The family life cycle: Impressions

This paper is concerned with the kind of everyday family experiences that most of us have gone through. It is written in a style that is more poetry than science, but, like poetry, probably gets closer to the truth about the nature of family life than does more technical conceptual material. Too often professionals write in such abstract, theoretical terms about families that they end up sounding unlike any family you ever knew. In this paper, I tried to write about the natural, typical incidents that occur to people as they get married, have kids, grow old, and die. It is hoped that the reader will connect and identify with these evocations, get shocks of recognition, as well as, who knows, some private chuckles. Families are where you live, emotionally and physically. Our family experiences — the passions, hates, loves, mysteries, paradoxes, measureless sacrifices, joys, injustices, jealousies, storms, comforts, bonds, and patterns— are burned into the cauldrons of the mind. The family memories lived through intimate others persist through space and time, sometimes sharply, usually as vague wisps of unremembered pasts, shaping the meanings of our lives and those close to us. The family, not anatomy, is destiny.a founder and past president of the American Family Therapy Academy.Editor's Note: This paper by Jim Framo was written 25 years ago, but for various reasons has not been published until now. Despite the fact that it focuses on the traditional middleclass family in the United States, it has wider implications and appeal than that focus.