ABSTRACT
Although family processes are not linear, families themselves do exist in the linear dimension of time. As the family moves forward in time they have to deal with the predictable course of development as children are born, become adolescents, enter adulthood, create their own families, deal with ageing and then ultimately death (Carter and McGoldrick 1999). The stages of family life and development begin with the individual. Individual life cycles are the threads from which the overall family context is woven, with changes in the individual threads being re¯ected in the appearance and shape of a particular family life cycle. The most helpful way of considering how the family life cycle is organised is to focus on the notion of developmental task. These are issues that have to be dealt with so that the next set of issues on the path of development can be approached. Tasks by their very nature are relationship bound and involve interaction with other family members and by the generational effect, e.g. the tasks of one generation in¯uence and are related to the tasks of another generation. Thus, for example, an individual requires some degree of personal autonomy to meet the task of separating from parents and the parents need to be able to allow and even encourage this to happen. Hence the task of separating becomes a foundation for the task of forming relationships outside of the family and the task for the parents of allowing separation prepares for the couple tasks that follow after the child has left home. Clearly the `solution' of any task is important for future development but what is of equal importance is the process of the solving itself. Indeed development both for the individual and the family is best conceived of as a continual process of facing tasks that being human sets. In this process, the cyclical nature of development is such that we can enter the process at any point and yet return to the same life cycle point within another generation.
