The Family Life Cycle Refers to the Predictable Patterns Families Exhibit During a Time Frame.

Topic Overview

What is a family life cycle?

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

Not everyone passes through these stages smoothly. Situations such equally severe illness, financial bug, or the death of a loved one can accept an effect on how well you pass through the stages. Fortunately, if yous miss skills in one stage, yous can learn them in after 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 information technology important to understand the family unit life cycle?

Mastering the skills and milestones of each stage allows you to successfully move from one phase of development to the next. If yous don't principal the skills, you may still move on to the next phase of the cycle, but you are more likely to have difficulty with relationships and future transitions. Family life bicycle theory suggests that successful transitioning may also help to prevent affliction and emotional or stress-related disorders.

Whether you are a parent or child, blood brother or sister, bonded past blood or love, your experiences through the family life cycle volition affect who you are and who you become. The more you understand about the challenges of each phase of the cycle, the more likely you 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 can disrupt the normal life wheel. Ongoing stress or a crisis tin filibuster the transition to the side by side phase of life. Or y'all may move on without the skills that you need to easily adjust and transition to the next phase of life.

How can I improve my family life cycle?

Be assured, you tin larn missed skills and meliorate your and your family unit'due south quality of life at any stage. Cocky-examination, education, and perhaps counseling are ways to better yourself and your family unit life. These are also actions that can assistance you lot manage other issues, as well, such as going through a divorce or being a part of a nontraditional family construction.

Independence Stage

Independence is the most critical stage of the family life cycle . As y'all enter young adulthood, you begin to separate emotionally from your family. During this stage, you strive to become fully able to support yourself emotionally, physically, socially, and financially. Y'all begin to develop unique qualities and characteristics that ascertain your private identity.

Intimacy is a vital skill to develop during your contained, young adult years. Intimacy is the ability to develop and maintain close relationships that tin endure hard times and other challenges. In an intimate human relationship, yous acquire about:

• Delivery.
• Commonality or similarity.
• Compatibility.
• Attachment.
• Dependence on another person who is non in your family.
• Shared emotion in a relationship.

You also learn who you lot are outside of your identity within your family. Your ability to develop an intimate 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 stage may include making your sexual orientation known, or "coming out" to your family and friends.

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

You also begin to be responsible for your own health in this stage. Y'all become responsible for your nutritional, concrete, and medical needs. Developing healthy habits at this time—such as adept nutrition, regular practise, and safer sexual practice practices—is important for lifelong skilful health and happiness.

Y'all 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 stage.

During the independence phase, you hope to:

• Acquire to see yourself as a split up person in relation to your original family—parents, siblings, and extended family members.
• Develop intimate peer relationships outside the family.
• Establish yourself in your work or career.

Other important qualities you lot develop during this phase include:

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

Coupling Stage

The next phase in the family life cycle may be coupling. Using qualities such every bit trust that you gained in the independence phase, you 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 adaptation and relationship building, a marriage or committed marriage often requires unique skills.

When you join families through a marriage or committed matrimony, you lot form a new family unit system. Your family system includes your personal ideas, expectations, and values. These are shaped past the relationships and experiences with your original family unit. When you ally or course a union, yous combine your family system with your spouse's or partner's. This requires reshaping your goals and your partner's goals. In the most functional relationships, partners accept the power to take two different points of view and create an option that neither person had considered. Information technology differs from a compromise in that information technology is not giving upwards something. Rather, it is creating a third, better option.

You may discover that some of the ideas or expectations that you held in the past are not realistic at this stage. Some common areas of adjustment include:

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

The ultimate goal at this stage is to attain interdependence, which occurs when you are able to fully enter into a human relationship with another person. Interdependence likewise requires that you share goals and that y'all are able to sometimes identify the needs of another above your own. But before you can achieve interdependence, yous must kickoff have a high degree of independence.

The relationship skills y'all learn in coupling serve every bit a foundation for other relationships, such as parent-child, teacher-educatee, or physician-patient.

Within a couple, you larn:

• Advanced interpersonal communication.
• Problem-solving skills.
• Common spiritual and emotional development goals.
• How to form boundaries in relationships.
• When to identify the needs or importance of the other person higher up your own.

Most enquiry shows that early on on, a happy union is full of passion and sexual intimacy, which tin become less important in later successful spousal relationship. A satisfying marriage at this stage includes a high amount of considerate or kind acts (such as doing something nice for the other person without existence asked) and praise.

The life skills you learn in this stage are important in developing true interdependence and the ability to take a cooperative and healthy relationship. Some of the challenges of this stage include:

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

You lot and your partner will accept less stress if the transition into a new family system is smooth. Less stress often means better wellness.

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

• Forming a new family unit 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 have a baby

At some betoken in your human relationship, you lot and your partner will decide if you desire to have a baby. Some couples know going into a human relationship that they do not want children. Parenting is 1 of the most challenging phases of the family life cycle .

The decision to have children is 1 that affects your individual development, the identity of your family, and your human relationship. Children are so fourth dimension-consuming that skills non learned in previous stages volition exist difficult to pick up at this stage. Your ability to communicate well, maintain your relationships, and solve problems is often tested during this stage.

Introducing a child into your family unit results in a major change in roles for you and your partner. Each parent has 3 distinct and demanding roles: equally an private, a partner, and a parent. As new parents, your individual identities shift along with how you relate to each other and to others. The skills that you learned in the Independence and Coupling stages, such every bit compromise and commitment, will aid you move to the Parenting stage.

Along with the joy that comes from having a child, you may experience a great deal of stress and fear about these changes. A woman might have concerns near being significant and going through childbirth. Fathers tend to keep their fears and stress to themselves, which can cause health problems.

Talking about your emotional or concrete concerns with your family physician , obstetrician , or advisor can help you deal with these and future challenges.

Parenting immature children

Adapting children into other relationships is a primal emotional process of this phase. Y'all will take on the parenting role and transition from being a fellow member of a couple to beingness a parent. While yous are still evolving every bit individuals, you and your partner are also becoming decision-makers for your family. Standing to express your individuality while working well together as a couple results in a potent union.

Your child's good for you development depends on your power to provide a safe, loving, and organized surround. Children do good when their parents have a stiff relationship.

Caring for immature children cuts into the amount of fourth dimension you might otherwise spend alone or with your partner. If yous did not fully develop some skills in previous phases, such as compromise for the good of the family, your relationship may be strained. For example, divorce or affairs may be more probable to occur during the years of raising young children if parents have not developed stiff skills from earlier life stages.

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

Specific goals when young children join your family are:

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

Parenting adolescents

Parenting teenagers can be a rough time for your family and can examination your relationship skills. It's also a fourth dimension for positive growth and creative exploration for your entire family. Families that function best during this period take potent, flexible relationships developed through good communication, problem solving, common caring, support, and trust.

Well-nigh teens experiment with different thoughts, behavior, and styles, which can cause family unit disharmonize. Your strengths equally an individual and every bit part 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 back up and emotional safety as well as opportunities to try new behaviors. An important skill at this stage is flexibility every bit you lot encourage your kid to become contained and artistic. Institute boundaries for your teenager, but encourage exploration at the same 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 before stages of life, you may experience more prepared and more secure about the changes your child is going through. But if yous did not work through these skills at before stages of life, you lot may feel threatened past your child's new developments.

Flexibility in the roles each person plays in the family unit system is a valuable skill to develop at this stage. Responsibilities such as the demands of a task or caring for someone who is ill may require each person in the family to take on diverse, and sometimes changing, roles.

This is a time when i or more than family members may feel some level of low or other distress. It may as well lead to physical complaints that take no concrete crusade ( somatization disorders such as stomach upsets and some headaches) along with other stress-related disorders.

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

Y'all also may begin thinking about your role in caring for aging parents. Making your own wellness a priority in this phase is helpful as you enter the side by side stage of the family unit life wheel.

Specific goals during the stage of parenting adolescents include:

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

Empty Nest: Launching Developed Children

The phase of launching adult children begins when your starting time kid leaves habitation and ends with the "empty nest." When older children leave abode, there are both positive and negative consequences. If your family has developed significant skills through the family unit life cycle , your children will be set to leave dwelling, ready to handle life's challenges. Gratuitous from the everyday demands of parenting, y'all may choose to rekindle your own human relationship and perchance your career goals.

Developing developed relationships with your children is a key skill in this stage. Y'all may be challenged to accept new members into your family through your children's relationships. You may focus on reprioritizing your life, forgiving those who have wronged you (maybe long agone), and assessing your beliefs nearly life.

If you struggled with previous life phases, your children may not accept learned from you all the skills they demand to alive well on their own. If yous and your partner have not transitioned together, yous may no longer experience compatible with each other. But remember that you tin can nonetheless gain the skills you may have missed. Self-test, education, and counseling can heighten your life and help ensure a healthy transition to the adjacent phase.

This is a fourth dimension when your health and free 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 bug related to midlife may begin to occur and tin can include:

• Loftier blood pressure (hypertension).
• Weight problems.
• Arthritis.
• Menopause.
• Osteoporosis.
• Centre disease (coronary artery illness).
• Depression.
• Stress-related illnesses.

Y'all may also exist caring for aging parents in this phase, which can be stressful and touch on your own health.

Specific goals to reach at this stage include:

• Refocusing on your relationship without children.
• Developing developed relationships with your grown children.
• Realigning relationships to include in-laws and grandchildren when your children begin their ain families.

Retirement or Senior Stage of Life

During the retirement phase of the family unit life wheel , many changes occur in your life. Welcoming new family members or seeing others exit your family is ofttimes a large role of this phase as your children marry or divorce or you become a grandparent.

This phase can be a great hazard where you are free from the responsibilities of raising your children and tin simply bask the fruits of your life's piece of work. Challenges you may face up include being a support to other family unit members, even equally you are notwithstanding exploring your ain interests and activities or focusing on maintaining your relationship. Many people are caring for elderly parents at this time. You may feel challenged by their emotional, fiscal, and physical needs while trying to help them keep their independence.

You may experience declining physical and mental abilities or changes in your financial or social status. Sometimes you must deal with the death of other family unit members, including your partner. The quality of your life, in part, depends on how well yous adjusted to the changes in earlier stages. It ofttimes also depends on how well you have cared for your ain health up to this point. Normal aging will affect your trunk, resulting in wrinkles, aches, pains, and loss of bone density. The chances of having a mental or chronic concrete affliction increases with historic period. But aging does non mean you will automatically experience poor health.

Retirement can exist a fulfilling and happy time. Becoming a grandparent can bring yous great joy without the responsibleness of raising a child. But those who are without adequate support systems or not well off financially may have a more difficult fourth dimension in this stage of life.

Specific goals to attain 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 torso ages.
• Exploring new family and social roles.
• Providing emotional support for your adult children and extended family members.
• Making room in the family unit system for the wisdom and experience of older adults.
• Providing support for the older generation without doing too much for them.
• Dealing with the loss of a partner, siblings, and other peers, and preparing for your own decease.
• Reviewing your life and reflecting on all you have learned and experienced during your life cycle.

References

Other Works Consulted

• McGoldrick M, et al., eds. (2011). The Expanded Family Life Bicycle: Individual, Family, and Social Perspectives, 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Salary.
• Newman BM, Newman PR (2012). Evolution Through Life: A Psychosocial Approach, 11th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
• Rentfro AR (2010). Health promotion and the family unit. In CL Edelman, CL Mandle, eds., Wellness Promotion Throughout the Lifespan, 7th ed., pp. 171–199. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby.

Credits

Current equally of: June xvi, 2021

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

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Source: https://www.peacehealth.org/medical-topics/id/ty6171