The Role of the Family Ends When a Person Reaches Adulthood.

Topic Overview

What is a family life cycle?

The emotional and intellectual stages you pass through from babyhood to your retirement years as a member of a family are called the family life bike. In each stage, you face challenges in your family life that permit you to build or proceeds new skills. Gaining these skills helps you lot work through the changes that nearly every family goes through.

Not everyone passes through these stages smoothly. Situations such as astringent illness, financial problems, or the death of a loved ane can take an effect on how well you laissez passer through the stages. Fortunately, if you miss skills in one stage, yous tin 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 wheel?

Mastering the skills and milestones of each stage allows y'all to successfully motion from ane stage of development to the next. If you don't main the skills, you lot may withal move on to the next stage of the cycle, but y'all are more likely to have difficulty with relationships and future transitions. Family life wheel theory suggests that successful transitioning may also aid to prevent illness and emotional or stress-related disorders.

Whether yous are a parent or child, brother or sister, bonded past blood or love, your experiences through the family life cycle will affect who you are and who y'all become. The more than you sympathise about the challenges of each stage of the wheel, 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 status, or other life crises can disrupt the normal life cycle. Ongoing stress or a crisis can delay the transition to the next phase of life. Or you lot may move on without the skills that you need to easily accommodate and transition to the side by side phase of life.

How can I improve my family unit life wheel?

Be assured, you lot can learn missed skills and improve your and your family'south quality of life at any phase. Self-examination, education, and perhaps counseling are ways to ameliorate yourself and your family unit life. These are also actions that tin can assistance you manage other bug, too, such as going through a divorce or being a function of a nontraditional family structure.

Independence Stage

Independence is the most critical stage of the family unit life bike . As y'all enter young adulthood, yous brainstorm to split emotionally from your family unit. During this stage, you lot strive to become fully able to back up 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 shut relationships that can suffer difficult times and other challenges. In an intimate relationship, you lot acquire about:

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

You as well larn who you are outside of your identity within your family. Your power to develop an intimate human relationship depends on how successful you were at developing your private identity earlier in life.

If yous 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 must develop financial and emotional independence.

You also brainstorm to be responsible for your own health in this stage. You become responsible for your nutritional, physical, and medical needs. Developing healthy habits at this time—such as adept nutrition, regular exercise, and safer sexual practice practices—is important for lifelong skilful wellness and happiness.

You acquire new aspects of independence throughout your lifetime. Even when you lot have moved on to some other stage of life, such as coupling, you lot keep to larn independence within the context of that stage.

During the independence stage, you hope to:

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

Other of import qualities you lot develop during this phase include:

• Trust.
• Morals.
• Initiative.
• Piece of work ethic.
• Identity, or who you lot are in the globe.

Coupling Stage

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

When you bring together families through a wedlock or committed wedlock, you grade a new family system. Your family system includes your personal ideas, expectations, and values. These are shaped past the relationships and experiences with your original family. When yous ally or form a union, you combine your family arrangement with your spouse's or partner's. This requires reshaping your goals and your partner's goals. In the nearly functional relationships, partners have the ability to have two different points of view and create an choice that neither person had considered. Information technology differs from a compromise in that it is not giving up something. Rather, it is creating a tertiary, better selection.

You may notice that some of the ideas or expectations that you held in the by are non 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'south needs earlier your own.

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

The relationship skills you acquire in coupling serve as a foundation for other relationships, such as parent-child, teacher-student, or physician-patient.

Inside a couple, you larn:

• Advanced interpersonal communication.
• Problem-solving skills.
• Mutual spiritual and emotional evolution goals.
• How to form boundaries in relationships.
• When to place the needs or importance of the other person above your ain.

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

The life skills you learn in this stage are important in developing truthful interdependence and the power to have 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.
• Beingness committed to making your marriage work.
• Putting the needs of some other ahead of your own.

You and your partner will have less stress if the transition into a new family arrangement is smooth. Less stress often means better health.

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

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

Parenting: Babies Through Adolescents

Making the determination to take a baby

At some signal in your relationship, you and your partner will determine if you desire to have a baby. Some couples know going into a relationship that they exercise not want children. Parenting is 1 of the nearly challenging phases of the family life wheel .

The decision to have children is one that affects your individual development, the identity of your family unit, and your relationship. Children are so fourth dimension-consuming that skills not learned in previous stages volition be difficult to pick up at this phase. Your ability to communicate well, maintain your relationships, and solve problems is often tested during this stage.

Introducing a child into your family results in a major change in roles for you lot and your partner. Each parent has three distinct and demanding roles: as 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 y'all learned in the Independence and Coupling stages, such as compromise and commitment, volition help 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 accept concerns virtually existence meaning and going through childbirth. Fathers tend to keep their fears and stress to themselves, which tin cause health bug.

Talking about your emotional or physical concerns with your family doctor , obstetrician , or counselor tin can help you deal with these and hereafter challenges.

Parenting young children

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

Your child's good for you development depends on your power to provide a rubber, loving, and organized environment. Children benefit when their parents take a strong relationship.

Caring for young children cuts into the amount of fourth dimension you might otherwise spend solitary or with your partner. If you 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 than likely to occur during the years of raising young children if parents have not adult potent skills from earlier life stages.

But for those who accept the proper tools, this can be a very rewarding, happy time, even with all of its challenges. Optimally, y'all develop as an private, as a fellow 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 organisation 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 can be a rough time for your family and can test your relationship skills. It's besides a fourth dimension for positive growth and creative exploration for your entire family. Families that function best during this period have strong, flexible relationships adult through good advice, problem solving, mutual caring, support, and trust.

Most teens experiment with different thoughts, beliefs, and styles, which can cause family conflict. Your strengths as an private and every bit part of a couple are disquisitional as you bargain 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 as opportunities to try new behaviors. An important skill at this stage is flexibility as you encourage your child to become independent and creative. Establish boundaries for your teenager, just encourage exploration at the same time. Teens may question themselves in many areas, including their sexual orientation and gender identities.

Considering of what you learned when yous adult your identity in the earlier stages of life, you may feel more prepared and more than secure almost the changes your child is going through. But if you did non piece of work through these skills at earlier stages of life, you may experience threatened by 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 chore or caring for someone who is ill may require each person in the family to take on various, and sometimes irresolute, roles.

This is a time when i or more than family unit members may feel some level of depression or other distress. Information technology may besides atomic number 82 to concrete complaints that take no concrete cause ( somatization disorders such as stomach upsets and some headaches) along with other stress-related disorders.

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

You also may begin thinking well-nigh your role in caring for aging parents. Making your own health a priority in this phase is helpful as you enter the next phase of the family life wheel.

Specific goals during the stage of parenting adolescents include:

• Shifting parent-kid relationships to allow the child to move 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 Adult Children

The stage of launching adult children begins when your first kid leaves home and ends with the "empty nest." When older children get out home, there are both positive and negative consequences. If your family has developed significant skills through the family life cycle , your children volition be set to leave home, ready to handle life's challenges. Free from the everyday demands of parenting, you may choose to rekindle your own human relationship and perhaps your career goals.

Developing adult relationships with your children is a key skill in this phase. Yous may be challenged to accept new members into your family through your children's relationships. You lot may focus on reprioritizing your life, forgiving those who take wronged yous (maybe long ago), and assessing your beliefs about life.

If you struggled with previous life phases, your children may not accept learned from you all the skills they need to live well on their own. If you and your partner accept non transitioned together, you may no longer feel uniform with each other. But remember that you lot can however gain the skills you may take missed. Self-test, education, and counseling tin can raise your life and help ensure a healthy transition to the next phase.

This is a time when your health 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 can include:

• High blood force per unit area (hypertension).
• Weight bug.
• Arthritis.
• Menopause.
• Osteoporosis.
• Centre affliction (coronary artery illness).
• Depression.
• Stress-related illnesses.

You may also be caring for aging parents in this stage, which can be stressful and affect your ain 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 begin their own families.

Retirement or Senior Stage of Life

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

This stage can be a peachy take chances where y'all are free from the responsibilities of raising your children and can merely savor the fruits of your life'south work. Challenges you lot may face include existence a support to other family members, fifty-fifty as yous are still 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 proceed their independence.

Yous may experience failing concrete and mental abilities or changes in your financial or social status. Sometimes you must bargain with the death of other family members, including your partner. The quality of your life, in part, depends on how well you adjusted to the changes in earlier stages. It often also depends on how well you take cared for your own health up to this indicate. Normal aging will affect your body, resulting in wrinkles, aches, pains, and loss of bone density. The chances of having a mental or chronic physical illness increases with age. Only crumbling does not mean you lot will automatically experience poor health.

Retirement can be a fulfilling and happy time. Becoming a grandparent tin can bring you corking joy without the responsibility of raising a child. But those who are without adequate support systems or not well off financially may take a more hard time in this phase of life.

Specific goals to reach for at this terminal phase of your family life bike include:

• Maintaining your own interests and concrete performance, along with those of your partner, as your body 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 back up 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 cycle.

References

Other Works Consulted

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

Credits

Current equally of: June 16, 2021

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

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

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