Handbook of Family Development and Intervention

Like all complex living systems, a family, during its life course, proceeds through predictable stages of development. Yet every family is different, its uniqueness defined and continually redefined by an open-ended array of structural, biological, and sociocultural variables. And, as with all living things, a family's continued well-being depends upon its ability to adapt to changes arising from both within the family system and without.

First postulated in the 1940s, these basic ideas con...