Family Life Cycle
The family is the basic unit of society that, according to Aristotle, is a natural establishment that provides people with their wants. The family comprises of various life cycle stages, first to the eighth stages, which are affected by external factors either individually or as a collection. In this assignment, we will focus on the fifth stage of the family life cycle, Family with young children, and how it is affected by the challenge of chronic disease in one of the family members.
All families face several challenges that affect them in one way or another. In today’s American family setting, chronic illnesses, for instance, lymphoma cancer, are known for causing significant negative impacts on family settings, all the way up to the whole cycle in general (Newby, 2016). In the first and second stages of the family life cycle, individuals, especially those who are suffering from chronic disease tend to have a close relationship with family and siblings, making it difficult for them to leave home either for further education or for work. A significant challenge comes when developing relationships and selecting partners. Getting a partner who understands their situation may be hard for them. At the fourth and fifth stages, the individuals and their partners find it difficult to formulate a way of life that will suit their needs and create a conducive environment for bringing up children. The main challenge here is mostly financial constraints as a result of treatment for the chronic disease (Newby, 2016). For example, chemotherapy for lymphoma cancer can be overwhelmingly high. In the sixth and seventh stage, when the children are in the adolescent and young adulthood stages, the main challenge is stress among these children as they develop awareness concerning the medical condition of one of their parents. This is a major cause of children acting out. Finally, in the last stage, later family life, the other spouse and the children, who are grown up and already taking control of family matters, struggle with the pain of having lost the chronically ill family member. Therefore, the presence of a family member with chronic illness in the family is attributed to family stress, and the need for constant adaptation in the family (Newby, 2016).
The family life cycle is made up of eight main stages through which individual families go through. Each stage of the family life cycle may be affected by specific challenges in the environment more than other stages. As earlier mentioned, the focus of the paper is chronic illnesses as a challenge affecting the fifth stage of the family life cycle. The fifth stage of the family life cycle is characterized by a family with a young kid(s). Therefore, the main activities include coming up with a family system that can accommodate the young one(s) and developing the most suitable parenting skills. This should not only encourage the kid(s) to establish positive relationships with their peers but also be in line with original family parenting skills (Mattessich, & Hill, 2017).
In a situation where one of the parents is suffering from a chronic illness, for instance, cancer, these activities have to accommodate the condition. For example, the other parent may be overwhelmed by having to take care of their spouse, therefore end up neglecting the young one(s). In such a situation, the child may not get the most suitable parenting skills from the parent. Where one of the children is chronically ill, the parents may concentrate too much on the child, and forget the other children, making them feel neglected (Mattessich, & Hill, 2017). Such situations are known to create strains between the other children and the chronically ill child. In addition to that, the costs associated with the treatment of the chronically ill family member, parent or child, may put the whole family in a tight situation economically. This is bound to make it challenging to create and develop conducive environments for social interactions with either the society and either of the original family members (Mattessich, & Hill, 2017).
Families aim at Improving the overall quality of life. However, the occurrence of any chronic illness in one of the family members threatens this family goal. According to Golics et al., (2013), for parents with a chronically ill child, their main focus usually is on improving the overall welfare of the child. A practice that such parents can conduct to ensure this is using the bright IDEAS approach to problem-solving. As an evidence-based approach, this intervention is an acquired skill that enables the caregiver to attend to the needs of the chronically ill child who is admitted in a health care institution (Golics et al., 2013). Another evidence-based approach is the cognitive-behavioural approach which trains the parents on how to develop practical communication skills that will enable them to take care of the ill child.
Family therapies are usually designed to improve communication and resolve any conflicts that may exist in a family setting (Minuchin, 2018). In this case, the objectives of the family therapy treatment plan will be helping the family members deal with the trauma associated with chronic illnesses. In many situations, chronic diseases are viewed as death sentences, and, therefore, affect the overall quality of life of all the family members by inducing stress in all the members. The technique to be used to help the family members overcome the trauma is psychological counselling (psychotherapy). This has been proven to help individuals in dealing with personal problems through the identification of the underlying issues, then designing solutions meant to address the specific issues (Minuchin, 2018).
Mark and Linnet are a young couple with a three-year-old daughter. When their child was six months old, Mark was diagnosed with stage three lymphoma cancer and had to be hospitalized for two years to undergo chemotherapy. Since the couple was not financially stable, they had to move out of their house and take their young daughter to Mark’s parents for Linnet to be able to attend to Mark. This affected the daughter as she grew up without her parent’s presence. Now she finds it difficult to relate with her father.
References
Golics, C. J., Basra, M. K. A., Finlay, A. Y., & Salek, S. (2013). The impact of the disease on family members: a critical aspect of medical care. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 106(10), 399-407.
Mattessich, P., & Hill, R. (2017). Life cycle and family development. In Handbook of marriage and the family (pp. 437-469). Springer, Boston, MA.
Minuchin, S. (2018). Families and family therapy. Routledge.
Newby, N. M. (2016). Chronic illness and the family life‐cycle. Journal of advanced nursing, 23(4), 786-791.