The Developmental Stages in the Family Life Cycle

Topic Overview

What is a family life bicycle?

The emotional and intellectual stages you pass through from childhood to your retirement years as a fellow member of a family are called the family unit life cycle. In each stage, you face challenges in your family unit life that let yous to build or gain new skills. Gaining these skills helps you lot piece of work through the changes that about every family goes through.

Not everyone passes through these stages smoothly. Situations such as severe affliction, fiscal problems, or the expiry of a loved one tin can take an effect on how well y'all laissez passer through the stages. Fortunately, if you miss skills in i stage, yous can learn them in later stages.

The stages of the family life cycle are:

• Independence.
• Coupling or marriage.
• Parenting: babies through adolescents.
• Launching adult children.
• Retirement or senior years.

Why is it important to sympathise the family life cycle?

Mastering the skills and milestones of each phase allows you to successfully move from one phase of development to the next. If you don't master the skills, you lot may still move on to the next phase of the bike, just you are more likely to take difficulty with relationships and future transitions. Family life cycle theory suggests that successful transitioning may besides help to forbid disease and emotional or stress-related disorders.

Whether you lot are a parent or kid, brother or sister, bonded by claret or love, your experiences through the family unit life bike will affect who you are and who y'all become. The more you understand about the challenges of each stage of the bike, the more likely yous are to successfully move on.

What can disrupt the normal cycle?

The stress of daily living, coping with a chronic medical condition, or other life crises tin disrupt the normal life bicycle. Ongoing stress or a crisis tin delay the transition to the side by side phase of life. Or you may move on without the skills that you need to easily adapt and transition to the next stage of life.

How can I improve my family life cycle?

Be bodacious, y'all can acquire missed skills and improve your and your family's quality of life at whatsoever stage. Cocky-examination, education, and perhaps counseling are means to meliorate yourself and your family life. These are likewise deportment that can assist you manage other problems, too, such as going through a divorce or being a part of a nontraditional family structure.

Independence Stage

Independence is the most disquisitional stage of the family life cycle. As yous enter young machismo, you begin to split emotionally from your family. During this phase, you strive to become fully able to back up yourself emotionally, physically, socially, and financially. Y'all begin to develop unique qualities and characteristics that ascertain your individual identity.

Intimacy is a vital skill to develop during your contained, young developed years. Intimacy is the ability to develop and maintain shut relationships that tin can endure difficult times and other challenges. In an intimate human relationship, you learn about:

• Delivery.
• Commonality or similarity.
• Compatibility.
• Attachment.
• Dependence on another person who is not in your family.
• Shared emotion in a human relationship.

Yous also learn who you are outside of your identity within your family. Your ability to develop an intimate human relationship depends on how successful you were at developing your individual identity earlier in life.

If you are a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered person (LGBT), this phase may include making your sexual orientation known, or "coming out" to your family unit and friends.

Exploring interests and career goals is role of developing independence. To live successfully away from your family, you must develop financial and emotional independence.

You also begin to be responsible for your own health in this phase. Y'all become responsible for your nutritional, physical, and medical needs. Developing healthy habits at this time—such as good diet, regular exercise, and safer sex practices—is important for lifelong skilful health and happiness.

Yous learn new aspects of independence throughout your lifetime. Even when you lot have moved on to another stage of life, such as coupling, you continue to learn independence within the context of that phase.

During the independence stage, you lot promise to:

• Larn to encounter yourself equally a separate person in relation to your original family—parents, siblings, and extended family members.
• Develop intimate peer relationships exterior the family unit.
• Constitute yourself in your work or career.

Other important qualities you develop during this phase include:

• Trust.
• Morals.
• Initiative.
• Work ethic.
• Identity, or who y'all are in the world.

Coupling Phase

The next stage in the family life bike may be coupling. Using qualities such as trust that y'all gained in the independence phase, you tin can explore your ability to commit to a new family and a new way of life. Although existence in an intimate human relationship with someone does involve a process of accommodation and relationship edifice, a marriage or committed marriage often requires unique skills.

When you bring together families through a matrimony or committed union, you grade a new family organisation. Your family system includes your personal ideas, expectations, and values. These are shaped by the relationships and experiences with your original family. When you marry or form a wedlock, you combine your family unit system with your spouse's or partner's. This requires reshaping your goals and your partner's goals. In the virtually functional relationships, partners have the ability to take two different points of view and create an option that neither person had considered. It differs from a compromise in that it is non giving up something. Rather, information technology is creating a 3rd, amend pick.

You lot may find that some of the ideas or expectations that you held in the past are not realistic at this stage. Some mutual areas of aligning include:

• Finances.
• Lifestyle.
• Recreational activities or hobbies.
• Relationships with in-laws.
• Sexuality or sexual compatibility.
• Friendships.
• Putting another person's needs before your own.

The ultimate goal at this phase is to attain interdependence, which occurs when you are able to fully enter into a human relationship with some other person. Interdependence also requires that yous share goals and that you are able to sometimes identify the needs of another to a higher place your own. But earlier yous can achieve interdependence, you must first have a high caste of independence.

The relationship skills you acquire in coupling serve every bit a foundation for other relationships, such as parent-child, teacher-pupil, or doc-patient.

Within a couple, you learn:

• Avant-garde interpersonal communication.
• Trouble-solving skills.
• Mutual spiritual and emotional development goals.
• How to course boundaries in relationships.
• When to place the needs or importance of the other person above your own.

Most research shows that early on, a happy marriage is full of passion and sexual intimacy, which can become less important in later successful marriage. A satisfying marriage at this stage includes a loftier corporeality of considerate or kind acts (such as doing something prissy for the other person without beingness asked) and praise.

The life skills you larn in this phase are important in developing true interdependence and the power to have a cooperative and healthy relationship. Some of the challenges of this stage include:

• Transitioning into the new family organisation.
• Including your spouse or partner in your relationships with friends and family members.
• Being committed to making your union piece of work.
• Putting the needs of another ahead of your own.

You and your partner will take less stress if the transition into a new family unit system is smooth. Less stress ofttimes means better health.

Your specific goals for this stage of the family life cycle are:

• Forming a new family with your partner.
• Realigning your relationships with your family of origin and your friends to now include your spouse.

Parenting: Babies Through Adolescents

Making the decision to take a baby

At some signal in your relationship, you lot and your partner will decide if you lot want to have a baby. Some couples know going into a relationship that they do not want children. Parenting is one of the most challenging phases of the family life cycle.

The decision to have children is 1 that affects your individual evolution, the identity of your family, and your relationship. Children are and so fourth dimension-consuming that skills not learned in previous stages volition be hard to choice upwards at this stage. Your power to communicate well, maintain your relationships, and solve problems is often tested during this stage.

Introducing a kid into your family results in a major alter in roles for you and your partner. Each parent has 3 singled-out and demanding roles: equally an individual, a partner, and a parent. As new parents, your individual identities shift along with how y'all relate to each other and to others. The skills that y'all learned in the Independence and Coupling stages, such as compromise and commitment, volition help you lot move to the Parenting phase.

Along with the joy that comes from having a child, you may experience a slap-up deal of stress and fright about these changes. A woman might have concerns virtually existence significant and going through childbirth. Fathers tend to keep their fears and stress to themselves, which can crusade health problems.

Talking about your emotional or physical concerns with your family unit physician, obstetrician, or counselor tin can help y'all bargain with these and future challenges.

Parenting young children

Adapting children into other relationships is a key emotional process of this stage. You will take on the parenting role and transition from being a member of a couple to being a parent. While yous are still evolving as individuals, you lot and your partner are also becoming decision-makers for your family. Continuing to express your individuality while working well together every bit a couple results in a strong wedlock.

Your kid'due south healthy development depends on your power to provide a safety, loving, and organized environment. Children do good when their parents accept a strong human relationship.

Caring for young children cuts into the amount of time yous might otherwise spend lone or with your partner. If you did non fully develop some skills in previous phases, such as compromise for the good of the family, your human relationship may be strained. For case, divorce or affairs may be more likely to occur during the years of raising immature children if parents take not developed strong skills from earlier life stages.

But for those who have the proper tools, this can be a very rewarding, happy fourth dimension, even with all of its challenges. Optimally, you lot develop as an individual, equally a member of a couple, and equally a member of a family unit.

Specific goals when young children bring together your family are:

• Adjusting your marital organization to make space for children.
• Taking on parenting roles.
• Realigning your relationships with your extended family to include parenting and grandparenting roles.

Parenting adolescents

Parenting teenagers tin can be a rough time for your family and can test your human relationship skills. It's too a time for positive growth and creative exploration for your unabridged family. Families that function best during this period take stiff, flexible relationships adult through skillful communication, problem solving, common caring, support, and trust.

Virtually teens experiment with dissimilar thoughts, beliefs, and styles, which tin can cause family conflict. Your strengths equally an individual and every bit role of a couple are critical as you deal with the increasing challenges of raising a teenager. Strive for a balanced atmosphere in which your teenager has a sense of support and emotional condom every bit well as opportunities to try new behaviors. An of import skill at this stage is flexibility equally y'all encourage your kid to become independent and creative. Establish boundaries for your teenager, simply encourage exploration at the aforementioned time. Teens may question themselves in many areas, including their sexual orientation and gender identities.

Because of what you learned when you developed your identity in the earlier stages of life, you may feel more than prepared and more secure about the changes your child is going through. But if you did not work through these skills at earlier stages of life, you may feel threatened past your child's new developments.

Flexibility in the roles each person plays in the family system is a valuable skill to develop at this phase. Responsibilities such as the demands of a job or caring for someone who is ill may crave each person in the family to take on various, and sometimes irresolute, roles.

This is a time when one or more family members may feel some level of depression or other distress. It may likewise lead to physical complaints that have no physical cause (somatization disorders such equally stomach upsets and some headaches) forth with other stress-related disorders.

Nurturing your relationship and your individual growth can sometimes be ignored at this phase. Toward the finish of this phase, a parent'south focus shifts from the maturing teen to career and relationship. Neglecting your personal development and your relationship can make this shift hard.

You lot also may begin thinking virtually your role in caring for aging parents. Making your own health a priority in this phase is helpful equally you enter the next stage of the family life cycle.

Specific goals during the phase of parenting adolescents include:

• Shifting parent-child relationships to allow the child to motion in and out of the family unit system.
• Shifting focus back to your midlife relationship and career issues.
• Beginning a shift toward concern for older generations in your extended family.

Empty Nest: Launching Developed Children

The stage of launching adult children begins when your first kid leaves abode and ends with the "empty nest." When older children leave home, there are both positive and negative consequences. If your family has developed meaning skills through the family life wheel, your children will exist ready to leave domicile, ready to handle life's challenges. Free from the everyday demands of parenting, you may cull to rekindle your own relationship and perchance your career goals.

Developing developed relationships with your children is a central skill in this stage. You may exist challenged to accept new members into your family unit through your children's relationships. You may focus on reprioritizing your life, forgiving those who accept wronged you lot (mayhap long ago), and assessing your beliefs most life.

If you struggled with previous life phases, your children may not have learned from you all the skills they need to live well on their ain. If you and your partner accept not transitioned together, you may no longer feel compatible with each other. But remember that you can still gain the skills y'all may accept missed. Self-test, education, and counseling can enhance your life and help ensure a healthy transition to the next phase.

This is a time when your wellness and energy levels may decline. Some people are diagnosed with chronic illnesses. Symptoms of these diseases can limit normal activities and even long-enjoyed pastimes. Health issues related to midlife may begin to occur and tin include:

• High blood pressure (hypertension).
• Weight problems.
• Arthritis.
• Menopause.
• Osteoporosis.
• Heart affliction (coronary artery disease).
• Depression.
• Stress-related illnesses.

You may also be caring for aging parents in this stage, which tin can be stressful and touch on your own wellness.

Specific goals to attain at this stage include:

• Refocusing on your relationship without children.
• Developing adult relationships with your grown children.
• Realigning relationships to include in-laws and grandchildren when your children brainstorm their own families.

Retirement or Senior Phase of Life

During the retirement phase of the family life cycle, many changes occur in your life. Welcoming new family members or seeing others leave your family is often a large office of this stage equally your children marry or divorce or you become a grandparent.

This stage can be a great adventure where y'all are free from the responsibilities of raising your children and can simply relish the fruits of your life's work. Challenges yous may face include being a support to other family unit members, even as you are all the same exploring your own interests and activities or focusing on maintaining your relationship. Many people are caring for elderly parents at this fourth dimension. You may feel challenged by their emotional, financial, and physical needs while trying to help them keep their independence.

Yous may experience failing physical and mental abilities or changes in your financial or social status. Sometimes you lot must bargain with the death of other family unit members, including your partner. The quality of your life, in part, depends on how well you adjusted to the changes in before stages. Information technology oft also depends on how well you have cared for your own health upwards to this bespeak. Normal aging will touch your body, resulting in wrinkles, aches, pains, and loss of bone density. The chances of having a mental or chronic physical disease increases with historic period. Only aging does not mean yous will automatically experience poor wellness.

Retirement can exist a fulfilling and happy time. Becoming a grandparent can bring you great joy without the responsibility of raising a kid. But those who are without acceptable support systems or not well off financially may have a more difficult time in this phase of life.

Specific goals to reach for at this final stage of your family unit life cycle include:

• Maintaining your own interests and physical functioning, along with those of your partner, as your body ages.
• Exploring new family and social roles.
• Providing emotional support for your adult children and extended family members.
• Making room in the family system for the wisdom and experience of older adults.
• Providing support for the older generation without doing besides much for them.
• Dealing with the loss of a partner, siblings, and other peers, and preparing for your own death.
• Reviewing your life and reflecting on all you have learned and experienced during your life wheel.

References

Other Works Consulted

• McGoldrick Thousand, et al., eds. (2011). The Expanded Family Life Wheel: Private, Family, and Social Perspectives, 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
• Newman BM, Newman PR (2012). Development Through Life: A Psychosocial Approach, 11th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
• Rentfro AR (2010). Wellness promotion and the family. In CL Edelman, CL Mandle, eds., Health Promotion Throughout the Lifespan, seventh ed., pp. 171–199. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby.

Credits

Current equally of: August 31, 2020

Author: Healthwise Staff
Medical Review:
Anne C. Poinier Medico - Internal Medicine
Kathleen Romito Doctor - Family Medicine
Adam Husney MD - Family Medicine

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Source: https://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/ty6171

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