Question
Answered step-by-step
MajorElkPerson782
CHAPTER 2 Family Development: Continuity and Change Developing a…
CHAPTER 2 Family Development: Continuity and Change
Developing a Life-Cycle Perspective
24. Developmental tasks refer to those activities or experiences undertaken by families to overcome conflicts that need to be mastered at various stages in the family life cycle thus enabling the family to move to the next developmental stage. Identify an important family problem. What steps did your family take to overcome it? How did your family change once the problem was overcome?
25. Think back to when you were first married or initially entered into a significant romantic relationship. Did your sense of your independence change? Did your partner’s? If so, did these changes cause problems in the relationship? Were you able to overcome the developmental challenges that accompany partnering? If so, how? If not, why not?
26. In a marriage, each spouse usually acquires a set of roles and adheres toa set of rules, often unstated, for marital interaction. In your parents ‘marriage, do you believe these patterns enabled each individual to maintain a separate sense of self? Elaborate.
27. After successfully weathering an important developmental transition, how did your family reset its priorities? Identify the situation and describe the changed priorities.
Continuity and Change throughout the Family Life Cycle
28. How flexible would you say your family is in meeting stresses and developmental transitions? Describe the difficulties your family typically experiences in facing transitions. What are its strengths?
29. Both continuity and change characterize the family system as it progresses through time. In some cases the changes are orderly, gradual, and continuous; in others they may be sudden, disruptive, and discontinuous. Describe a long-term change (such as reacting to a child’s changing behaviors through her or his adolescence or coping with a chronically ill family member) that took place (or is taking place) in your family. How does your family process long-term transition? Or does it? Does your family seem capable of processing the associated stressful experiences? What problems have emerged when family processing seems to have stalled?
30. What gains and losses occurred for each family member (including yourself) when you first left home?
31. The stress on the family system during a transition may actually give the family an opportunity to break out of its customary coping patterns and develop more productive, growth-enhancing responses to change. Identify a situation in which your family left old coping patterns and developed more growth-enhancing alternatives.
32. Are there any single-parent-led families in your extended family? How did solo parenting come about (divorce, widowhood, abandonment, adoption, etc.)? Are there particularly noticeable characteristics (economic hardship, fatigue, role overload, etc)?
33. What were the critical transition points for your family of origin (e.g., marriage, birth of first child, last child leaves home)? Were there one or more points of particular crisis involving the resolution of any of these tasks?
34. Describe the vertical and horizontal stresses around a crisis time in your family (death, illness, financial setback, moving to a new location).
35. How did the cultural background that each of your parents brought to their marriage blend or conflict with one another? What were the major consequences for the children?
The Developmental Stages
36. In many families, adolescents are the focus of much attention, as if they and not the family system are the basis of family conflict. What was going on with your family members at the time of your adolescence that contributed to family harmony or disharmony?
37. Describe the stage of life your parents were in when you reached adolescence. How did this affect your adolescence?
38. Will you or have you left your family’s home to live alone or with others? If so, how did your mother and father react to this stage in family development? Were their responses different from each other? How?
39. At what age do you think it is appropriate to get married? How have your background and family experiences shaped your attitudes toward marriage and its appropriate time in your life?
40. Assuming you are old enough, think back to your late adolescence, emerging adulthood and young adulthood. How would you characterize your developmental changes through these stages? Did your family notice and react to your changes? How?
41. Do you know of a marriage where a new spouse had difficulty gaining entrance into the family circle of their marital partner? What personal and family problems derive from such circumstances?
42. How often should a newlywed couple visit or talk by telephone with their parents? How has your background shaped your thinking?
43. Many traditional-aged students attending sleep-away college today are in continuous contact with their parents by phone, email, text messages, and digital social networks. As a general rule, do you think this much contact between student and home is healthy, unhealthy or is the question of health irrelevant? How might such activity help the student to achieve
44. Have you personally witnessed the arrival of a child disturb the family equilibrium of a previously well-established but childless couple? How? How did they cope with the imbalance? In what ways did husband and wife react differently? Did grandparents reenter the family system?
45. Have you experienced the death of a grandparent? Was it the first death where you were involved? How did the family handle it? What reactions of yours do you recall?
46. Overall, how has your family dealt with life cycle transitions? Did they deal with job changes, children leaving home, marriages, illness or death of family members with the same equanimity? Can you remember a transition that was problematic for the family? Was the family “stuck” for a period of time? How, and how well, did they move beyond the impasse? Are there residual consequences today?
47. Consider the issue of stress in your family. Did the stress first appear in your parents or grandparents? Were family patterns (e.g., drinking), attitudes (all the men in this family are weak) or secrets (grandma and grandpa never actually got married) passed on to you? What has been their influence on your outlook and expectations?
48. Consider how you and your family experienced your sexual development through adolescence and into emerging adulthood. Did you feel understood and supported? Describe how you experienced your family during this period of your life.
49. Did you ever live in a single-parent-led family? If so, what were the significant consequences for the family (economic hardship, grief, loss of a support system, etc.)? Were there any family resilient factors that emerged?
50. From your own experiences, or just from speculation, what do you think would be the major family problems in a joint custody arrangement?
51. Have you known anyone raised by a gay or lesbian couple? Can you describe the family relationships during early childhood and during adolescence? Did you observe any special problems in this family structure?
52. Was there someone gay or lesbian in your nuclear or extended family when you were growing up? Was his or her sexual preference out in the open or was it kept secret? How did it affect your family? If you are the gay or lesbian person, how did your family react to your experiences as you grew up?
Reference: Goldenberg, I., Stanton, M., & Goldenberg H. (2017). Family Therapy: an overview (9th ed.). Cengage.
