ELDER (when the needs and tasks of the Parent have been fulfilled or the youngest child reaches adult maturity):
An elder is a father or mother to his/her community. They are able to treat children who are not their own with the same unselfish care they learned to give to their own children.
PARENT (from birth of first child to when the youngest child becomes an adult)
The Goal of the Parent stage is to learn to give sacrificially with joy, without expecting to receive in return.
Anyone who has ever been a parent knows that this new stage requires all we learned in the earlier stages—infant, child, adult—and more. Welcome to the parent stage! Only a person who has mastered the first three stages will have the capacity to give sacrificially to an infant.
