13-20 years)
  6. Family as launching center (leave taking of children)
  7. Family in middle years (empty nest)
  8. Family in retirement (breadwinner 65 and over)

  The scheme delineated above rests on an assumption of high member interdependence; namely, that families are forced to change the rules for interrelating of members each time one or more members are added or leave the family and each time the oldest child1

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  The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Couples and Family Relationships

  • Patricia Noller, Gery C. Karantzas, Patricia Noller, Gery C. Karantzas(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Part II Families across the Lifespan Passage contains an image Chapter 4 The Role of the Family across the Lifespan Toni C. Antonucci, Kristin M. Wong, and Sarah Trinh

  In this chapter the role of the family across the lifespan is explored. In particular, we consider how individual lifespan development influences family experiences over time. In addition, we recognize the critical role of the life course (i.e., the context in which individuals develop over their lifetime) in understanding the family, its evolution, and influence on the individual over time. Next, we consider various definitions of the family as well as its changing structure. We review the roles that exist within the family across the lifespan and over the life course; and finally turn to a consideration of policy and societal influences on the lifespan and life course of individuals and families. We conclude with thoughts about the current state of knowledge and implications for future directions.

  We begin this chapter with the recognition that while there has been a great deal of pressure in the past to recognize only one form of family, there appears to be increased awareness that multiple forms of the family can lead to positive pathways of success while the traditionally recognized family form is no guarantee of achieving successful life paths for its members.

  Lifespan and Life Course

  The importance of recognizing the influence of lifespan development (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2006) and life-course (Elder & Shanahan, 2006) influences on the individual has been increasingly recognized. Both fundamentally shape the family, its structure and functioning (Fuller-Iglesias, Smith, & Antonucci, 2010).

  Lifespan developmental theory critically recognizes that individuals develop over time in a manner that is interdependent with the past, present, and future. The infant has both pressing needs to be fed, sheltered, and loved but also has limited physical, cognitive, and social skills. The developmental period of infancy clearly delineates an individual who is different from and has distinctive characteristics from, for example, the child, adolescent, and adult. It is not difficult to recognize the differences that each individual possesses at each of these stages. Thus, the elementary sensorimotor-cognitive stage of the infant is replaced by the increasingly complex and abstract cognitive abilities of the adolescent and later adult. Similarly, it is not difficult to ascertain how experience in early developmental periods influences later experiences; for an example of such work see Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins 2005).

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  Work & Leisure Ils 166

  • Nels Anderson(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  If these roles do not indicate family and home identification, at least in everyday thinking they imply that. Each links the individual to his social, economic and political environment in some special way, and each assumes a particular set of community relationships. With the exception of the unusual personality, most people reach the high point in most of these roles during the middle phase of the life cycle. The family-related roles, as will be seen, are the ones most likely to decline, and we are faced with the fact that the modern family also has a life cycle.

  This middle phase of the life cycle has its own natural wholeness. The two decades of life preparation that went before were a looking-ahead period, and the decade or two that will come after it will be largely in retrospective of the active middle years.

  Family in the Life Cycle

  In pre-urban times man belonged to an extended family and this wide kinship group was his guide, his security and his government from childhood on. The primary group of parents and children was a mere unit in the extended family. The extended family tends to vanish and now the family is identified as the nuclear group. We have what Halbwachs called ‘uncomplicated families of which the hard core is the married couple’.2 Brought into being on the basis of romantic love, this one-generation family is also a contractual group. Using a military term, it may be called a ‘mission-completed’ family that runs its course and then disintegrates. There are different exceptions, mainly the property-holding families in which the generations are tied, often uncomfortably, together by their holdings of wealth and power.

  The extended family came into existence for practical reasons, and practical reasons of another kind explain its decline. It is the nuclear group of parents and children that now, with reasonable effectiveness, performs the family role. This family in the modern community has a different type of home, but the home is not the centre of production it once was, yet it remains the principal centre of consumption. The family retains its monopoly on the bearing of children, but it shares with the community the task of rearing and educating them. Family functions tend to be timed and defined by the respective life cycles of the family members. The extended family did not have a life cycle, but the nuclear is a sensitive life-cycle group.

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  The Framework of Systemic Organization

  A Conceptual Approach to Families and Nursing

  • Marie-Luise Friedemann(Author)
  • 1995(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  4 Life Span Considerations As individuals in the family develop over time, their perceptions and needs change and require an adjustment in the family process, specifi-cally in the way members relate to each other. Developmental the-ory has been used extensively to explain such changes over time. This chapter will first examine the relevance of developmental theory in light of the structural complexity of today's families. Second, it will present the developmental phenomenon from the perspective of the framework of systemic organization. Chapter 3 has pointed out the pervasiveness of the traditional family ideal and its resiliency over time. Developmental theory has had a major function in enhancing and perpetuating this ideal. It may not be by chance that the sociologist Glick (1947) introduced the concept of the family life cycle at a time when women's efforts were no longer needed to support the war machine. There was a need to teach women how to be professional mothers and homemakers and teach fathers how to support the family to optimize the children's personality and vocational development. The family life cycle, based on traditional family norms, has served as a concrete teaching tool with which one could deduce the tasks families had to master within certain predict-able phases of family life, the length of which was calculated with the help of demographic statistics. Thus, couples aspiring to the tradi-69 70 THE FRAMEWORK OF SYSTEMIC ORGANIZATION tional family ideal could be given specific instructions on how to over-come developmentally induced stresses and improve their spousal re-lationship and parenting skills. Developmental theory applied to individuals and the family system has shaped sociological and psychological thinking over several dec-ades and is still heavily used. It depicts a model of distinct phases with significant transitions to be mastered between each phase and the next.

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  Family Therapy

  An Overview

  • Irene Goldenberg, Mark Stanton, Herbert Goldenberg, , Irene Goldenberg, Mark Stanton, Herbert Goldenberg(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  The resulting stepfamilies (far more often a stepfather and custodial mother rather than the reverse) must undergo an entire new stage of the family life cycle before gaining stability (see Table 2.3). One glimpse of the complexity involved comes from McGoldrick and Carter (2011): “As the first marriage signifies the joining of two families, so a second marriage involves the interweaving of three, four, or more families whose previous life cycle courses have been disrupted by death or divorce” (p. 322). Stepfamily development occurs in stages, and each stage in the process calls for gradually renegotiating and reorganizing a complex and dynamic network of relationships. Therapy to Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. FAMILY DEVELOPMENT: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 53 assist stepfamilies may move from understanding the specific structure of the stepfamily to defining subsystems within the stepfamily to normalize the experience and increase empathy to assisting co-parenting and increasing communication (Browning & Artelt, 2012). Those stepparents who demand “instant love” are likely to end up feeling frustrated and rejected. On the other hand, relationships within stepfamilies that are allowed to blossom slowly often lead to caring and loving bonds that last a lifetime (Pasley & Garneau, 2012). In some cases, the stepparent may provide a model that expands a child’s choice of roles in life or that offers a positive view of husband–wife relationships not seen before.

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