Tracking patterns across family life cycles

What insights can a genogram provide us about a client’s history??

A comprehensive genogram can give therapists clues about a client’s current struggles by highlighting patterns in their family history. When we examine a client within their socio-cultural context, repetitive patterns become apparent.?

Monica McGoldrick (the pioneer of genogram work) coined the term “life cycles” as the timing or off-timing of life cycle transitions including birth, launching (leaving home), forming couple relationships, educational and career paths, caretaking (early parenthood), and death.?Relationships with parents, siblings, and other family members go through transitions as they move through the life cycles.?

She views the family as a system moving through time, that have a shared history and a shared future.?

We are born into families. Our first relationships, our first group, our first experience of the world are with and through our families. We develop, grow, and hopefully die in the context of our families.

-Betty Carter and Monica McGoldrick,?The Expanded Family Life Cycle: Individual, family, and social perspectives (3rded.).

A genogram provides a visual representation of the client’s family tree and provides insight to both client and therapist on intergenerational trauma and relationship and life cycle patterns.?

Of course, it is also important to note that some people do not fit into the “typical” life cycle patterns and are sometimes made to feel abnormal. While they may have followed other life patterns or be creative and independent. It is always important to look for client strengths and resilience as well as vulnerabilities.?

“Upon reaching each ‘milestone’ the family must reorganise itself to move on successfully to the next phase. If patterns rigidify at transition points, they are likely to have trouble adapting to later phases.”

– Monica McGoldrick, Randy Gerson and Sueli Petry,?Genograms: Assessment and Treatment (4th?ed.)?

Life cycle transitions

As a clinician, we can take note of the current life cycle our client exists within and pay careful attention to similar life cycle patterns in former generations. Were there struggles in the same life cycle in previous generations?

Transition periods to pay close attention to are adolescence, launching, couple relationships, parenthood and death.

Adolescence

As children grow, they build interests and relationships outside of the family. Adolescents become less dependent on their parents and begin to forge their own way in the world. On creating a genogram with an adolescent, we should include important peer relationships, to help us see who they feel connected to and how well the family boundaries can expand to embrace people outside of the family system.?

How well does the parent/ child relationship shift to permit the adolescent to move in and out of the family system??

Launching (leaving the family home)

The launching phase, when young adults leave home to be on their own, is a crucial phase for all other phases to follow. The young person accepts emotional and financial responsibility for themselves and they begin to differentiate themselves in relation to their family of origin.?

In the case of a teenage pregnancy, this could both advance the launch phase as they shift into the role of a parent and yet the phase could also arrest as they juggle the role of being both a child and parent, perhaps relying on their own parents for emotional, practical and financial support.?

Find out your client’s ‘leaving home’ story and that of their siblings as well. How well did the young person and their parents adjust to the transition?

Couple relationships

The joining of families through defacto relationships or marriage requires a realignment of relationships with extended families and friends to include a partner. A genogram exploring this life cycle, can provide valuable clues to the issues involved in joining together of two family traditions into a new family.?

For example, parents may struggle to accommodate their young adult children’s’ partners and in-laws into a new and expanded family.

If it’s early marriage where problems lie then you may want to know about their parents’, siblings and grandparents early marriages and those of key friends.?

Parenthood/ caregiving

Childrearing years of a young family are eventful and busy times and can be difficult for the parental relationships as much energy is taken up with work and children. New parents may have to realign their relationships with their parents to include grandparenting roles. The couple relationship also adjusts to make space for children.?

Parents often have extra tasks as their own parents and other older relatives begin to need extra support.?

Death?

As people age, they come to terms with the mortality of older generations. The death of a parent is a reminder of one’s own mortality We may ponder, which sibling becomes the designated caretaker?

Life cycle patterns

How families adapt to change and transitions provides the clinician with clues about where a client may become stuck. When using a genogram, it can help us understand or predict the reactions of family members to key events at different points in the life cycle.?

I see this a lot in working with perinatal clients. There are often repetitive patterns, usually outside of the client’s awareness. Examples of life cycle patterns include:?

• A mother feeling disconnected from her young baby and there are parallels to her own mother “abandoning” her in her first year of life
• A woman fears her partner abandoning her upon discovering pregnancy and an unconscious parallel of her father leaving her mother when pregnant with her

While life cycles can repeat, they can also be?motivators for change. In pregnancy and parenthood, new parents may wish to parent differently to their own. Through education and reflection this can happen successfully but at other times the parents may overcompensate and new struggles will arise.?

For example, a woman who has come from a “broken” family, desperately wants to keep her family unit intact, and yet the parents’ toxic relationship may create a different set of struggles for the children. Exploring these links can help clients understand where these sometimes rigid beliefs originate and allow them to make different, informed decisions.

Other considerations we may have when exploring life cycle patterns is whether there’s evidence of relationship enmeshment or withdrawal/ separations??

What are the other factors in the clients life that may influence their distress at the current moment??

Were there disruptions at this age of the life cycle in previous generations?

Want to learn how to use genograms effectively in therapy??

Join me on Thursday 8th?December 2022 at 12pm AEST for an online workshop on how to effectively use genograms in trauma-informed practice.?Book your spot here.

This article was first published at Lauren Keegan Psychology.

Further reading

1. 5 ways a genogram can help you understand your therapy client
2. Betty Carter and Monica McGoldrick,?The Expanded Family Life Cycle: Individual, family, and social perspectives (3rd?ed.).
3. Monica McGoldrick, Randy Gerson and Sueli Petry,?Genograms: Assessment and Treatment (4th?ed.)?