Goldberg Chapter 2: Family Development: Continuity and Change

Question 1

What is the family life cycle perspective?

Answer 1

Offers a positive view of the family’s capacity to retain its stability and continuity at the same time that it evolves and changes its structure as new relational processes occur.

Families have the resilience to use its strengths, resources, and effective interpersonal processes to master the necessary transitions.

Question 2

What happens when a family has the inability to negotiate a particular life cycle passage or transition point (signalled by interpersonal conflicts)?

Answer 2

The family is thought to have become “stuck” between stages of the life cycle and to be in need of reorganizing in order to better accommodate to the changing needs of its members.

Question 3

Define: Developmental tasks

Answer 3

Developmental tasks refer to those activities or experiences that need to be mastered at various stages in the family life cycle to enable the family to move to the next developmental stage. Individual developmental tasks fold into family developmental tasks (these tasks vary by culture and are not all universal).

Developmental tasks define role expectations throughout the life cycle (role when you’re married changes).

Question 4

T or F: Transitions from one stage to the next are accomplished as neatly in real life as stage theory would suggest

Answer 4

False. Mastering a significant life cycle transition calls for changes in the family system, not merely rearrangements of accommodations between members. Not only that, but life stages often merge into one another.

*Each transition requires a family to change, to reset priorities, and to organize to meet the challenges of the new life cycle stage.

Question 5

A variety of individual family differences may change the exact nature of a family life cycle stage for that family. What are some of these factors?

Answer 5

• Ethnicity
• Culture
• Socioeconomic status
• Sexual identity
• Spirituality
• Family violence
• Physical or mental illness
• Substance abuse

Question 6

What is a family stage marker?

Answer 6

Each stage of the family life cycle is precipitated by a particular life event demanding change and a new adaptation.

Question 7

Why is it important to consider how easily and how well the family manages conflict and negotiates the transitions between stages?

Answer 7

Successful management of challenges in one stage has a significant impact on its ability to effectively carry out the tasks of the subsequent stage. If the family’s interactive pattern is more rigid, it becomes less likely that the members will be able to negotiate differences, the more the family will be stressed by the need to change, and the more likely symptoms will develop within the family system.

Question 8

What happens if a task for one stage in the family life cycle is incomplete?

Answer 8

During each stage, family development proceeds through family task accomplishment, and family characteristics of the previous period are carried over into the next stage. If any tasks are incomplete or impeded, development is delayed or suspended, and these difficulties are carried into the subsequent stage of family development.

Question 9

What is the first stage of the family life cycle and the emotional process of transition that accompanies it?

Answer 9

Leaving home: Emerging young adults; Accepting emotional and financial responsibility for self

Question 10

What is the second stage of the family life cycle and the emotional process of transition that accompanies it?

Answer 10

Joining of families through marriage/ union; Commitment to new system

Question 11

What is the third stage of the family life cycle and the emotional process of transition that accompanies it?

Answer 11

Families with young children; Accepting new members into the system

Question 12

What is the fourth stage of the family life cycle and the emotional process of transition that accompanies it?

Answer 12

Families with adolescents; Increasing flexibility of family boundaries to permit children’s independence and grandparents’ frailties

Question 13

What is the fifth stage of the family life cycle and the emotional process of transition that accompanies it?

Answer 13

Launching children and moving on at midlife; Accepting a multitude of exits from and entries into the family system

Question 14

What is the sixth stage of the family life cycle and the emotional process of transition that accompanies it?

Answer 14

Families in late middle age; Accepting the shifting generational roles

Question 15

What is the seventh stage of the family life cycle and the emotional process of transition that accompanies it?

Answer 15

Families nearing the end of life; Accepting the realities of limitations and death and the completion of one cycle of life

Question 16

T or F: All continuous or discontinuous change leads to symptomatic behaviour.

Answer 16

False. The stress of a transition may give the family an opportunity to break out of its customary cop- ing patterns and develop more productive, growth-enhancing responses to change.

Question 17

What is relational resilience?

Answer 17

Families that have developed effective collaborative ways of coping with adversity and hardship

Question 18

What are the major values of the family life cycle perspective?

Answer 18

To establish a template for family difficulties, reveal linkages over generations, and focus on family resilience and continuity.

Question 19

What is the structural position?

Answer 19

Holding the belief that problems develop within a family with a dysfunctional structure when the family encounters a transition point but lacks the flexibility to adapt to the changing conditions.

Question 20

What does the most prominent contemporary family life cycle model maintain?

Answer 20

They believe the flow of anxiety within a family is related to both “vertical” and “horizontal” stressors.

Question 21

What are vertical (transgenerational) stressors?

Answer 21

Vertical stressors are patterns of relating and functioning transmitted historically through generations— family attitudes, stories, expectations, secrets, taboos, and loaded family issues passed along from grandparents to parents to children. The vertical axis also includes any biological heritage, genetic makeup, temperament, and possible congenital disabilities within the family. Any racism, sexism, poverty, homophobic attitudes, as well as family prejudices and patterns of relating carried over from earlier generations add to these vertical stressors.

Question 22

What are horizontal (developmental) stressors?

Answer 22

Horizontal stressors describe the events experienced by the family as it moves forward through time, coping with changes and transitions of the life cycle—the predictable developmental stresses as well as unexpected, traumatic ones (such as an untimely death, birth of a handicapped child, a serious accident, migration).

Question 23

What happens if stress is placed on the horizontal axis? What about stress placed on the vertical?

Answer 23

With enough stress on the horizontal axis, any family will appear dysfunctional. For a family that is full of stress on the vertical axis, even a small amount of horizontal stress can disrupt the family system.

Question 24

Why is the point where the axes (horizontal and vertical stressors) converge important to consider?

Answer 24

A key determinant of how well the family will manage the transition point.

Question 25

What are centripetal periods (model of Combrinck-Graham)?

Answer 25

At certain times family members are tightly involved with one another (when a child is born or when someone is seriously ill).

Question 26

What are centrifugal periods (model of Combrinck-Graham)?

Answer 26

Individual moves take precedence.

Question 27

What is coupling?

Answer 27

Couple’s move from independence to interdependence

Question 28

T or F: Mother-headed families especially are characterized by a high rate of poverty, a high percentage of minority representation, and relatively low education.

Answer 28

True.

Question 29

Define: joint legal custody

Answer 29

Both parents have equal authority regarding their children’s general welfare, education, and so on

Question 30

How does divorce add another family life cycle stage?

Answer 30

When divorce occurs, family has to regroup and try to deal with the physical and emotional losses and changes before rejoining the “main road” in their developmental journey.

Question 31

From a life-cycle perspective, young gays and lesbians face the same normative demands to become independent adults as do their heterosexual counterparts… What also needs to be considered?

Answer 31

They simultaneously must also learn to cope with the psychological toll of living in a stigmatizing larger society.

Question 32

What is important for a heterosexual therapist to distinguish between when working with gay and lesbian clients?

Answer 32

They caution the therapist to distinguish problems internal to the specific couple from problems due to gender and cultural biases. They suggest that therapists need to be sensitive to the external sociocultural and family sources of stress on the couple, including homophobia and heterosexism; gender stereotyping (such as gay men are feminine or lesbians are “like men”); issues associated with coming out as a couple; and conditions of social support enjoyed or not by the gay or lesbian couple.