Fourth Edition

THE EXPANDEDFAMILY LIFE CYCLE"INDIVIDUAL, FAMILY,

AND ÿOCIAL PERSPECTIVES

Monica McGoldrickDirector, Multicultural Family Institute,

Highland Park, New Jersey

Betty CarterEmerita Director, Family Institute of Westchester

Nydia Garcia PretoAssociate Director, Multicultural Family Institute,

Highland Park, New Jersey

Allyn & BaconBoston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper Saddle River

Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich Paris Montreal TorontoDelhi Mexico City Sao Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul Singapore Taipei Tokyo

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Individual, Family and Social PerspectivesMonica McGoldrick, Betty Carter, Nydia Garcia Preto

introduction: The Family Life Cycle:A System Moving Through Time

We are born into families. They are the foundation ofour first experiences of the world, our first relation-ships, our first sense of belonging to a group. We de-velop, grow, and hopefully die in the context of ourfamilies. Human development takes shape as itmoves and evolves through the matrix of the familylife cycle, embedded in the larger socio-cultural con-text. All human problems are framed by the forma-tive course of our family's past, the present tasks it istrying to master, and the future to which it aspires.Thus, the family life cycle and the larger social con-text in which it is embedded are the natural frame-work within which to focus our understanding ofindividual identity and development. This chapterand this book offer a framework for understandingfamilies in the U. S. in their cultural context over thelife cycle. Statistics offered refer to the U.S. unlessotherwise specified and are an effort to help clini-cians appreciate the larger context of individuals,their families, and their larger social system, as theymove through the life cycle.

Families comprise people who have a sharedhistory and an implied shared future. They encom-pass the entire emotional system of at least three,and frequently four or even five, generations heldtogether by blood, legal, and/or historical ties. Rela-tionships with parents, siblings, and other family

members go through transitions as they movethrough life. Boundaries shift, psychological dis-tance among members changes, and roles within andbetween subsystems are constantly being redefined(Norris & Tindale, 1994; Cicirelli, 1995; Tindale,1999; Meinhold, 2006; McKay & Caverly, 2004;Connidis, 2001, 2008). It is extremely difficult tothink of the family as a whole because of the com-plexity involved. As a system moving through time,families are different from all other systems becausethey incorporate new members only by birth, adop-tion, commitment, or marriage, and members canleave only by death, if then. No other system is sub-ject to these constraints. A business manager can firemembers of his organization viewed as dysfunction-al, and members can resign if the organization'sstructure and values are not to their liking. In fami-lies, by contrast, the pressures of membership withno exit available can, in the extreme, lead to severedysfunction and even suicide. In nonfamily systems,the roles and functions are carried out in a more orless stable way, by replacement of those who leavefor any reason, or else the group dissolves and peo-ple move on into other systems. Although familiesalso have roles and functions, their main value is inthe relationships, which are irreplaceable.

Until recently, therapists have paid little attentionto the family life cycle and its impact on humandevelopment. Even now, psychological theories tendto relate at most to the nuclear family, ignoring the

2 Part 1 . Perspectives on the Evolving Family Life Cycle

multigenerational context of family connections thatpattern our lives. But our society's swiftly changingfamily patterns, which assume many configurationsover the life span, are forcing us to take a broader viewof both development and normalcy. Those milestonesaround which life cycle models have been oriented(birth, marriage, childbearing, and death) hold very dif-ferent roles in the lives of families in the twenty-firstcentury than they did in previous times. Even in thethree decades of this book's history we have revised thedefinitions of life cycle stages and their meanings witheach of our four editions to reflect our evolving under-standing of this framework and the exciting and dra-matically changing realities of the life cycle of familiesin the United States in our times. The tremendous life-shaping impact of one generation on those following ishard to overestimate. For one thing, the three or fourdifferent generations must adjust to life cycle transi-tions simultaneously. While one generation is movingtoward old age, the next is contending with late middleage, caregiving or the empty nest. The next generationscope with establishing careers and intimate peer adultrelationships, having and raising children, and adoles-cents, while the youngest generations are focused ongrowing up as part of the system. Naturally, there is anintermingling of the generations, and events at onelevel have a powerful effect on relationships at eachother level. The important impact of events in thegrandparental generation is routinely overlooked bytherapists who focus only on the nuclear family.Painful experiences such as illness and death are partic-ularly difficult for families to integrate and are thusmost lilÿely to have a profound, long-range impact onrelationships in the next generations.

Of course, in different cultures, the ages ofmultigenerational transitions differ markedly. In addi-tion, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, gender identi-ty, socio-economic status and health status influencethe life cycle. The stages of the life cycle themselvesare rather arbitrary breakdowns. The notion of child-hood has been described as the invention of eigh-teenth-century Western society and adolescence as theinvention of the nineteenth century (Aries, 1962),related to the cultural, economic, and political contextsof those eras. The notion of young adulthood as an in-dependent phase could be thought of as an inventionof the twentieth century, due to society's technological

needs. The inclusion of women as independent indi-viduals could be said to be a construct of the late twen-tieth century. The lengthy phases of midlife, the emptynest, and older age have certainly been developmentsprimarily of the late twentieth and early twenty-firstcenturies, brought about by the smaller number ofchildren and the greatly increased life span of ourtimes. Given the current changes in the family, thetwenty-first century may become known for an evenmore expanded launching stage, influenced by the ed-ucational requirements of the post-industrial age. Wecertainly seem headed for a transformation in our con-cept of marriage and of nurturing/caretaldng relation-ships with both children and older family members.

Just as the texture of life has become more com-plicated, so too our therapeutic models must evolve toreflect this complexity, appreciating both the contextaround the individual as a shaping environment andthe evolutionary iiffluence of time on human experi-ence. From a family life cycle perspective, symptomsand dysfunction are examined within a systemic con-text. At the same time we must be extremely cautiousabout stereotyping people who do not fit into tradi-tional norms for marriage, or having children, as ifthey were in themselves measures of maturity, whichthey are not. So we must consider in our clinical as-sessment the critical life cycle challenges of individu-als and families at each point in their lives, whilebeing careful not to marginalize those whose lifecourses differs from the norms of the majority. Rele-vant life cycle questions include how family membersare managing their same-generation and intergenera-tional relationships at each phase for the healthy evo-lution of the family. Are certain family membersover-functioning for others and are certain develop-mental or caretaking needs being neglected?

Families characteristically lack a time perspec-tive when they are having problems. They tend tomagnify the present moment, overwhelmed and im-mobilized by their immediate feelings. Or they be-come fixed on a moment in the past or the future thatthey dread or long for. They lose the awareness thatlife always means motion from the past into the fu-ture with a continual transformation of familial rela-tionships. As the sense of motion becomes lost ordistorted, therapy involves restoring a sense of life asa process and movement both from and toward.

Chapter 1 • Overview: The Life Cycle in Its Changing Context 3rodent indi-e late twen-, the emptyvelopmentstwenty-firstnumber ofpan of ourfamily, theFor an event by the ed-Lal age. Wein our con-

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The changing American family structureshould be put in the context of similar changes oc-curring worldwide and at every economic level:vastly increased divorce rates, the rise of single par-ent families, two-income households, an increase inwork time, especially for women, and high rates ofunwed childbearing. Experts have expressed hopethat the universality of family change will bringabout new thinking on social policy and a new at-tention to the integrity of families in their commu-nity context.

Despite the fact that in our era nuclear familiesoften live on their own and at great distance from ex-tended family members, they are still part of the larg-er multigenerational system, intertwined in theirpast, present, and anticipated future relationships.We have many more options than families of thepast: whether or whom to marry, where to live, howmany children to have, if any, how to conduct rela-tionships within the immediate and extended family,and how to allocate family tasks. Our society hasmoved from family ties that were obligatory to thosethat seem voluntary, with accompanying shifts in theclarity of norms for relationships. Relationships withsiblings and parents are fairly readily disrupted byoccupational and geographic mobility as we movethrough the life cycle; even couples are increasinglystruggling with bi-coastal relationships (Hess &Waring, 1984; Connidis, 2001; Mckay & Caverly,2004; Pruchno & Rosenbaum, 2003; Taylor, Clark,& Newton, 2008).

Therapeutic interventions with a life cycle frame-work aim at helping families to reestablish their evolu-tionary momentum so that they can proceed forward tofoster the uniqueness of each member's development.We can, through our therapeutic efforts, validate, em-power, and strengthen family ties or, by ignoring them,perpetuate the invalidation, anomie, and disconnectionof the dominant value structure of our society, whichprivileges individualism, autonomy, competition andmaterialistic values, over connectedness to a whole net-work of ldn with whom one feels "at home."

The Changing Family Life CycleFamily life cycle patterns have changed dramaticallyover the past century. In 1900 the average life ex-pectancy in the U.S. was 47 years; by the year 2000

dying before old age has become a rare event. About75 percent of the population live beyond their 65thbirthday, whereas, in 1850, only 2 percent of peoplelived to this birthday (Skolnick, 2009)! Two thirds ofthe longevity increase of all human history has takenplace since 1900. At that time half of all parents ex-perienced the death of a child; by 1976 this rate wasonly 6 percent. Thus, in earlier times couples had tohave two children in order to have one who survivedto adulthood, but this is no longer necessary. Twenty-five percent of children in 1900 had lost a parent bydeath before age 15; by 1976 only 5 percent of chil-dren experienced parental death by that age. In 1900one out of 62 children had lost both parents; by 1976this was only one out of 1800 (Skolnick, 2009).

At the same time that we are living much longerand experiencing much less untimely loss than ever inhistory, our couple and parent-child patterns are alsochanging dramatically. In terms of couples, fewer andfewer appear to be marrying. It has been speculatedthat the major change is the economic situation ofwomen, who, once they can support themselves, maynot want a marriage with the traditional caretakingrules. As one well-paid working wife and mother putit, "Women's expectations have changed dramatically,while men's have not changed at all .... Providing isnot enough. I need more partnership" (Jones, 2006,p. B1). Fifty-one percent of women live without aspouse (Zernike, 2007). The marriage rate hasdropped by about 50 percent since the mid-twentiethcentury (McManus, 2006). Marriage rates are de-creasing dramatically (33 percent of men and 26percent of women never marry) and the age of mar-riage has been increasing dramatically, from age 21 toage 25 for women and from age 23 to age 27 for menin the last 30 years (Cherlin, 2009; U.S. Census,2007). Whereas in 1976 women had on average 3.2children, current childbearing rates in the U.S. havediminished to less than 2 children per couple, al-though rates are higher for Latinas (2.3) (Zezima,2008). In 1970 only 10 percent of women did not havechildren, while currently that rate has doubled. Evenmore educated professional women (27 percent) areremaining childless (Zezima, 2008). Whereas in 1950only 4 percent of births took place outside of mar-riage, the current rate is 35 percent, though many ofthese parents are living in couple relationships, a fair

4 Part 1 . Perspectives on the Evolving Family Life Cycle

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percentage being same-sex parents (Cherlin, 2009).Married couples with children have shrunk from 40percent of all households in 1970 to less than 25 per-cent (Saluter, 1996; www.statemaster.com, 2009).

Overall changes in family life cycle patternshave escalated dramatically, in recent decades owingespecially to:

A lower birth rate

Longer life expectancy

The changing role of womenThe rise in unmarried motherhood

The rise in unmarried couples

Increasing single-parent adoptions

Increasing LGBT gay and lesbian couplesand families

High divorce and remarriage rates

Increasing two-paycheck marriages to thepoint where they are now the norm

One of the greatest changes in living patterns inthe U.S. in recent years is the increase in single per-son households, which now represent 26 percent ofU.S. households, up from 10 percent in 1950(Francese, 2003). Another major change is that child-rearing, which used to occupy adults for their entireactive life span, now occupies less than half of theadult life span prior to old age. The meaning of familyis thus changing drastically, and there are no agreed-upon values, beyond child-rearing by which familiesdefine their connections. The changing role of womenis central to these shifting family life cycle patterns.Sixty percent of working-age women are now in thepaid workforce (U.S. Census, 2007). Even womenwho choose primary roles of mother and homemakermust now face an "empty nest" phase that is longerthan the number of years devoted to child care.

There is also an increasing chasm between lessfortunate children, who grow up in poverty with fi-nancially pressed, often single parents, and more ad-vantaged children, who grow up in comfortablecircumstances with highly educated dual-earner par-ents. These differences are reflected in an expandingdifferential in longevity between the rich and thepoor. In 1980 the differential was only three years,but that difference has increased to 10 years (Pear,

I,i

2009). Education is a powerful differential in the po-tential for a longer, healthier life (Kolata, 2007). Atage 35, even a year of more education leads to asmuch as a year and a half longer life expectancy. Oneof the big differences in marriage rates is a class dif-ference. Those with resources are much more likelyto be married (Zernike, 2007). And children fromdisadvantaged backgrounds are much more likelynot to be raised with both parents. The proportion ofchildren living with both parents also varies greatlyby cultural group: 87 percent of Asian children, 78percent of Whites, 68 percent of Latinos, and 38 per-cent of African Americans (Roberts, 2008). Jones(2006) suggests that marriage is only for White peo-ple, indicating that it may not seem like a worthwhileproposition for African American women, who maysee a husband as hazardous to their health.

On the other hand, while research has general-ly failed to look at the value of extended family onwell-being through life, it has been shown that thepresence of a grandparent, most of all the maternalgrandmother, can have a major positive impact onfamily well-being and make a tremendous differencein children's life prospects, especially in strugglingfamilies (Angier, 2002).

The size of family living units has been de-creasing for centuries (Fishman, manuscript inpreparation). Through most of history familieslived in bands of extended families of about 40 peo-ple. By 1500 in the west, the average household haddecreased to 20 people, by 1850 to 10, and by 2000to less than 3 in the U.S. In traditional societies,when children were raised in large family groupsthere were usually three or more caregiving adultsfor each child under six, and there was little priva-cy. In our society, with three people or fewer in theaverage household, we rarely eat family meals, wespend 30 percent of available family time watchingTV or on the computer, and our children are raisedin age-segregated cohorts in situations where weare lucky if we have two adults for one child. Wehave overscheduled our children, and they have lit-tle time for spontaneous social play with peers(Perry, 2002, p 96). Our children might developvery differently, if we resolved problems of ourchildren not with medication or court sanctions butin consultation with the community. What if chil-

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Chapter 1 . Overview: The Life Cycle in Its Changing Context 5

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dren had responsibility to the community to makeup for their misdeeds? Speck & Attneave (1973)recommended such intervention decades ago. Ifchildren would be accountable to the community ofthose who care for them our world might begin tolook very different (Perry, 2002).

Human Development in Context

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married heterosexual couples raising their children,but rather involves many different structures andcultures with different organizing principles, iden-tifying family stages and emotional tasks for vari-ous clusters of family members is complex. Yet,even within the diversity, there are some unifyingprinciples that we have used to define stages andtasks, such as the primary importance of additionand loss of family members for the family's emo-tional equilibrium through life's many transitions(Hadley, Jacob, Milliones, Caplan, & Spitz, 1974).We embrace this complexity and the importance ofall levels of the human system: individual, family,and social. Indeed we believe that the meaning offamily is deeply intertwined with a sense of"home," or belonging, and is essential to our senseof individual and social identity. Paolo Freire(2000) put it this way:

The search for the meaning of our individual liveshas led to many theories about the process of "nor-mal" development, most of them proposing suppos-edly inherent, age-related, developmental stages forthe individual (Erikson, 1963, 1994; Levinson,1978, 1996; Sheehy, 1977, 1995; Valliant, 1977; andothers) and the traditional family (e.g., Duvall,1977). From the beginning of our work, we haveplaced the individual in the context of the familyand have indicated the importance of the impact ofcultural and structural variation on life cycle tasksfor individuals and families. However, we do not es-pouse family life cycle stages as inherent, that is,identical for all families. We do believe it is helpfulto consider all clinical assessment within a life cycleframework which offers a flexible concept of pre-dictable life stages and acknowledges the emotionaltasks of individuals and family members, dependingon their structure, time of life, culture and historicalera. We disagree with human developmental or lifespan theorists who, like many feminist theorists,have ignored the family system altogether in theireffort to move away from traditional notions of thefamily, and act as if the individual existed in societywith no mediating context.

We believe, by contrast, that individual devel-opment always takes place in the context of signifi-cant emotional relationships and that the mostsignificant are family relationships, whether byblood, adoption, marriage, or informal commit-ment. From our perspective it is impossible to un-derstand individuals without assessing their currentand historical cultural and family contexts. We seethe family as the most immediate focus for thera-peutic intervention because of its primacy in medi-ating both individual and social forces, bridgingand mediating between the two. However, since thefamily is no longer organized primarily around

Freire conveys the importance of the sense ofour roots, our connections, and of home that wecarry with us as an integral part of our identitythrough life. In our view this context is essential toincorporate into our clinical assessment and inter-vention practice.

Part of the pull that family therapists feel to re-vert to psychoanalytic thinking whenever the individ-ual is under consideration comes from the fact thatour models of individual development have been builton Freud's and Erikson's ideas of psychosocial devel-opment. Compared to Freud's narrow focus on bodyzones, Erikson's (1963, 1968) outline of eight stagesof human development, by which he was referring to

No one goes anywhere alone... --not even

those who arrive physically alone, unaccompa-nied by family, spouse, children, parents, or sib-lings. No one leaves his or her world withouthaving been transfixed by its roots, or with avacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memoryof many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, ourculture; a memory, sometimes scattered, some-

times sharp and clear, of the streets of our child-hood, of our adolescence, the reminiscence ofsomething distant that suddenly stands out be-fore us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a

smile lost in a time of misunderstanding (p. 31).

6 Part 1 . Perspectives on the Evolving Family Life Cycle

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male development, was an effort to highlight the in-teraction of the developing child with society. How-ever, Erikson's stages actually emphasize notrelational connectedness of the individual, but the de-velopment of individual characteristics (mostly traitsof autonomy) in response to the demands of social in-teraction (Erikson, 1963). Thus, trust, autonomy, in-dustry, and the formulation of an identity separatefrom his family are supposed to carry a child toyoung adulthood, at which point he is suddenly sup-posed to know how to "love," go through a middleage of "caring," and develop the "wisdom" of aging.This discontinuity--a childhood and adolescence fo-cused on developing one's own individuality and au-tonomy-expresses exactly what we believe is wrongwith developmental norms of male socialization eventoday; it devalues by neglect most of the major tasksof adulthood: intimacy, caring, teamwork, mentoring,and sharing one's wisdom.

Although there has always been a "his" and"hers" version of development, until the late twentiethcentury only the former was ever described in the liter-ature (Dinnerstein, 1976; Gilligan, 1982; Miller,1976). Most theoreticians tended to subsume femaledevelopment under male development, which wastaken as the standard for human functioning. Separa-tion and autonomy were considered the primary valuesfor male development, the values of caring, interde-pendence, relationship, and attention to context beingconsidered primary only for female development.However, healthy human development requires findinga balance between connectedness and separateness,belonging and individuation, interdependence and au-tonomy. In general, developmental theories have failedto describe the progression of individuals in relation-ships toward a maturity of interdependence. Yethuman identity is inextricably bound up with one'srelationship to others, and the notion of completeautonomy is a delusion. Human beings cannot exist inisolation, and the most important aspects of humanexperience have always been relational.

Most developmental theorists, however, evenfeminist theorists, have espoused psychodynamic as-sumptions about autonomy and separation, over-focusing on relationships with mothers as theprimary factor in human development. They haveassumed that masculine identity is achieved through

separation from one's mother and feminine identitythrough identification and attachment to her. Silver-stein & Rashbaum (1994), Gilligan (1982), andDooley & Fedele (2004) have effectively challengedthe assumption that male development requires sepa-rating from one's mother. Gilligan (1991) critiquedPiaget's conception of morality as being tied to theunderstanding of rights and rules and suggested thatfor females, moral development centers on the under-standing of responsibility and relationships, whereasPiaget's description fits traditional male socializa-tion's focus on autonomy. Eleanor Maccoby (1990,1999), the Stone Center at Wellesley (Miller, 1987;Jordan, Walker, & Hartling, 2004; Stiver & Miller,1988; Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991),Barnett/Rivers (2004), and Michael Kimmel (2000,2007) have expanded our understanding of the powerdimensions in the social context of development.Their work suggests a broader conception of develop-ment for both males and females.

Developing a schema that would enhance allhuman development by including milestones of bothautonomy and emotional connectedness for malesand females from earliest childhood has drawn us tothe work of those whose perspectiv.es go beyondwhite male development. These include Hale-Ben-son (1986), who explored the multiple intelligencesand other developmental features she identified inAfrican American children; Comer and Poussaint(1992), who factored racism and its effects into theirblueprint for the development of healthy Black chil-dren; Ian Canino and Jeanne Spurlock (1994), whooutlined many ways in which minority ethnic groupssocialize their children; and Joan Borysenko (1996),whose descriptions of the stages of female develop-ment appear to have universal applicability for bothmales and females from all cultural groups. Bory-senko's outline reflects the human need for responsi-ble autonomy and emphasizes the importance ofunderstanding interdependence, a concept that girlsand children of color learn early but that is ignored intraditional theories of male development.

Dilworth-Anderson et al. (1993), Burton et al.(2004) and their colleagues argue for the importanceof a life cycle perspective because it is based oninterdisciplinary ways of thinking, being a frame-work that emerged from the cross-fertilization of the

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sociology of aging, demographic cohort analysis,and the study of personal biography in social psy-chology and history. In their view the life cycle per-spective represents a dynamic approach to the studyof family lives by focusing on the interlocking natureof individual trajectories within kinship networks inthe context of temporal motion, culture, and socialchange. Their position is especially important be-cause as researchers, they are well aware of the rele-vant frameworks necessary for research. As theyhave articulated it: A life cycle framework thus "of-fers the conceptual flexibility to design conceptualframeworks and studies that address a variety offamily forms in culturally diverse contexts" (p. 640).This is a most compelling argument, and one that wemust put forward to encourage culturally meaningfulresearch on diverse populations.

The Vertical and Horizontal Flowof Stress in the Life Cycle

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To understand how individuals evolve, we must ex-amine their lives within their individual, family,community, and the larger social and cultural con-texts over time. This can be represented schematical-ly along two time dimensions: the vertical axisreflecting influence of the historical issues that flowdown the family tree, influencing families as they gothrough life (our biological heritage, genetic make-up, cultural, religious, psychological, and familial is-sues that come down through our family tree); andthe horizontal axis, which represents the develop-mental and unpredictable influences that affectfamilies as they go through life. Over time, the indi-vidual's inherent qualities can either become crystal-lized into rigid behaviors or elaborated into broaderand more flexible repertoires. Certain individualstages may be more difficult to master, depending onone's innate characteristics and the influence of theenvironment. At the family level (Carter, 1978), thevertical axis includes the family history, the patternsof relating and functioning that are transmitted downthe generations, primarily through the mechanism ofemotional triangling (Bowen, 1978). It includes allthe family attitudes, taboos, expectations, labels,and loaded issues with which we grow up. These

aspects of our lives make up the hand we are dealt.What we do with them is up to us. The horizontalflow describes the family as it moves throughtime, coping with the changes and transitions ofthe family's life cycle. This includes both pre-dictable developmental stresses and unpredictableevents, the "slings and arrows of outrageous for-tune," that may disrupt the life cycle process, suchas untimely death, birth of a handicapped child,chronic illness, or job loss.

The vertical axis includes cultural and societalhistory, stereotypes, patterns of power, social hierar-chies, and beliefs, that have been passed downthrough the generations. A group's history, in partic-ular the legacy of trauma, will have an impact onfamilies and individuals as they go through life (e.g.,the Holocaust on Jews and Germans, slavery onAfrican Americans and on slave-owning groups, ho-mophobic crimes on homosexuals and heterosexu-als, genocide and forced incarceration in boardingschools and on reservations for American Indiansand all other citizens, and colonizing exploitation forfamilies in Latin America and for the colonizers).The horizontal axis relates to community connec-tions, current events, and social policy as they affecta family or individual at a given time. It depicts theconsequences in people's present lives of a society'sinherited (vertical) norms of racism, sexism, clas-sism, and homophobia, as well as ethnic and reli-gious prejudices, as these are manifested in social,political, and economic structures that limit the op-tions of some and support the power of others.

Anxiety and SymptomDevelopment

Stress is often greatest at transition points fromone stage to another in the developmental processas families rebalance, redefine, and realign theirrelationships. Symptom onset has been correlatedsignificantly with the normal family developmen-tal process of addition and loss of family memberssuch as birth, marriage, divorce and death (Hadleyet al.,1974). We found that a significant life cycleevent, such as the death of a grandparent, whenclosely related in time to another life cycle event,

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8 Part 1 ° Perspectives on the Evolving Family Life Cycle

Vertical StressorsPoverty/Politics, Racism, Sexism, Classism,HomolBi/Transphobia, Violence, Addictions,Family Emotional Patterns, Myths,Triangles, Secrets, Legacies,Genetic Abilities &Disabilities, ReligiousBeliefs & Practices

Socio-Cultural ContextI. Individual & Family's History Having a

Sense of Belonging, Safety, &"Home Place"2. Connection to Community, Political,

Religious, Ethnic, & Social Groups3. Community Resources, Friendship Networks

ssion in Relation to Culture, Race,Class, Religion, Age, Sexual Orientation,

& Economic Power, FamilyDisabilities

Time

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Family (Immed. & Extended)I. Family Life Cycle Stage

problems

2. Family Structure3. Emotional & Relational Patterns:

Boundaries, Communication,Triangles, Secrets, Myths,Legacies, Themes, Disabilities, Skills, Talents;Strengths &Vulnerabilities or Dysfunctions

4. Socio-Cultural Factors: Race, Ethnidty, Sex, GenderIdentity & Sexual Orientation. Social Class, Education,Work, Finances, Religious & Spiritual Values,Life Stmssors. Sense of Belonging, Family, Friendship &Community Connections; PowerlPrivilege orPowerlessnesslVulnerabitity Appropriateinterdependence for Life Cycle Circumstances

S. Loss & Trauma

6.Values, Beliefs, Rituals & Practices

HorizontalDevelopmentalLife Cycle TransitiorUnpredictableUntimely Death, TraurrAccident, Chronic Illness,Unemployment, NaturalDisaster, MigrationHistorical, Economic,Political EventsWar, Economic Depression, Individual (Body, Mind, Spirit)Political Climate,Disaster, Migration I. Age & Life Cycle Stage

2. Biological & Psychological FactorsHealth & Mental Health Functioning, Abilities orDisabilities,Temperament, Self-Direction,Language & Communication,Addictions & Behavioral Disturbances,Life Skills (Education, Work, Finances, Time)

3. Socio-Cultural Factors:Race, Ethnicity, Sex, Gender Identity & Sexual Orientation.Sodal Class, Education,Work, Finances, Religious, & SpiritualValues, Respect for Nature, Life Stressors. Sense of Belonging,Family, Friendship & Community Connections;PowerlPrivilege or PowerlessnesslVulnerabilityAppropriate Interdependence for Life Cyde Circumstances

4. Loss &Trauma5. Personal Hopes And Dreams

Chapter 1 • Overview: The Life Cycle in Its Changing Context 9

, Myths,

dship &

such as the birth of a child, correlated with patternsof symptom development at a much later transitionin the family life cycle, such as the launching ofthe next generation (Walsh, 1978; McGoldrick,1977). Such research supports the clinical ap-proach of Murray Bowen, which tracks patternsthrough the family life cycle over several genera-tions, focusing especially on nodal events and tran-sition points to understand dysfunction at thepresent moment (Bowen, 1978). The implication isthat if emotional issues and developmental tasksare not resolved at the appropriate time, they willbe carried along and act as hindrances in futuretransitions and relationships. For example, ifyoung people do not resolve their issues with theirparents, they will probably carry them into theiryoung adult relationships and beyond. In life cycleterms, there is an expiration date on blaming yourparents for your problems; at a certain point in life,maturity requires letting go of resenting your par-ents for what they did wrong or else you remaintrapped in your family history.

Given enough stress on the horizontal, devel-opmental axis, any individual family will appearextremely dysfunctional. Even a small horizontalstress on a family in which the vertical axis is fullof intense stress will create great disruption in thesystem. The anxiety engendered on the verticaland horizontal axes are the key determinants ofhow well the family will manage its transitionsthrough life. It becomes imperative, therefore, toassess not only the dimensions of the current lifecycle stress, but also their connections to familythemes and triangles coming down in the familyover historical time. Although all normativechange is to some degree stressful, when the hori-zontal (developmental) stress intersects with a ver-tical (transgenerational) stress, there tends to be aquantum leap in anxiety in the system. To give aglobal example, if one's parents were basicallypleased to be parents and handled the job withouttoo much anxiety, the birth of the first child willproduce just the normal stresses of a system ex-panding its boundaries. On the other hand, if par-enting was a problem in the family of origin of oneor both spouses, and has not been dealt with, thetransition to parenthood may produce heightenedanxiety for the couple. Even without any outstand-

ing family of origin issues, the inclusion of a childcould potentially tax a system if there is a mis-match between the child's and the parents' tem-peraments. Or, if a child is conceived in a time ofgreat political upheaval that forces the family tomigrate, leaving its cultural roots for another coun-try, ordinary stresses of the child's birth may be ac-companied by extra stressors. The break in culturaland family continuity created by immigration af-fects family relationships and family patternsthroughout the life cycle for generations. (Chapteron immigration; Sluzki, 2008).

Cohorts: When and Where in Timeand Place We Are Located

In addition to the anxiety-provoking stress that is in-herited from past generations and the stress experi-enced in moving through the family life cycle, there is,of course, the stress of living in a given place at a giventime. Each group or cohort born at a given time in his-tory, and hving through various historical and socio-cultural experiences at the same life cycle phase, is toan extent marked by its members' experiencgs. TheWorld War II generation and the baby boomers are ex-amples of this effect. We must also pay close attentionto the enormous anxiety generated by the chronic un-remitting stresses of poverty and discrimination, just asthe generations that experienced the Civil Rights erawere marked by the hopes of their era.

Cohorts born and living through differentperiods vary in fertility, mortality, acceptable gen-der roles, migration patterns, education, attitudestoward child-rearing, couple relationships, familyinterrelationships and aging. Those who livedthrough the Great Depression and World War II,those who experienced the Black migration to theNorth in the 1940s, the baby boomer generation thatgrew up in the 1950s, those who came of age duringthe Vietnam War in the 60s, and cohorts who grewup during the Reagan years, will have profoundlydifferent orientations to life, influenced by the timesin which they lived (Elder, 2002, 2006; Modell &Elder, 2002; Schaie & Elder 2005; Johnson, Foley,& Elder, 2004).

And as Malcolm Gladwell (2008) points outthere are specifics of being at a certain key lifecycle point when opportunities open up. For example,

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10 Part 1 . Perspectives on the Evolving Family Life Cycle

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19 percent of the wealthiest 75 people who wereever born anywhere in the world were born in theUS between 1830 and 1840. These people madetheir money in the industrial manufacturing era ofthe 1860s and 1870s when Wall Street emerged,and the rules by which the economy had tradition-ally operated were transformed• Gladwell suggeststhat those born after the 1840s were too young toparticipate and those born before the 1830s weretoo old and fixed in their ways of doing things tobecome part of the new era. Thus there is a certainlife cycle trajectory that influences our creativity inparticular ways, assuming that we have the familyand community to support the endeavor.

A similar pattern occurred with the develop-ment of computers in the 1970s. Bill Gates, SteveJobs and a great many of the other key geniuses ofthe computer age were born smack in the middleof the 1950s and came of age just when they hadthe opportunity to work on computers during theformative years of their adolescence• These peo-ple grew up in communities and families that fos-tered their developing interests to allow for thiscreative energy. Thus, if we want to understandwhat creates resilient, innovative, healthy citizens,we need to look at a multiplicity of factors includ-ing the historical era, the individual, the familyand its social location (in terms of class, race andethnicity), and the community life cycle in whichthey were embedded.

Understanding Changing Familiesin Context

No single family form has ever been able to satisfythe human need for love, comfort, and security•.. We must keep our family cultures diverse, fluid,and unresolved, open to the input of everyone whohas a stake in their future... Our rituals, mythsand images must therefore be open to perpetualrevision, never allowed to come under the sway ofany orthodoxy or to serve the interests of any oneclass, gender or generation. We must recognize

that families are worlds of our own making andaccept responsibility for our own creations. JohnR. Gilles, 1996, p. 240.

The family of the past, when the extended familyreigned supreme, should not be romanticized as atime when mutual respect and satisfaction existedbetween the generations• As Johnetta Cole (1996)put it: "No one family form--nuclear, extended, sin-gle-parent, matrilineal, patrilineal, fictive, residen-tial, nonresidential--necessarily provides the idealform for humans to live or raise children in" (p. 75).The traditional more stable multigenerational ex-tended family was supported by patriarchy, sexism,classism, racism, and heterosexism. In that tradition-al family structure, respect for parents and obliga-tions to care for elders were based on their control ofthe resources, reinforced by religious and secularsanctions against those who did not go along withthe ideas of the dominant group. Now, with the in-creasing ability of younger family members to deter-mine their own fate regarding marriage and work,the power of elders to demand filial piety is reduced.As women continue developing the right to havelives of their own, and are no longer willing to limittheir roles to being caretakers of others as was previ-ously expected, our social institutions will have toshift to fit with the resulting needs.

Instead of evolving values of shared caretak-ing, our social institutions still operate mainly onthe notions of the individualism of the pioneeringfrontier, and the most vulnerable--the poor, theyoung, the old, and the infirm--suffer the conse-quences. Nowhere is this more readily seen than inthe lonely efforts of the "sandwich" generation toprovide care for both their children and their agingand dependent relatives, with woefully few re-sources from our society• The "typical" caregiverin the U.S. is a woman in her forties who worksoutside her home and spends more than 20 hours aweek providing unpaid care. Caregivers often ex-perience serious economic losses due to changes inwork patterns, including lost wages, health insur-ance and other job benefits, lower retirement sav-ings and no Social Security benefits for any periodthey spend caretaking.

Families have many forms: multigenerationalextended families of three or four generations, gay orlesbian couples and children, remarried familieswith shifting membership of children who belong toseveral households, single-parent families, families

Chapter 1 ° Overview: The Life Cycle in Its Changing Context 11

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of brothers and/or sisters or aunts and nieces, unmar-ried partners and their children and possibly a parentor an unmarried sibling of one. Yet our society stilltends to think of"family" as meaning a heterosexual,legally married couple and their children. This fami-ly form is taken all too frequently as the ideal againstwhich all other family forms are judged and foundwanting (McCarthy, 1994). All other family forms,which former Irish President Mary Robinson termed"unprotected families," require our special consider-

ation. Their history and family experience have beeninvalidated (McCarthy, 1994).

Backlash forces in our society have used codeterms such as "family values" to imply that tradi-tional nuclear families are the only valid families.We must resist such insidious definitions and insiston a more inclusive definition of family and familyvalues. Most families live in more than one house-hold. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, andother ldn who are intimately involved with the im-mediate family may live next door or far away butstill be part of the family. Immigrant families oftenhave members living in different continents, yet stayvery connected. Divorced, remarried, and unmarriedfamilies may have partners and/or children livingseparately with whom they are intimately connected.If two parents live apart, children are generallymembers of both households, regardless of the legalcustody arrangements, as part of multi-nuclear fami-lies, because divorce restructures but does not endthe family.

As Dilworth-Anderson, Burton, and Johnson(1993) have made clear it is impossible to understandfamilies by using the old nuclear family model: "Im-portant organizing, relational bonding of significantothers, as well as socialization practices or socio-cultural premises are overlooked by researchers whenthe nuclear family structure is the unit of analysis"(p. 640). They demonstrate the important ways inwhich social support networks within the Black com-munity serve as a buffer against a discriminating envi-ronment. They call for broadening ideas of whatconstitutes a family and its positive characteristics toallow for "culturally relevant descriptions, explana-tions, and interpretations of the family."

Indeed, the separation of families into genera-tional subsystems, referred to as the "nuclear" and

the "extended" family, creates artificial separation ofparts of a family. Extended family may live in manydifferent geographic locations, but they are still fam-ily. Adding or subtracting family members is alwaysstressful, and the strain of restructuring in the ex-tended family because of divorce, death, or remar-riage adds to the normative stress for the immediatefamily of dealing with whatever family patterns,myths, secrets, and triangles make up the emotionallegacy from the family of origin.

In our time, people often act as though mem-bership in and responsibility for their families wereoptional but we have very little choice about ourfamily ties. Children have no choice about beingborn into a system, nor do parents have a choice,once children are born, adopted, or fostered, as to theresponsibilities of parenthood, although they mayneglect these responsibilities. In fact, no family rela-tionships except marriage are entered into by choice.Even the freedom to marry whomever one wishes isa rather recent option, and the decision is probablymuch less freely made than people recognize at thetime. Although partners can choose not to Continue amarriage relationship, they remain co-parents oftheir children, and the fact of having been marriedcontinues to be acknowledged with the designation"ex-spouse." Even in the divorce of a couple without

children, bonds tend to linger; it is difficult to hear ofan ex-spouse's death without being shaken. If a par-ent leaves or dies, another person can be brought into fill a parenting function, but this person can neverreplace the parent in his or her personal emotionalaspects (Walsh & McGoldrick, 2004).

People cannot alter whom they are related to inthe complex web of family ties over all the genera-tions. Obviously, family members frequently act asif this were not so--they cut each other off becauseof conflicts or the belief they have nothing in com-mon, but when family members act as though familyrelationships were optional, they do so to the detri-ment of their own sense of identity and the richnessof their emotional and social context.

Friendship Through the Life CycleAs part of our sense of home and the importance ofcommunity, friendship is one of our most important

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12 Part 1 , Perspectives on the Evolving Family Life Cycle

resources through life. Indeed, dramatic research onwomen in the past few years has turned five decadesof stress research upside down by demonstrating thatwomen, unlike men, turn to their friends when understress at every point in the life cycle and that is amajor resource and protection. It helps when mar-riages are in trouble, when a spouse has died, and iteven contributes to longevity (Taylor, Klein, Lewis,Gruenewald, Gurung, & Updegraff, 2000). While oursociety has a well developed ideology about marriageand family, we have tended to relegate friendship tothe cultural attic, which has blinded us to its impor-tance throughout the life cycle (Rubin, 1993). Friendscan be crucial supports from early childhood andthrough adolescence and young adulthood, mitigat-ing family trauma and dysfunction and providing en-couragement, socialization, and inspiration for ourdevelopment. In the phases of adulthood friends canagain buffer stress as well as tell us the truth aboutourselves, stimulate us to change our ways, and, infact, keep us healthy• The loss of a close friend at anypoint in the life cycle can be a major stress• Friendsshould always be included on genograms and consid-ered in our life cycle assessment.

They are participating more in child care (Khazan,McHale, & Decourcey, 2008; Levine, Murphy, &Wilson, 1993) and housework (Barnett & Rivers,1996; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007), and manyare realizing, in their minds if not always in action(Hochschild, 2001, 2003), that equality and partner-ship are a sensible ideal for couples (Sayer, Bianchi,& Robinson, 2004). Michael Kimmel, a sociologistand spokesman for the National Organization forMen Against Sexism, holds out to men the ideal of"democratic manhood," which "requires both pri-vate and public commitments--changing ourselves,nurturing our relationships, cherishing our families• . . but also reforming the public arena to enlargethe possibilities for other people to do the same"(1996, p. 334). Kimmel welcomes feminism, gayliberation, and multiculturalism as blueprints for thereconstruction of masculinity. He believes thatmen's lives will be healed only when there is fullequality for everyone (Kimmel, 1996, 2007; Kim-mel & Messner, 2007)•

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The Changing FarniJy Life Cycle ofMen and Women

Perhaps the modem feminist movement was inevitable,as women have come to insist upon a personal identity•Having always had primary responsibility for home,family, and child care, women began to resist theirburdens as they came to have more options for theirown lives. Given their pivotal role in the family andtheir difficulty in maintaining concurrent functionsoutside the family, it is perhaps not surprising thatthey have been the most prone to symptom develop-ment at life cycle transitions. For men, the goals ofcareer and family have been parallel. For women,these goals have presented a serious conflict. Surely,women's seeking help for family problems has muchto do with their socialization, but it also reflects thespecial life cycle stresses on women, whose role hasbeen to bear emotional responsibility for all familyrelationships at every stage of the life cycle (SeeChapter on Women and the Life Cycle)•

Men's roles in families are also beginning tochange (see Chapter on Men and the Life Cycle)•

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HornepJace: The importance ofBelonging Throughout the LifeCycJeWhen we speak of "home" we are usually referringto a place of acceptance and belonging, which isessential to our development of a solid sense of our-selves as human beings. Bell hooks (1999) refers to asense of "homeplace," as an essential part of ourcultural and individual identity• Bartlett Giamattidescribed it this way:

Home is an English word virtually impossible totranslate... No translation catches the associa-

tions, the mixture of memory and longing, thesense of security and autonomy and accessibility,the aroma of inclusiveness, of freedom from wari-ness, that cling to the word home... Home is a

concept, not a place; it is a state of mind whereself-definition starts; it is origins--the mix of timeand place and smell and weather wherein onefirst realizes one is an original. • . Home... re-

mains in the mind as the place where reunion, if itever were to occur, would happen... It is about

restoration of the right relations among people• . . Everyone has a "hometown" back there, at

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Chapter 1 • Overview: The Life Cycle in Its Changing Context 13

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least back in time, where stability or at least itsimage remains alive . . . To go home may be

impossible, but it is often a driving necessity, or atleast a compelling dream (1998, pp. 99-101).

Giamatti conveys powerfully the concept ofhome as a place of self-definition and belonging, aplace where people find resilience to deal with theinjustices of society or even of their families, a placewhere they can develop and express their values.Home reflects our need to acknowledge the forces inour history that have made us strong, but it is also aconcept that we remake at every phase of life, withfamily, with friends, with work, with nature, withsmells and sounds and tastes that nurture us becausethey give us a sense of safety and connection. Clini-cal intervention needs to acknowledge the impor-tance of this place of psychological and spiritualsafety at each life cycle phase.

Burton, Winn, Stevenson, and Clark (2004)drew attention to the concept of homeplace, de-scribed by bell hooks as that place in African Amer-ican families where: "All that truly mattered in lifetook place-the warmth and comfort of shelter, thefeeding of our bodies, the nurturing of our souls.There we learned dignity, integrity of being--therewe learned to have faith" (Hooks, 1999, pp. 41-42).She spoke of it also as the site of resistance, whereoppressed people resist racism and oppression, andgather their strength and do not feel invalidated. It isa place where one can mobilize a positive sense ofpersonal and cultural identity. It is an essential con-cept for a life cycle framework. As Maya Angelouonce put it: "The ache for home lives in all of us, thesafe place where we can go as we are and not bequestioned. It impels mighty ambitions and danger-ous capers . . . Hoping that by doing these thingshome will find us acceptable, or, failing that, thatwe will forget our awful yearning for it" (1986, p.196). It may be a physical location, with physicalassociations, but it is absolutely a spiritual locationwith value and deep meaning for people as they gothrough life. Burton and her colleagues provide im-portant clinical examples of the value of proactivelyattending to our client's need for the continuity andbelonging provided by the concept of "homeplace"(Burton, Winn, Stevenson, & Clark, 2004). Trans-ferring them to a new therapist or a new home, or

ignoring their important kin connections, evenwhere there are serious dysfunctions, may onlycompound their distress. We see the concept ofhomeplace as being at the core of a meaningful lifecycle assessment. We must assess clients with re-gard to their sense of belonging and connection towhat is familiar. Having a sense of belonging is es-sential to well-being.

Grasping where this sense of home is for aclient is an essential part of any assessment and cli-nicians and policy makers who do not consider ourdeep seated need for continuity and belonging as wego through life, especially through traumatic transi-tions and disruptions, will increase the trauma of theoriginal experience.

Community represents multiple levels of thehuman system, from the small face-to-face neighbor-hood, group, or local community to the larger cultur-al group, to the nation, and then to our increasingly"global" society. All these levels have an enormous

impact on the individuals and families under theirsway. They either offer protective safety and a senseof "home" and group identity, or of alienation, mar-ginalization and disaffection. Many people in theU.S. do not seem to have an evolving sense of them-selves as community members or participants in thedeveloping U.S. identity or as evolving citizens of aglobal community.

There is an African saying, "if I don't care foryou, I don't care for myself," which expresses thesense that our identity is bound up in our interrelated-ness to others. This is the essence of community de-fined as the level of interaction that bridges the gapbetween the private, personal family and the great im-personal public sphere. We have a need for a spiritualsense of belonging to something larger than our ownsmall, separate concerns. With our ever greater in-volvement in work, time for anything "unnecessary"has been disappearing, leaving little time for church orsynagogue, friends, family Sunday dinners, support-ing children's school activity, political action or advo-cacy. These activities get lost in the scramble tosurvive in a tense, high-wired time that rewards noth-ing but the individual acquisition of power and money.

Many traditional communities were and are re-pressive as well as secure, exclusionary as well assupportive of their members, and then only as long asmembers conform to community norms. Our social

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networks of friends and collective association are nolonger the given they were in the past. We must findour own place in shifting social networks from neigh-borhoods to internet communities. Community is oneof the best antidotes to the violence and anomie ofour society and our best hope of an alternative to con-sumerism as a way of life. And the focus on clients'having a sense of home is ever more important whenthe network of belonging is as rapidly changing as inour society. Shaffer and Amundson (1993) definedcommunity as a dynamic whole that emerges when agroup of people participate in common practices, de-pend on one another; make decisions together, identi-fy themselves as part of something larger than thesum of their individual relationships, and committhemselves for the long term to their own, one anoth-er's, and the group's well-being. Choice is the opera-

tive idea here, not nostalgia.With our increasingly global economy, our

context has increasingly become the entire earth, butwe will focus primarily on the culture of the UnitedStates in the early twenty-first century. Clinicianshave a meaningful role to play in encouraging clientsto think about the meaning of family and communityto them and asking whether they are living accordingto their values mad ideals. To do this they must gener-ally overcome their training to avoid topics thatsmack of spirituality or philosophy. In spite of thou-sands of years of holistic approaches to healing, oursociety has tended to keep physical, emotional, andspiritual healing separate.

We have also become one of the world's mostclass-stratified nations, with almost impenetrablewalls between people of different status. The upperclass lives in gated communities (where the empha-sis is on security, not community), while the under-class lives behind prison bars, on the street, or incell-like corners of the ghetto with almost no accessto transportation to other parts of the community(Fullilove, 2004); and everyone in between is con-fused about what is going on. The poor have tendednot to vote, but as we are seeing in recent times,great political victories can be won with a small per-centage of eligible voters. If concerned citizens bringthe poor into the system, things could change aspoliticians seek to respond to voters. What if weasked poor clients if they planned to vote? What if'i

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we discussed social or political action with middle-class clients? We have to remind ourselves and ourclients that if we limit our efforts to personal andfamily change within an unchanged larger society,we are helping to preserve the status quo.

To keep family therapy relevant to today's fam-ilies, we have to learn how and when to discuss theimportant issues that shape and determine our lives.We have to learn to reconnect family members withtheir dreams and their values. We have to learn to dis-cuss the inequalities in our society franldy theracism, classism, sexism, and homophobia that arebuilt into the system--and help clients join togetherwithin their families to create change for themselvesand then to look outward and help bring change tothe community and larger society. To be lasting,change must occur at every level of the system.

Power and Privilege Given to SomeGroups over Others Because of theHierarchical Rules and Norms 'Heldby Religious, Social, Business,or Governmental Institutions

It is important to assess those in privileged and pow-erful groups regarding their awareness of their posi-tion and its responsibilities. Because most peoplecompare themselves with those "above" them, werarely let ourselves become aware that our privilegesare at the expense of those below us in the hierarchy.But it is important to realize that sexism, classism,racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and other preju-dices are problems of the privileged groups, not ofthe oppressed, who suffer from the problems. There-fore, we need to find ways, whether the issues arepart of the presenting problem or not, to raise theissue of racism with Whites, sexism with men, clas-sism with the well-to-do, homophobia with hetero-sexuals, and anti-Semitism or other religiousprejudice with Christians. These are the groups whomust change to resolve the problem.

We ask: What community groups do you be-long to? Is there diversity of membership? Is that be-cause of exclusionary policies or attitudes? What areyou doing about that? Do you belong to a church ortemple or other religious organization? If so, do youagree with their attitude toward people of other reli-

Chapter 1 • Overview: The Life Cycle in Its Changing Context 15

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gions? If not, why not? Do your children have friendsof other racial and religious backgrounds? How areyou preparing them for the rapidly increasing multi-culturalism in our society? I notice your brother Johnhas never married. Do you think he is gay? If hewere, what would make it hard for him to tell thefamily? How did you and your wife decide on the al-location of household chores? How did you and yourwife decide who should cut back at work to do childcare? Are you ashamed of your son-in-law because heand his parents have less education and money thanyour family? You have much more education andmoney and social status than the average. Are youaware of the power that gives you? How do you useit? Do you exercise your power to make a differencein social and political issues that concern you? Whatwould it take for you to make time to do for others?

Asking such questions is obviously notenough, since these inequities are structured into oursociety and our consciousness at such a profoundlevel that those of us with privilege have extreme dif-ficulty becoming aware of this fact. We rarely be-come aware of or give up our privilege withoutpressure. These questions are the beginning of suchchallenge, because they assert that the status quo isnot necessarily acceptable to us or to our clients ifwe are pushed to think about such issues seriously.

Life Cycle Stages: A ProvisionalFramework

1o you be-Is that be-' What arechurch or;o, do youother reli-

Current definitions of life cycle stages differ fromthose of all other times in history. Indeed, it is becom-ing increasingly difficult to determine what family lifecycle patterns are "normal," causing great stress forfamily members, who have few consensually agreed-upon models to guide them through life's passages.We offer Table 1.1 as a map for considering the trans-formational nature of different stages of life and thetasks required to accomplish the tasks at each stage.Readers need to beware of such maps--as every sys-tems thinker knows, the map is not the territory, and aschema for defining stages of the family life cycle is amere approximation of complex processes, not an af-firmation that stages really exist. The definition ofstages is remarkably different in differing culturalcontexts (McGoldrick, Giordano, & Garcia Preto,

2005) and historical eras (Elder & Johnson, 2002;Elder & Shanahan, 2006; Gladwell, 2008). The gener-al paradigm offered for American families is currentlymore or less mythological, relating to the ideal stan-dards of a romanticized past against which most fami-lies compare themselves: an intact, self-sufficientnuclear family that goes through prescribed life cycletransitions on time from birth to death. It is imperativethat therapists recognize the pattern variations that arenow part of changing and expanding norms. We musthelp families to stop comparing their structure and lifecycle course with those of middle class White TVfamilies of the 1950s. While relationship patterns andfamily themes may continue to sound familiar, thestructure, ages, stages, and culture of families arechanging dramatically.

It is high time we expanded our traditional deft-nitions of family. We know what patterns are nothealthy: Wife beating, child abuse and neglect, sexualabuse, psychological terror, material deprivation, mal-nutrition, emotional abuse. These abuses, which occurin all family forms, must be eradicated. And our re-sponsibility, whether as single parents or co-parents orno parents at all, is to do all in our power to help createa healthy non-oppressive family environment for everyhuman being, regardless of its particular structure.

We need to put a more positive conceptualframe around what exists: two-paycheck marriages;permanent single-parent households; unmarried, re-married, and GLBT couples and families; single-parent adoptions; and men and women of all ages notpartnered. We must stop thinking of transitionalcrises as permanent traumas and to drop from our vo-cabulary words and phrases that link us to norms andnegative stereotypes of the past, such as "broken" or"fatherless" homes, children of divorce, out-of-wed-

lock children, and working mothers.Community-level interventions have been rec-

ognized as essential within the social work field formore than 100 years. The Community Mental Healthmovement of the 1960s made great strides forwardin attending to the community level of services tomaintain family members' health and mental health.Unfortunately, the capitalistic, me-first, "not in mybackyard" dismantling of communities and commu-nity services that has been going on since the 1970shad far-reaching implications in terms of making the

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16 Part 1 ° Perspectives on the Evolving Family Life Cycle

FamilyLife CycleStage

LeavingHome:EmergingYoung c.Adults

Joining ofFamilies ThroughMarriage/Union

FamilieswithYoungChildren

Families withAdolescents

Emotional Processof Transition: KeyPrinciples

Accepting emotionaland financialresponsibility for self

Commitment to a.new system b.

Accepting new a.members into thesystem b.

C.

d.

Increasing flexibility a.of family boundariesto permit children's b.independence and

C.grandparents'frailties

d.

2nd Order Changes in FamilyStatus Required to ProceedDevelopmentally

a. Differentiation of self in relation to familyof origin

b. Development of intimate peer relationshipsEstablishment of self in respect to work andfinancial independence

d. Establishment of self in community andlarger society

e. Spirituality?

Formation of partner systemsRealignment of relationships with extendedfamily, friends, and larger community andsocial system to include new partners

Adjustment of couple system to makespace for childrenCollaboration in child-rearing, financial andhousekeeping tasksRealignment of relationships with extendedfamily to include parenting andgrandparenting rolesRealignment of relationships withcommunity and larger social system toinclude new family structure andrelationships

Shift of parent-child relationships to permitadolescent to move into and out of systemRefocus on midlife couple and career issuesBegin shift toward caring for oldergenerationRealignment with community and largersocial system to include shifting family ofemerging adolescent and parents in newformation pattern of relating

FamilyLife Cycl,Stage

Launchin!ChildrenMoving 0at Midlife

Familiesin LateMiddleAge

FamiliesNearingthe Endof Life

Chapter 1 . Overview: The Life Cycle in Its Changing Context 17

FamilyLife CycleStage

Emotional Processof Transition: KeyPrinciples

2nd Order Changes in FamilyStatus Required to ProceedDevelopmentally

Familiesin LateMiddleAge

FamiliesNearingthe Endof Life

LaunchingChildren andMoving Onat Midlife

Accepting a multitudeof exits from andentries into thesystem

Accepting the shiftincgenerational roles

a. Renegotiation of couple system as a dyadb. Development of adult-to-adult relationships

between parents and grown childrenc. Realignment of relationships to include

in-laws and grandchildrend. Realignment of relationships with

community and larger social system toinclude new structure and constellationof family relationships

e. Exploration of new interests/career giventhe freedom from child care responsibilities

f. Dealing with care needs, disabilities, anddeath of parents (grandparents)

a. Maintenance of own and/or couplefunctioning and interests in face ofphysiological decline: exploration of newfamilial and social role options

b. Supporting more central role of middlegenerations

c. Realignment of the system in relation tocommunity and larger social system toacknowledge changed pattern of familyrelationships of this stage

d. Making room in the system for the wisdomand experience of the elders

e. Supporting older generation withoutoverfunctioning for them

Accepting the realitiesof limitations anddeath and thecompletion of onecycle of life

a. Dealing with loss of spouse, siblings, andother peers

b. Making preparations for death and legacyc. Managing reversed roles in caretaking

between middle and older generationsd. Realignment of relationships with larger

community and social system toacknowledge changing life cyclerelationships

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18 Part 1 . Perspectives on the Evolving Family Life Cycle

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rich richer and the poor poorer. But we do not needto lose our moral sense or our essential commonsense awareness of what is obviously in the best in-terest of families through the life cycle just becausethe dominant elite are trying to blind us to the com-mon welfare of our whole society. And in spite ofour hyper-individualistic times, some creative thera-pists are still daring to maintain their social perspec-tive and challenge the dominant ideology. Therapistscan make a difference in large and small ways, even

in our office practices.Our assessment of families and our interven-

tions must attend to the unequal ways that familiesare situated in the larger context so that we don't be-come part of the problem by preserving the statusquo. Areas to assess include the following:

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o Current or Longstanding Social, Political, andEconomic Issues

How have these become family prob-lems? It is helpful to make a list of issues thatyou think have an impact on your locale, tohelp keep these issues in the forefront of yourmind, since there are so many forces thatwould obscure them. Such a list at the start ofthe twenty-first century might include randomviolence, affirmative action, de facto schooland neighborhood segregation, gay and les-bian adoption or marriage, welfare reform,abortion rights, the education of all our chil-dren, prejudice against legal and illegal immi-grants, health care and insurance, tax cuts,layoffs, social services to the elderly and othergroups, cost and availability of infertility treat-ments, and physician-assisted suicide.

It is extremely important that we not"psychologize" social problems by searchingfor the roots of every problem in the interiormotivations and actions of the individualand/or the family. Many clinical problems canbe directly connected with the social system.A lesbian couple came to therapy because ofongoing conflict between them. One partnerdescribed the other as neurotic and restless, al-ways wanting to move to a different neighbor-hood, pressuring her ceaselessly. Assessment

revealed that the "neurotic" partner was aschoolteacher who feared, realistically, thatshe would be barred from teaching if her sexu-al orientation were reported to the school sys-tem. She was extremely anxious aboutcontacts with neighbors and very sensitive toindications that neighbors were puzzled aboutor suspicious of their relationship.

2. Bias against Race, Ethnicity, Class, Gender,Sexual Orientation, Religion, Age, FamilyStructure, or Disability

How does a person's, family's, or group'splace in these hierarchies affect family rela-tionships and limit or enhance the ability tochange? Much has been written about the im-pact of the norms and values of the larger soci-ety on the individuals and families within it.What is most important for the clinician tograsp is that race, class, gender, and sexual ori-entation are not simply differences; they arecategories that are arranged hierarchically withpower, validation, and maximum opportunitygoing to those at the top: whites, the affluent,men, and heterosexuals.

We must learn to be aware of and deal withthese power differences as they operate (1) in thetherapy system, in which they add to the already ex-isting power differential between therapist andclient; (2) within the family system, in which socialstress easily becomes family conflict; and (3) be-tween the family and society, in which they eitherlimit or enhance the options available for change.

Clinically, the therapist must be prepared todiscuss explicitly how racism, sexism, classism, andhomophobia may be behind the problems clients aretaking out on each other. The goal is to help thefamily members to join together against the prob-lems in society instead of letting these problems di-vide them. Explicit discussion and strategies willalso be needed to overcome the obstacles to change,which unaware therapists may blame on the client's"resistance."

A severely injured Irish American fireman andhis Italian American wife came to therapy becauseof the wife's complaints about her husband's drink-

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Chapter 1 • Overview: The Life Cycle in Its Changing Context 19

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ing and depression. She also expressed great concernabout family finances because his disability paycould not support them and their two young children.The therapist discovered that although the wife was atrained bookkeeper, the sexist norms of their ethnici-ties and class did not permit either of them to evenconsider one obvious solution: that the wife couldget a full-time job while the husband stayed homewith the children and planned or trained for whatev-er new work he would be able to do in the future. Notuntil the therapist explicitly addressed this andtracked the relevant attitudes about gender roles intheir families of origin and in their friends and com-munity network did the couple realize that theycould choose a different set of beliefs about genderroles--and did so.

A middle-class African American woman andher husband entered therapy because of marital con-flict, which her husband blamed on her depression.She agreed, saying that her depression was causedby her lack of progress at work, which she blamedon herself. Only after detailed questioning from thetherapist did she come to realize that her supervisor'sracism might be behind her poor evaluations. En-couraged by the therapist and her husband, she thendiscussed the issue with a higher-level manager andwas transferred to a different supervisor, who subse-quently promoted her. It is disconcerting to contem-plate how many therapists might have suggestedProzac and explored her marriage and family of ori-gin for the source of her depression and "poor workperformance."

The multi-contextual framework first laid out byBetty Carter in 1993 and expanded in Appendix 1 is aframework to assist clinicians in assessment of all lev-els of the system. Our intent is to make an enormousamount of information manageable and clinicallyrelevant without diminishing its complexity. We havebeen evolving this guide over the years. It is meant tobe suggestive and always subject to clinical judgmentfor a particular case.

Conclusion

Catherine Bateson (2001) has described the need forflexibility in life cycle thinking in our time thus:

I believe in the need for multiple models . . . toweave something new from many different threads•.. When we speak to our children about our own

lives we tend to reshape our pasts to give them anillusory look of purpose. But our children are un-likely to be able to define their goals and then livehappily ever after. Instead, they will need to rein-vent themselves again and again in response to achanging environment. Once you begin to see these... multiple commitments and multiple beginningsas an emerging pattern rather than an aberration,•.. the models for that reinvention . . . are not fixed

but.., evolve from day to day (pp. 16-17)•

This is our concept of the life cycle, that wemust re-invent ourselves and our relationships as wego through life, always in relation to those in our so-cial and family network of belonging, and in ourtimes especially each generation must be flexible inrelation to changing rules and relationships as theygo through life's transitions.

What clinicians require is a framework thatdoes not force clients to make molehills out ofmountains by ignoring all aspects of their lives ex-cept their individual thoughts, feelings and behav-ior in clinical situations. At the same time, ourfamily models need to articulate not a rigid, in-equitable multi-generational patriarchal family, buta recognition of our connectedness in life--regard-less of the particular family structure or culture--with those who went before us, those who go withus, and those who will follow after us. Exploringproblems within this broad and flexible frameworkwill help individuals and their families draw on themultiple resources of their actual kin arrangementsfor resilience, healing, support, and caretaldng asthey go through life.