The Family Life Cycle Repeats Many Times for a Family.

Topic Overview

What is a family unit life cycle?

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

Non anybody passes through these stages smoothly. Situations such as severe illness, financial problems, or the death of a loved i can have an upshot on how well you laissez passer through the stages. Fortunately, if yous miss skills in ane phase, you lot tin can learn them in later stages.

The stages of the family life bicycle are:

• Independence.
• Coupling or union.
• 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 phase allows you to successfully movement from one stage of development to the adjacent. If you don't master the skills, you lot may nevertheless motility on to the next phase of the wheel, but you are more probable to have difficulty with relationships and future transitions. Family life bike theory suggests that successful transitioning may as well assistance to foreclose disease and emotional or stress-related disorders.

Whether you are a parent or child, blood brother or sister, bonded by claret or love, your experiences through the family life cycle will affect who yous are and who you become. The more you understand about the challenges of each stage of the bicycle, the more likely you are to successfully movement on.

What can disrupt the normal bike?

The stress of daily living, coping with a chronic medical condition, or other life crises tin disrupt the normal life cycle. Ongoing stress or a crisis can delay the transition to the side by side stage of life. Or you may move on without the skills that you lot demand to hands adjust and transition to the next stage of life.

How can I improve my family unit life cycle?

Be bodacious, you tin larn missed skills and improve your and your family's quality of life at any stage. Self-examination, teaching, and peradventure counseling are ways to improve yourself and your family life. These are also actions that can help you manage other issues, likewise, such as going through a divorce or being a part of a nontraditional family unit construction.

Independence Stage

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

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

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

You also acquire 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 lot 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 function 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 stage. You lot go responsible for your nutritional, physical, and medical needs. Developing good for you habits at this time—such as good nutrition, regular exercise, and safer sex practices—is important for lifelong good health and happiness.

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

During the independence phase, you lot hope to:

• Learn to run into yourself equally a separate person in relation to your original family—parents, siblings, and extended family members.
• Develop intimate peer relationships outside the family.
• Found yourself in your work or career.

Other important qualities yous develop during this phase include:

• Trust.
• Morals.
• Initiative.
• Work ethic.
• Identity, or who yous are in the world.

Coupling Stage

The adjacent stage in the family life bike may be coupling. Using qualities such as trust that you gained in the independence stage, you tin can explore your ability to commit to a new family unit and a new style of life. Although existence in an intimate relationship with someone does involve a process of adaptation and relationship edifice, a marriage or committed union often requires unique skills.

When you lot join families through a wedlock or committed union, you class a new family unit system. Your family organization 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 union, you combine your family organization with your spouse's or partner's. This requires reshaping your goals and your partner's goals. In the most functional relationships, partners take the power to take ii different points of view and create an selection that neither person had considered. It differs from a compromise in that it is not giving upwardly something. Rather, information technology is creating a third, better option.

Y'all may observe that some of the ideas or expectations that you held in the past are not realistic at this stage. Some common areas of aligning include:

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

The ultimate goal at this stage is to attain interdependence, which occurs when y'all are able to fully enter into a human relationship with another person. Interdependence as well requires that y'all share goals and that y'all are able to sometimes place the needs of some other above your own. Only earlier y'all can achieve interdependence, you must offset have a high degree of independence.

The human relationship skills yous learn in coupling serve equally a foundation for other relationships, such as parent-kid, teacher-educatee, or physician-patient.

Within a couple, you learn:

• Avant-garde 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 above your own.

Almost inquiry shows that early on, a happy wedlock is full of passion and sexual intimacy, which can get less important in later successful marriage. 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 phase are of import in developing truthful interdependence and the ability to have a cooperative and good for you human 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.
• Beingness committed to making your marriage work.
• Putting the needs of some other alee of your ain.

You lot and your partner volition have less stress if the transition into a new family system is shine. Less stress often 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 unit of origin and your friends to at present include your spouse.

Parenting: Babies Through Adolescents

Making the decision to have a baby

At some point in your relationship, you and your partner volition determine if you want to have a baby. Some couples know going into a relationship that they do not want children. Parenting is 1 of the most challenging phases of the family life bicycle.

The decision to have children is one that affects your individual development, the identity of your family, and your relationship. Children are so time-consuming that skills non learned in previous stages volition be difficult to pick upwardly at this stage. Your ability to communicate well, maintain your relationships, and solve problems is oft tested during this stage.

Introducing a child into your family results in a major change in roles for you and your partner. Each parent has three distinct and enervating roles: as an private, a partner, and a parent. As new parents, your private identities shift along with how y'all chronicle to each other and to others. The skills that you learned in the Independence and Coupling stages, such every bit compromise and commitment, will help yous move to the Parenting stage.

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

Talking well-nigh your emotional or concrete concerns with your family md, obstetrician, or counselor can help yous deal with these and future challenges.

Parenting young children

Adapting children into other relationships is a key emotional process of this stage. You volition take on the parenting role and transition from being a member of a couple to being a parent. While you are however 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 as a couple results in a potent wedlock.

Your kid'southward salubrious development depends on your power to provide a safe, loving, and organized environment. Children benefit when their parents have a strong relationship.

Caring for young children cuts into the amount of fourth dimension yous might otherwise spend alone or with your partner. If you did non fully develop some skills in previous phases, such as compromise for the good of the family unit, your relationship may be strained. For example, divorce or diplomacy may be more than likely to occur during the years of raising young children if parents take not developed strong skills from before 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 develop as an individual, as a fellow member of a couple, and as a member of a family.

Specific goals when immature 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 tin can exist a rough time for your family unit and can test your relationship skills. It'southward also a time for positive growth and artistic exploration for your entire family. Families that function best during this period have potent, flexible relationships developed through good advice, problem solving, mutual caring, support, and trust.

Most teens experiment with different thoughts, behavior, and styles, which can cause family conflict. Your strengths as an individual and as part of a couple are critical equally 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 safety besides equally opportunities to try new behaviors. An important skill at this phase is flexibility as you encourage your kid to become independent and creative. Establish boundaries for your teenager, but encourage exploration at the aforementioned time. Teens may question themselves in many areas, including their sexual orientation and gender identities.

Considering of what you lot learned when you developed your identity in the earlier stages of life, you may feel more prepared and more secure virtually the changes your child is going through. But if y'all did non work through these skills at earlier stages of life, yous may feel threatened by your child's new developments.

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

This is a time when 1 or more family members may experience some level of depression or other distress. It may as well lead to physical complaints that have no physical cause (somatization disorders such as stomach upsets and some headaches) forth with other stress-related disorders.

Nurturing your human relationship and your individual growth can sometimes be ignored at this stage. Toward the end of this stage, 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 also may begin thinking about your role in caring for crumbling parents. Making your own health a priority in this phase is helpful equally you enter the side by side stage of the family unit life bicycle.

Specific goals during the phase of parenting adolescents include:

• Shifting parent-child relationships to allow the child to move in and out of the family unit arrangement.
• Shifting focus dorsum to your midlife relationship and career bug.
• 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 outset child leaves home and ends with the "empty nest." When older children leave home, there are both positive and negative consequences. If your family has adult significant skills through the family life bicycle, your children will exist ready to leave abode, ready to handle life'southward challenges. Complimentary from the everyday demands of parenting, you lot may choose to rekindle your own relationship and possibly your career goals.

Developing adult relationships with your children is a key skill in this stage. Yous may exist challenged to accept new members into your family through your children's relationships. You may focus on reprioritizing your life, forgiving those who accept wronged yous (mayhap long agone), and assessing your behavior nigh 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 own. If you and your partner have not transitioned together, you may no longer feel compatible with each other. Only call back that you tin still gain the skills y'all may have missed. Self-exam, education, and counseling can raise your life and aid 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 tin limit normal activities and even long-enjoyed pastimes. Health issues related to midlife may brainstorm to occur and can include:

• High blood pressure level (hypertension).
• Weight bug.
• Arthritis.
• Menopause.
• Osteoporosis.
• Heart disease (coronary artery disease).
• Low.
• Stress-related illnesses.

You may also be caring for aging parents in this phase, which can be stressful and affect your own health.

Specific goals to reach 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 begin their ain families.

Retirement or Senior Stage of Life

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

This stage tin can exist a swell run a risk where yous are free from the responsibilities of raising your children and can just relish the fruits of your life's piece of work. Challenges you may face include existence a support to other family members, fifty-fifty as you are still exploring your own 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 concrete needs while trying to assist them keep their independence.

You may feel declining physical and mental abilities or changes in your financial or social condition. Sometimes you must bargain with the decease of other family members, including your partner. The quality of your life, in role, depends on how well you adjusted to the changes in before stages. It often also depends on how well you accept cared for your own health up to this bespeak. Normal aging volition affect your torso, resulting in wrinkles, aches, pains, and loss of bone density. The chances of having a mental or chronic concrete illness increases with historic period. But aging does not mean you will automatically experience poor health.

Retirement can be a fulfilling and happy time. Becoming a grandparent can bring you great joy without the responsibility of raising a child. Merely those who are without adequate support systems or non well off financially may have a more difficult time in this stage of life.

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

• Maintaining your ain 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 developed children and extended family unit members.
• Making room in the family system for the wisdom and experience of older adults.
• Providing support for the older generation without doing also 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 y'all take learned and experienced during your life cycle.

References

Other Works Consulted

• McGoldrick M, et al., eds. (2011). The Expanded Family Life Cycle: Individual, 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). Health promotion and the family. In CL Edelman, CL Mandle, eds., Wellness Promotion Throughout the Lifespan, 7th ed., pp. 171–199. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby.

Credits

Current as of: August 31, 2020

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

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

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