Tasks in religious development of spouses in the course of their lives. Developmental stages and developmental achievements

The main goal of the presented paper is to analyze developmental tasks in the aspect of religious development of married life as well as to indicate possible new developmental qualities occurring in the course of life of spouses, characteristic for particular stages of their family life. The following analysis is based on several basic assumptions. Religious development is understood as development of positive relationship with God (Walesa, 2005), while religiousness itself is understood personalistically (Zdybicka, 1993). The idea of developmental tasks was taken from the theory of Robert Havighurst (1981) and developed on one of the dimensions of social time, i.e. time determined by major life events such as marriage, parenthood, but also by major events of religious life, like religious education of children. At a given stage of religious development of a married couple, it is important to describe: (1) factors triggering development, (2) developmental achievements, (3) possible threats to religious development, (4) possible non-normative crises, not directly related to a particular stage, but often occurring and capable of mobilizing one or both spouses to religious development.