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Stages of the Family Life Cycle

By Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

In reading the material below, you may wonder what I mean by the term "second-order change," since that is not a common phrase. When talking about second-order change, therapists consider this to be the major transitions that occur within a system (or within an individual person). When related to families, they are the changes that occur at the juncture of two stages (though they may take place over a period of several years) and allow one stage to turn into another. Let me give you an example.

Let's say you and your teenager have been in constant battles over how he keeps his room. You've nagged and nagged and nagged. Finally you tell him that if the room isn't cleaned by Saturday night, he can't go to the movies! And that's final! If he's willing to make an issue of who's "in charge" of whether his room is clean or not (see the challenges of dealing with the 12 to 19 year old's growth stage), he may rather just stay home that evening. When you realize you didn't win that round, you might then start taking away other privileges if he "doesn't shape up." No more TV. No more phone. No more computer games. No more whatever you think will make him change.

But let's say you decide to take a totally different approach. You tell him that you are no longer going to nag him about his room. If he wants to live in a messy room, you'll let him. Your only request is that he keep his door closed so you don't have to look at it. And since one of your concerns is that his clothes get dirty and thrown into the wash just because they've fallen on the floor, he will now be responsible for washing his clothes. You'll show him how to do it, but you decide to no longer go into his room and gather his clothes off the floor, bed, desk, chairs, and other places where tossed clothes can land.

This, folks, is a second-order change. In this illustration, changing punishments are first-order changes. You will understand this concept better when you review the stages below. And remember, here we're talking about family stages that complement the individual growth stages discussed in other articles.

PLEASE NOTE: The following is based on my graduate school notes and a variety of resources, such as Family Therapy: An Overview by Goldenberg and Goldenberg

Stage One: Single young adults leave home

Here the emotional change is from the reliance on the family to acceptance of emotional and financial responsibility for ourselves. Second-order changes include differentiation of self in relation to family of origin. This means we neither blindly accept what our parents believe or want us to do, nor do we automatically respond negatively to their requests. Our beliefs and behaviors are now part of our own identity, though we will change and refine what we believe throughout our lives. Also, during this period we develop intimate peer relationships on a deeper level than we had previously and become finacially independent.

Stage Two: The new couple joins their families through marriage or living together

The major emotional transition during this phase is through commitment to the new system. Second-order change involves the formation of a marital system and realignment of relationships with extended families and friends that includes our spouses.

Stage Three: Families with young children

Emotionally we must now accept new members into the system. This isn't hard initially because babies come to us in sweet innocent packages that open our hearts. Unfortunately, in the middle of the night we may wonder what we've gotten ourselves into. Nevertheless, we adjust the marital system to make space for our children, juggling childrearing, financial and household tasks. Second-order change also ocurs with the realignment of relationships with extended family as it opens to include the parenting and grandparenting roles.

Stage Four: Families with adolescents

Emotional transitions are hard here for the whole family because we need to increase the flexibility of families boundaries to include children's independence and grandparents' frailities. As noted above, second-order change is required in order for the shifting of the parent-child relationship to permit adolescents to move in and out of the system. Now there is a new focus on midlife marital and career issues and the beginning shift toward joint caring for the older generation when both children and aging parents demand our attention, creating what is now called the sandwich generation.

Stage Five: Launching children and moving on

This is one of the transitions that can be most emotionally difficult for parents as they now need to accept a multitude of exits from and entries into the family system. If the choices of the children leaving the nest are compatible with the values and expectations of the parents, the transition can be relatively easy and enjoyable, especially if the parents successfully navigate their second-order changes, such as renegotiation of the marital system as a couple rather than as simply parents. Other developmental changes include development of adult-to-adult relationships between us and our grown children, inclusion of in-laws and grandchildren, and dealing with the disabilities and death of our own parents. (See Letting Go of Our Adult Children: When What We Do is Never Enough for what can happen when transitions in this stage become particularly bumpy.)

Stage Six: Families in later life

When Erikson discusses this stage, he focuses on how we as individuals either review our lives with acceptance and a sense of accomplishment or with bitterness and regret. A family systems approach, however, is interested in how the family as a unit responds and sees the key emotional principle as accepting the shifting of generational roles. Second-order changes require us to maintain our own interests and functioning as a couple in face of physiological decline. We shift our focus onto the middle generation (the children who are still in stage five) and support them as they launch their own children. In this process the younger generation needs to make room for the wisdom and experience of the elderly, supporting the older generation without overfunctioning for them. Other second-order change includes dealing with the loss of our spouse, siblings, and others peers and the preparation for our own death and the end of our generation.

© Copyright 2002, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT