Beyond the family life cycle: Understanding family development in the twenty-first century through complexity theories

Abstract

Perspectives on family development have been organized, mainly, around the idea of the family life cycle. However, a family life cycle approach is probably too simplistic and norm-oriented to understand family development, particularly in face of the diversity of family forms and challenges in the twenty-first century. In this article, we discuss how family science can borrow inspiration from concepts and methods of complexity sciences in order to (re)conceptualize family development as the time unfolding of a complex self-organizing system, in the direction of increasing differentiation and integration. We highlight some strategies to inspect developmental coordination dynamics at the level of the whole family, as a complex system. We hope this reflection opens a new space of debate and new avenues for theoretical development and research in the field of family science.