Family Wellbeing

Child and Family Perspectives: Theory and Practice

"Family well being is influenced by the interplay between children's development needs, parenting capacity and wider family and environmental factors" (O' Doherty, 2013: 322).

This essay will focus on the concept on how family well being is influenced by the interplay between children's development needs, parenting capacity and wider family and environmental factors in relation to families with adolescences. It will explore how each domain contributes to the well-being of family. This essay will also explore theoretical perspectives to family well- being. It will ultimately examine how the three domains promotes family well being.

"Family well-being is promoted

The study of human development is mostly the study of change (Cote et al., 2002; Fukuda & Ishihara, 1997; Waller et al., 1995) and in order to understand it, we need to study the change that children undergoes beginning in the womb, through the post-natal period and continuing throughout childhood. Human development is a pattern of change in people's lives that everybody undergoes including children right from conception through the span of life (Hewstone, Stroebe, and Jones, 2007). These are the changes that adolescents go through. Development includes changes in human growth which are readily observable and measurable. Theses changes are fast-moving and enable children to support their own body weight, to move around in a variety of ways, to manipulate, and build and

Erikson saw identity formation as the hallmark of adolescence. This is also an important aspect that a child needs to develop because they have to know who they actually are and that each person is different in order for them to flourish in life. Erickson theory emphasises on the contribution of social life to identity formation (Lalor et al., 2007). He defines identity as a "subjective sense of invigorating sameness and continuity" with different components: a sense of wholeness achieved through the synthesising functions of the ego, a sense of solidarity with the ideals of some group that in turn affirms a person's own identity and a feeling of inner sameness and continuity over time (Lalor et al.,