Human Development

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Human Development

• Pastoral Care in the
• Human Life Cycle

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Development A Biblical Perspective

• When I was a child, I talked like a child, I
  thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
  When I became a man, I put childish ways behind
  me. (I Cor. 1311)
• Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings
  about Christ and go on to maturity . . . . And
  God permitting, we will do so. (Heb. 61a, 3)
• Train a child in the way he should go, and when
  he is old he will not turn from it. (Prov. 226)

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Communicating the Gospel at the Point of Need
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Faith Development

• James Fowler identifies a series of distinct,
  identifiable stages which characterize the way
  that people make meaning of life. He treats
  faith as a generic human phenomenon, though he
  acknowledges Christian faith as a modification of
  meaning-making toward God. Describes one
  pre-stage and six stages in the sequence of faith
  development.

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Fowlers Stages of Faith Development

• Adopts a structuralist-developmental view using
  important concepts from
• Erik Erikson (psychosocial development)
• Jean Piaget (cognitive development)
• Lawrence Kohlberg (moral development)
• Paul Tillich (theologian)
• Richard Niebuhr (theologian)

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Basis of Fowlers Stages

• Stages are constructed based upon the
  inter-relationships of seven aspects
• Form of Logic
• Role-taking
• Form of Moral Judgment
• Bounds of Social Awareness
• Locus of Authority
• Form of World Coherence
• Symbolic Functioning

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Fowlers Stages of Faith Development 2

• Pre-stage - infancy undifferentiated faith
• Stage 1 - Intuitive-Projective faith
• Stage 2 - Mythic-Literal faith
• Stage 3 - Synthetic-Conventional faith
• Stage 4 - Individuative-Reflective faith
• Stage 5 - Conjunctive faith
• Stage 6 - Universalizing faith

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Temp Sparkmans Faith Development Perspective
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Temp Sparkmans Faith Development Perspective 3
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Temp Sparkmans Faith Development Perspective 4
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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory 1

• Based upon
• organismic (active) view of human beings
• developmental (rooted in genetics pattern
  capacity for growth) view of biology
• structural (active, subjective transformation and
  construction of ones understanding of the world)
  view of human intelligence

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory 2

• Sensori-motor Stage (0-2 yrs) object permanence
  develops
• Pre-operational Stage (2-7 yrs) egocentrism,
  classification conservation problems, animism
• Concrete Operations Stage (7-12 yrs) good
  conservation operations, unable to deal with most
  abstract concepts
• Formal Operations Stage (11-12 yrs) adult
  reasoning, can think abstractly

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Erik Eriksons Psychosocial Developmental Theory

• Epigenetic - first the blade, then the ear, then
  the full corn shall appear (Mk. 428) Kingdom
  of God - plan, process
• Involves a major psychosocial crisis in the
  course of development both as the social sphere
  widens and physical/mental maturation occurs
• Each stage has pos./neg. outcome no crisis ever
  completely solved perennial themes
• Eriks son

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Everybody Rides the Carousel

• Video

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Family Life Cycle Stages

• 1) Leaving Home
• 2) Joining Families through Marriage
• 3) Families with Young Children
• 4) Families with Adolescents
• 5) Launching Children Moving On
• 6) Families in Later Life

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Family Life Cycle
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Marital Life Cycle

• Marital Satisfaction is typically
• Highest prior to birth of children
• Lowest for husbands while children are
  adolescents
• Lowest for wives just after empty nest but before
  retirement
• These are descriptive, not prescriptive!!
• 85 divorce rate among couples who have had a
  child to die.

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Family Systems Theory

• Sees and responds to problems within the context
  of the larger system
• Does not remove individual accountability and
  responsibility
• Considers that the presenting problem may be a
  symptom of a system problem (marital or family
  system)

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Step Families

• The Struggle to Be

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Definitions

• A stepfamily is a household in which there is an
  adult couple, at least one of whom has a child by
  a previous relationship. Sixty-five percent of
  stepfamilies resulting from divorce have children
  living with their biological mother.
• Step - comes from the old English steop
  meaning orphaned or bereaved.

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How Stepfamilies Are Formed

• Up until about the 20th century, the primary
  reason for the creation of a stepfamily was the
  death of a parent.
• Today, the number one reason is divorce.
• Loss grief are inherent in both.
• Stepfamilies create relationships in which a
  parent is related to a child only by marriage,
  not by blood.

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Virginia Rutter, Lessons from Stepfamiles,
Psychology Today, 27 (3), May-June 1994, 30.

• In 2000, stepfamilies will outnumber all other
  family types
• Stepfamilies experience most of their troubles in
  the first two years
• What trips up stepkids is not the stepfamily per
  se, but parental conflict left over from the
  first marriage (lack of time attention from
  parents)
• 80 no long-term behavior problems compared to
  90 in first marriage families

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Basic Differences in SF Structure 1

• The Family Begins after Many Losses Changes
• Both Adults Children Come Together with
  Incongruent Individual, Marital, Family Life
  Cycles
• Children Adults All Have Expectations from
  Previous Families
• Parent-Child Relationships Predate the New Couple
  Relationship
• There is a Biological Parent in Another Household
  or in Memory

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Basic Differences in SF Structure 2

• Children Often Are Members of Two Households
• There Is Little or No Legal Relationship Between
  Stepparents and Stepchildren
• Dealing with these structural differences
  requires that certain tasks be accomplished for
  satisfactory family integration to occur.

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Stepfamily Integration Tasks

• Dealing with Losses Changes
• Negotiate Different Developmental Needs
• Establish New Traditions
• Developing a Strong Couple Bond
• Forming New Relationships
• Creating a Parent Coalition
• Accepting Continual Shifts in Household
  Composition
• Risking Involvement Despite Little Support from
  Society

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Integration TimeframeVisher Visher, 49.
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Most Common Areas of SF Difficulty Usually
Created by External Structural Characteristics

• Change Loss
• Unrealistic Beliefs or Expectations
• Insiders/Outsiders
• Life-Cycle Discrepancies
• Loyalty Conflicts
• Boundary Problems
• Power Issues
• Closeness/Distance

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Typical Problem Areas

• Divided Loyalty - child to parents child to
  stepparent grandparents too parent to
  child/stepchild spouse to spouse.
• Discipline of Children/Stepchildren
• Financial Dilemmas - support insurance college
  tuition estate problems
• Differing Places Along the Life Cycle
• Relating to strangers

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