Family Development Theory (Book Report Sample)

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Family Development Theory
The developments in the field of family science contributed to the emergence of the family development theory, which is documented to have emerged in the late 1940’s. Family development theory was in fact named as one of the first family focused theories, with a clear distinction from sociology and psychology. Psychology based theories had focused their emphasis on individuals, and were not able to account for situations with competitive individuals in a family while sociology based theories focused on the society as a whole, having a relatively broad analysis. The different perspectives generated from these theories necessitated the origin of the family development theory.
In 1948, Evelyn Duvall and Ruben Hill explained that families inevitably experienced development as a result of them being social beings, and therefore, they needed to be studied as a dynamic unit, contrary to being studied as a collection of individuals. Duvall particularly emphasized on a theory later named the ‘family life cycle’ which explained that families underwent two major stages; expansion and contraction, whereby in expansion, children were brought into the family through birth and contraction whereby children left their homes after growing up. Later, she published a book called "Family Development" which would be used widely for the next 30 years to study the family development process.
In the book, Duvall stated 8 crucial stages in the family life cycle, commonly known as the stages of the family development theory. Scholar’s however later critiqued this theory, claiming it lacked scientific testability since the variables of the theory were not well defined and couldn’t be properly tested. In 2002, Tracey Laztoffy modified this theory, basing her reasons on the fact that his theory assumed these 8 stages were universally experienced in all families and their focus on a single generational experience. She revised the model and titled it the systematic family development theory as it explained the effect of family change at a more complex multigenerational basis.
In family development theory, a family is described as a set of interacting individuals who are related by blood, marriage or adoption. Over time, the family will move from one stage to another e.g. from marriage to having a child, changing the dynamics of the family. These stages that a family shifts to, from time to time, can be defined as periods where each family member possess defined roles with each stage being qualitatively different e.g. teenage stage, leaving home and getting married. Transition necessitates shift from one stage to another. Transition is inevitable and its ease is dependent on the success of the roles of the individual family member at each stage of the development stage. After transition, change occurs. Change may result from external factors such as the interaction to ...