A. Explain the family life-cycle development. Family life cycle development theory looks at how couples and family members deal with various roles and developmental tasks within the marriage and the family as they move through each stage of the life cycle. In 1948, Evelyn Duvall and Reuben Hill first proposed a developmental framework for studying families to account for regularities in family life over time. Duvall and Hill’s model included eight stages and each stage is accompanied by the major transition to achieve at that specific stage. They are: 1. The married couple – Commitment to each other 2. Childbearing – Developing parent roles 3. Pre-school aged children – Accepting child’s personality 4. School-aged children – Introducing children to institutions 5. Teenage children – Accepting adolescence (social and sexual role changes) 6. Launching the children – Accepting child’s independent adult role 7. Middle-aged parents – Letting go, facing each other again 8. Ageing family members – Accepting old age Since 1980, Carter and McGoldrick have continually expanded the concept to include individual, family and socio-cultural perspectives. Their initial model has six stages and each stage comes with an emotional process of transition, and an outline of second-order changes in family status needed to proceed developmentally. The six stages are: 1. Leaving home: emerging single young adults 2. The joining of families through marriage: the new couple 3. Families with young children 4. Families with adolescents 5. Launching children and moving on 6. Families in later life Later in 2003, Carter and McGoldrick would again revise their model, providing a more multidimensional view of the impact of multiple stresses on a family’s ability to navigate transitions. They believe that the flow of anxiety within a family is related to both “vertical” and “horizontal” stressors. In their model, family life cycles are dramatically affected by diverse variables, including class, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, immigration status, race, religion, and sexual orientation. The family life cycle perspective offers a valuable context for understanding dysfunction in the individual and family. From the family life cycle point of view, psychiatric symptoms in a family member may represent a signal that the family is having problems mastering the tasks or making the transition at the stage of the cycle. B. Relate one incident/situation in your family life cycle (either immediate family or family of origin) to its influence/impact on you as a person to this day. One incident in my family life cycle would fall under the first stage of Carter and McGoldrick’s original six family life cycle stages – Leaving home: Emerging single young adults. In this model, stage one is characterized by the entrance into the self-supporting work world and formation of friendships and intimate relationships. The young adult begin to strive to become fully able to support oneself emotionally, socially, physically and financially. The young adult begin to develop unique qualities and characteristics that define his or her individual identity. In essence, the single adult must separate from her/his family of origin without cutting off or fleeing. Derailment occurs when families do not let go of their adult children, or the adult children are “persuaded” to remain dependent by circumstances beyond their control, such as social disadvantage or isolation, poor family finances, or severe illness in the family. When I was eighteen years old, my mother suffered her second stroke. She had had a minor stroke two years prior which did not cause her any significant disability. However, the second stroke she had was a major one. She stayed in the Intensive Care Unit for weeks and had to undergo a risky operation with a fifty-fifty chance of survival. She managed to pull through but the stroke left her unable to speak coherently. She could understand conversations and instruct