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A number of issues related to individual and family life are studied as they vary across stages of the family life cycle. Strong relationships are found between stages in the family life cycle and a number of such issues. Further analysis which seeks to determine the manifest dimensions of the family life cycle indicates that the major empirically important dimensions qf the family life cycle are the presence qf children and length of marriage. Finally, it is shown that relationships which exist between many family life variables and stages in the family life cycle disappear when the effect of length of marriage is removed from the relationships. It is suggested that the applicability qf family life cycle analysis could be considerably extended by recognition of the crucial empirical importance of the length of marriage and the simple presence or absence of children.
Steven L. Nock (1979) studied this question.