The Family Life Cycle
family life
Cycles occur daily in human life. Day to day, a sample human cycle could include waking up at a specific time, eating breakfast, go to work, return home, eat dinner, relax and watch a favorite television show, and go to bed. Cycles are also a recurring theme in sociology. One such cycle – the family life cycle – points out the different stages of development in family life. It divides family life into five sections – Love and Courtship in Global Perspective, Marriage, Childbirth, Child Rearing, and The Family in Later Life.
Love and Courtship in Global Perspective refers to work done by anthropologists William Jankowiak and Edward Fischer in 1992. Before almost every marriage in western culture, and even before emotional attractions, is a sexual attraction. The second stage of family life, marriage, has proven to be much more pre meditated than most people figure. Sociologists Tucker and Mitchell-kerman (1990); Kalmijn (1991) showed that most people follow marital paths predictable via age, education, social class, race, and religion. For example, a high school dropout punk rocker is more likely to marry a failing, pregnant high school student than an Ivy League college attendee. Sociologists use the term homgamy to describe this pattern of attraction to people of similar social attributes. Sociologist Lillian Rubin found in 1992 that social class made a significant difference in how couples would adjust to the arrival of a child. After the child is born, and the family begins to settle, the family is prepared to start on the next path of family life: Child Rearing.
The fourth stage in the family life cycle is Child Rearing. This is the stage where the child grows up, until the child is just about ready to leave the nest. This development is usually done by a nanny or grandparent in a working class family, and a less intimate attraction is created between child and parents. Parents also tend to give more discipline to firstborns than the rest of the children, and this is generally attributed to factors such as ‘burning out’ and satisfaction with the initial child’s success. As the children begin to leave the house, family life transitions to the final stage – family in later life.
The final stage, The Family in Later Life, has three stages in itself – the empty nest, retirement, and widowhood. The children have just left, and the parents find extra money, and extra time. These two luxuries are initially enjoyed, but eventually prove insufficient to replace the children that have left. Secondly, as the parents start to age, they will retire. Retirement provides the parents with relaxation, a sense of completion, and a sense of near death. Parents miss their children, but cherish grandchildren, generally, as they are present at this stage.
Tips For Improving Your Family Life
It is often said that family life is the most vital component to a successful society. This is because the ties that bind family members can’t be broken, and are sometimes all we have in a world gone awry. The stress of everyday life can sometimes drive families apart, but luckily, there are a number of things you can do to improve your family life and strengthen your bonds with one another. Just use some of the following techniques to begin experiencing a more harmonious family life today.
- Schedule family fun nights. This may sound silly, but scheduling weekly activities together doesn’t have to be corny or boring. We recommend seeing a movie together, taking a trip to the nearest go-kart track, or just staying at home and playing Monopoly. You’d be surprised how much fun it can be to just hang out with one another – and the time you spend together will also help you become closer as a family.
- Eat dinner together. Studies have shown that children who regularly sit down to meals with their parents do better in school and have less behavioral problems. This is due to the fact that spending time with their family each day, even if it’s only 30 minutes, helps children to feel loved, supported, and cared for. And the advantages work both ways; parents are able to raise children more effectively when they are able to touch base with them on a daily basis.
- Take care of yourself. It is easy for family life to suffer when parents become overly tired, stressed, or unhappy. But because parents are the head of the family, it is very important that they take care of themselves so that they have the strength to guide their children. If you’re a parent, schedule yourself a nap or massage on a regular basis to help you recharge, and also give you the energy you need to lead your family.
- Reach out to extended family members. Help foster family cohesiveness by reminding children of the love and support of their extended family members. Encourage children to send birthday cards or make phone calls to long-distance relatives in order to keep in touch. Bonding together for the common purpose of contacting your shared family members will help to strengthen your own tight-knit family circle.
- Get regular exercise. Physical fitness is essential to the well-being of every individual, so why not make it a family activity? The next time you have a free Saturday afternoon, get the whole family together and go biking or play a game of baseball. Not only will you feel better afterwards, your family will get much closer in the process.
