Family Development Theories

Abstract

Family development theories consider the changes experienced by a family over the period of its existence, especially in periods of time called family stages and the transitions between them. Such development is influenced by social norms that are specific to the various social groups to which the family belongs and thus varies culturally and historically in accordance to the variance of those norms. The changes experienced by a family can be discussed in terms of changes to the family group, changes to individuals within the family, or changes to the institution of “the family” across a cultural or social group.

Overview

Family development theory is a body of theoretical work within sociology that discusses the changes experienced by a family over time. The term “family development theory” was first used in reference to the work of Reuben Hill and Paul Mattesich, who presented a historical overview of sociological work on family life cycles and development in their 1987 Handbook of Marriage and the Family. Hill and Mattesich’s work built on prior theory dating back to the Enlightenment, when the idea of a family life-cycle was first formulated, but was particularly influenced by the post-World War II work of sociologists like Evelyn Duvall and Hill himself, who began publishing work on family stress in 1949. What Hill and Mattesich proposed was that family development moves through specific universal stages, much as there is a universal model of individual development with respect to the stages of life one passes through at different ages. Much of the work in the sociology of the family since Hill and Mattesich has been impacted by the debate over this theory.

By “family,” sociologists mean a social grouping with at least one parent-child relationship and that is recognized as a family by those outside the group. Norms of family groupings and family life are socially constructed and vary by culture; the American “nuclear family” consisting of a married couple and their minor children living in one household is one familiar form, but in other cultures it is just as common for multiple generations to share a household. Furthermore, since about half of children of married parents experience a parental divorce while they are still minors, the American nuclear family is no longer the norm it was before the reform of divorce law in the twentieth century.

Developmental psychology talks about stages of development, and family development theory similarly treats family stages. A family stage is a period of time marked by a family structure and set of interactions among family roles that are distinct from other periods of time. Family stages are labeled or divided up variously by different theorists, but often include early marriage, when the “family” includes just the future parents; the family with young children; the departure of children from home; and the empty nest, when the primary household again consists only of the married couple. Even at a glance, it is not hard to understand some of the ways family relationships change in these stages: The couple of the early marriage has few day-to-day responsibilities, whereas the couple raising young children has added co-parenting to their relationship with one another; the children of a family are dependent on their parents for more things and enjoy more daily interactions with them than is true when they are older and have left behind an empty nest. Broadly, the family goes through stages of birth, expansion, shrinkage, and dissolution. Parenthood does not end when children are no longer physically or financially dependent on their parents, but there is a marked change in the parental relationship. While early developmental theorists attempted to tie family development to the physical maturation of family members—making it more closely analogous to developmental psychology—this attempt was more or less universally rejected as unworkable.

Applications

Twentieth century work in the sociology of the family was initially heavily influenced by—really, an extension of—work on individual life span development, from Freudian psychology and its anal, oral, and genital stages to the psychosocial theories of Erik Erikson, the infant development theories of Esther Thelen, and the developmental stages of childhood proposed by Jean Piaget. Most of this early work therefore modeled the development of the family in terms that were invariant, universal, and deterministic, much as most early developmental psychology was.

The determinism of early theories from developmental psychology was challenged by attempts to extend those theories from childhood into adulthood; after the teen years, development of the individual simply varied too much, for a variety of reasons. Many critics of deterministic theories of family development similarly argue that this invariance weakens the validity of the theories; that is, there are too many external and social factors influencing families to confidently model their development along a linear progression.

The importance of social norms on development is one of the key distinctions of sociology’s approach to both individuals and families as compared with psychology. For instance, sociologists have argued that while the approach developmental psychology takes to child development (in which the relative linearity of biological development plays a significant role in developmental progression) cannot be extended into adulthood, there are social norms that prescribe certain times in an individual’s life when certain developments are expected: a period when it is normal to move out of one’s family’s home, a period when it is normal to attend college, a period when marriage and childbirth are normal.

Sometimes these norms are generated simply by the average experience of members of society, but not always; divorce, for instance, is still treated as abnormal or stigmatized by some social groups despite how common it is, while the age at which it is “normal” to get married varies considerably according to social group, with teen marriages stigmatized by some and normalized in others. Further, even within a culture, norms across a cohort can be influenced by historical events. The Great Depression was a formative event in the lives of those who came of age during it, influencing not only their development as individuals but also the development of their families, as growing up amid the rise of social media and ubiquitous computing will likely influence the norms of those born in the early twenty-first century.

Family development theory rests on a certain set of basic assumptions about the family, the first of which is the definition of family. The premise most central to development theory is simply that developmental processes are both inevitable and important; families undergo developmental processes such that these processes influence the structure of or interactions within the family fundamentally enough that recognizing and understanding those processes sheds light on something about the family itself. Some of these developmental processes are naturally driven by the aging of the individuals. As children produced by a marriage age, for instance, their relationships with their parents change, as do the roles they play in the household.

A second basic assumption is that the factors influencing the family originate from multiple “layers” of the social groupings within which the family is located. For instance, a hypothetical American family can be discussed in terms of families in the twenty-first century with minor children, families in Georgia, multiracial families, middle-class families, or Methodist families, just to name some groupings where this family is located. Norms about bedtimes for elementary school aged children may be influenced primarily by generation, class, and geography—in other words, by what the norm is for the children’s peers and the parents’ parental peers in their immediate area. Norms for how children are disciplined, though, may be influenced more by the parents’ own upbringing, which implicates class, race, and religion, among other factors. Keeping the first assumption in mind, this means that sociologists recognize that no two families are identical and also that their differences are not random. Every family is influenced by a different set of norms, some of which may be in conflict with one another, but those norms and the influence they exert can be identified and studied.

The family itself can be subject to different levels of analysis, the most basic of which is the family as a social group. It can also be analyzed in terms of individual relationships within the family (the marriage and co-parenting relationship of the parents) or the individual members of the family, or moving “up” from the single-family level, sociologists can look at clusters of families connected by generation, social class, and ethnicity, and further up to look at the institutional norms that inform conventions and expectations about family life and organization. For instance, there are general expectations about parent-child relationships and responsibilities that are found in most modern western families, some of which are enforced by but not created by legal requirements (the parent’s financial responsibility for the child, for instance). Institution-level analyses are what is generally invoked in cross-cultural or temporal discussions of “the family,” such as talking about “changes in the family during the Gilded Age” or “differences between Japanese and American families.”

For instance, norms such as child discipline or bedtime are not the only thing that varies about the family culturally, nor are structural differences limited to the traditional shape of the household. Family roles, or positions, are culturally specific. While clearly biological and legal relationships define who is and is not “family,” how people talk about the individuals they are related to, what they call them, varies widely from culture to culture. In English, for instance, there are words for aunt, uncle, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law, but no term for the “mother of my sister’s husband.”

Further, outside of “cousin,” English family terms tend to be gender-specific but do not specify much more information than that, unless disambiguating language is added: The same word, “uncle,” is used for “my father’s brother” and “my mother’s brother,” just as “grandfather” can refer to the father of any parent and “brother-in-law” can mean either “the brother of my spouse” or “the male spouse of my sibling.” Those latter two would seem to have little in common beyond being a similarly-aged male member of one’s family of procreation. While language is not deterministic, a culture’s terms for family roles seems to reflect something about the norms about those roles. In a culture like that of the United States, where it is less common for extended families to share a household, it makes sense that there is a less rich vocabulary to refer to extended family members like grandparents and parents’ siblings than we find in, for instance, Mandarin Chinese, which uses separate words for paternal grandfather’s older brother, paternal grandfather’s younger brother, maternal grandfather’s older brother, and so on.

Though theorists differ in how they treat family roles, family developmental theorists largely agree on what those roles are. Generally, sociologists refer to an individual’s relationship to another within the family as “the position,” and the norms surrounding that position as “the role.” For instance, a given woman may have multiple positions: mother to her children, wife to her husband, daughter to her parents, sister to her brother, sister-in-law to her husband’s sister, aunt to her sister-in-law’s children and her brother’s children. She also plays multiple roles, as different expectations of behavior are attached to each of these positions, and those expectations change over time (e.g., the norms of a daughter’s relationship with her parents are different when she’s an adult living outside their household than when she’s a ten year old). Sometimes these norms are very subtle. While the average person could list many things considered a norm for a parent-child relationship or the relationship of a married couple, the norms of sibling-in-laws or aunts may not immediately come to mind. Some are clear: An aunt is not expected to have the same latitude in disciplining or setting rules for children as a parent has, for example, and is more likely to be expected to buy presents for the children than the children are expected to buy presents for her. There are also specific tropes about aunthood in American culture, like the “cool aunt,” who is usually closer in age to the child, or African American culture’s “auntie,” who may be either a caretaker or a disciplinarian. Something is revealed about American gender dynamics by the fact that these tropes are gender-specific; “uncle” is not used in African American speech in the same way as “auntie,” nor is there a robust “cool uncle” trope.

Issues

One alternative to the life-cycle-influenced model of family development is the family career, as articulated by Roy H. Rodgers, another of Hill’s collaborators. The family career concept was best developed by Joan Aldous, who proposed subcareers—the sibling career, the parental career, the marital career—with family members developing in relationship to the family whole according to the role they occupy. The use of the career framing also avoids the misconception that a family “life cycle” implies that elements of family development are cyclical.

The shift from one stage to another is called a transition, while the family’s life span or career consists of a series of stages and transitions. Some theorists describe transitions as a set of choices. An early marriage, for example, transitions when the couple either does or does not have a child or get divorced. Transitions are “on time” when specific changes happen during a window of time determined by the norms applicable to the family and are considered “off time” when they do not. A common example is a couple having a new child when their oldest child is leaving home, which is considered “off time” for most twenty-first American families, but would not have been as unusual for earlier generations, when couples tended to have more children. When transitions occur out of the norm-prescribed order, they are called “disorganized”; the common example is a couple having a child before getting married. (Having a child and never getting married may diverge from a norm but probably does not count as disorganized, since the normal order of stages is still being followed.) It is important to note that the terms “off time” or “disorganized” are descriptive, not prescriptive. This is not to say sociologists never weigh in on what is healthiest or most successful for families, but to observe that a family’s story differs from the social norm is not to condemn that family.

Norms impacting family development vary in their rigidity, and both norms and the rigidity thereof vary over time. Divorce, though it has been a fact of life throughout recorded history, was once strongly stigmatized except in specific circumstances, independent of whether it was allowed by law. So too were same-sex marriages and childrearing by same-sex couples. Cohabitation before marriage was common at least one full generation before it was considered within the social norm, but the rigidity of that norm lessened with time. There continue to be rigid social norms about age gaps between married couples, especially when women marry significantly younger men. However, deviation from norms can also serve to reinforce other norms. The norm about cohabitation, for instance, weakened in part because more women were enrolling in college and entering the workforce. Cohabitation without marriage was one way to postpone marriage until after college, or after a career had been established; for many cohabiting couples, once they were married, this acted to “start the clock,” such that they then proceeded to pass through the subsequent family stages within the norm-dictated time frame. Had they married at the start of their cohabitation, the young marriage stage would have deviated from the normal time frame as the couple delayed having children.

Terms & Concepts

Developmental Psychology: The study of the progression of human change over stages of life. A strong influence on early work on family development, developmental psychology initially studied infants and children, focusing on questions like how children develop speech, reasoning, and basic motor skills.

Family: In sociology, refers to a social grouping that includes at least one parent-child relationship and is recognized as a family by those outside the group; members may be connected, for instance, through blood or adoption, marriage, or cohabitation.

Family of Orientation: The family into which one was born, consisting therefore of one’s parents, siblings, grandparents, and so on.

Family of Procreation: One’s family of procreation is the family one forms through marriage, including one’s spouse, children, stepchildren, in-laws, and so on.

Family Role: The social norms that surround a specific position within a family (such as mother, father, sister).

Social Norm: A behavior that is considered normal within a social group of any size, to which members of the group are expected to conform.

Bibliography

Davies, J. J., & Gentile, D. A. (2012). responses to children’s media use in families with and without siblings: A family development perspective. Family Relations, 61(3), 410–425. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=76303547&site=ehost-live

Euteneuer, M., & Uhlendorff, U. (2014). Family concepts—a social pedagogic approach to understanding family development and working with families. European Journal of Social Work, 17(5), 702–717. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=98605335&site=ehost-live

Kahl, S. F., Steelman, L. C., Mulkey, L. M., Koch, P. R., Dougan, W. L., & Catsambis, S. (2007). Revisiting Reuben Hill’s theory of familial response to stressors: The mediating role of mental outlook for offspring of divorce. Family & Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 36(1), 5–21. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. Ultimate http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=90970265&site=ehost-live

Kumar, K. (2017). The blended family life cycle. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 58(2), 110–125. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=121393357&site=ehost-live

Lantz, J. (2002). Family development and the martial arts: A phenomenological study. Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal, 24(4), 565. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=8819147&site=ehost-live

Laszloffy, T. A. (2002). Rethinking family development theory: Teaching with the systemic family development (SFD) model. Family Relations, 51(3), 206. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from Sociology Source Ultimate http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=7600724&site=ehost-live

Martin, T. F. (2018). Family development theory 30 years later. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 10(1), 49–69. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=128331661&site=ehost-live

Rodgers, R. H., & White, J. M. (2009). Family development theory. In P. Boss, W. J. Doherty, R. LaRossa, W. R. Schumm & S. K. Steinmetz (Eds.). Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods. Boston, MA: Springer.

Suggested Reading

Hewitt, N. M., & Anderson, J. A. (2015). A vehicle for empowering frontline human service workers: Family development credentialing—it’s not just training! Journal of Progressive Human Services, 26(1), 1–21. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=100421606&site=ehost-live

MacPhee, D., Lunkenheimer, E., & Riggs, N. (2015). Resilience as regulation of developmental and family processes. Family Relations, 64(1), 153–175. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=100299473&site=ehost-live

Martin, T. F. (2015). Advancing dynamic family theories: Applying optimal matching analysis to family research. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 7(4), 482–497. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=111336271&site=ehost-live

Richman, J. M., & Cook, P. G. (2004). A framework for teaching family development for the changing family. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 24(1/2), 1–18. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=13950684&site=ehost-live