ABSTRACT
The family development framework which provided the key concepts and many of the propositions to be tested has offered a scope of inquiry large enough to encompass these several discoveries. This chapter uses these findings to sharpen and improve the framework for further development. To date the family development framework has been largely silent about the transactional patterns between the family and its vertical kin in three generation depth and the intersecting of the family careers of these three generations over time. The framework has also tended to assume similar stages of development for each generational cohort, treating as residual the issue of continuity and change from generation to generation. Family consumership viewed developmentally over the marriage span is not so much a profile of growth and increased competence as of regression and deterioration. Several empirical propositions illuminate the unexpected inter-relationships between family consumership patterns and the subjective appraisals by families of actions undertaken.
