The family life cycle has been categorized by family therapists as the normative stages through which most families pass. These stages bring inevitable changes which often involve grief and loss. Yet how well a family navigates through these sometimes stormy waters of life may be a sign of their flexibility. And usually, given time and the family’s resources and coping skills, the changes are accommodated with new adaptive growth responses. In fact, the ability to change is a sign of good mental health.
It is good to be aware, however, that families are their most vulnerable during the transition times. Some of the normative stages of family development with their tasks and vulnerabilities include the following:
1. Between families: the unattached young adult. Young adults must differentiate from their family of origin, establish their own personal system of values and beliefs, develop intimate peer relationships, and choose and establish a career. If they remain overly dependent on their parents, they may have difficulty with this stage.
2. The joining of families through marriage: the new couple. The newly married couple must form a marital unit and realign with their families of origin. This process tends to result in difficulties and differences being ignored, usually due to the covering over by romantic feelings, only to resurface later. Also, couples may marry in order to escape problems in their original families, only to bring them to the new system.
3. The family with young children. The family who has children, by choice or not, must make space for the children and take on new responsible parental roles, often in already busy lives. As the social lives of children expand, the family must be prepared for contact with other families.
4. The family with adolescents. This stage usually brings a jolt to families who like the sometimes comfortable and more carefree prior stage. Parents must permit the adolescent to move in and out of the family system and must allow more freedom along with increasing responsibility. This stage and the next require the couple to reinvest in one another and may be a time of increased vulnerability to extramarital affairs and divorce.
5. Launching children and moving on. The marital couple must renegotiate their relationship and develop an adult-to-adult relationship with their children. This is a time of rapidly changing roles, as children may marry and themselves become parents. Also, there may be a accumulation of unresolved issues from the previous stages that now may lead to divorce, a sense of overwhelming loss (empty nest syndrome) and general disintegration of health. Some families embrace their new freedoms and opportunities. Others experience only transient disruptions. And a few develop symptoms in an unconscious effort to cling to the last child. This phase is also a time in which many couples must deal with aging or dying grandparents and parents.
6. The family in later life. This is the stage in which couples provide support for the middle generation; face retirement; deal with the loss of spouse, siblings, and peers; and prepare for their own deaths.
The above stages are classified as normative events. Paranormative events are those which occur frequently but not universally, to which families must also adapt and change. Examples include miscarriage, infertility, marital separation, divorce, illness, disability, relocation of households, and changes in socioeconomic status. When these events occur close together, a family can experience what is called “cluster stress” and be especially vulnerable. I encourage people to assess where they are in their life cycle as well as any paranormative events that are adding stress in order to be prepared and to seek outside help if they feel overwhelmed. Remember, the stormy waters of transition are inevitable but you can choose whether you take the course of growth or that of dysfunction.
