FAMILY LIFE CYCLE

Family Life Cycle

Family Life Cycle

Introduction

The family life cycle is a developmental process that is through a series of steps involving changes and adaptations (Robbins 2006). These changes can lead to crisis, lower and higher intensity in the core family since moving from one stage to another family rules change, resulting in the system adverse family situations such as the separation of one of its members or the arrival of the first child and problems within the family and couple that may arise (Giarrusso 2009).

Families are shaped by people who share a history and a future together. From this time perspective families are living systems moving through time. With the contemporary family pulsing with plural, multicultural patterns there is not one set course or normative sequence by which families develop over time? Major life-cycle transitions are marked by fundamental changes in the family system itself (second order changes) rather than rearrangements within the system (first order changes). McGoldrick and Carter have designed a classification of critical, fundamental family life-cycle stages of American middle-class families in the beginning of the 21st century (1999, 2) (Robbins 2006).

Stages of Family Life Cycle

1.Constitution of the couple

2.Birth and upbringing

3.School age children

4.Adolescence

5.Out of home children

6.Aging

7.Mature Age

Key Tasks of Each Stage

Constitution of the couple

With the formation of a pair is established a new system, which will be the beginning of a new family. This new system / partner will own new features. In turn, each partner will bring beliefs procedures and expectations to be inherited from their own families of origin (Giarrusso 2009). By forming a new system will to examine each of them and negotiate to establish a new identity as a new family, accepting the conferences and maintaining their individuality (Robbins 2006).

Birth and upbringing

The birth of ...