Family Resilience

Anju Aggarwal
Professor Richard Grunfeld
Conflict in the Family I
27 September 2011
In the 21st century high divorce rates compounded with economic and political uncertainty, are leading many families confronted by challenges (Walsh 27).   This paper will review the essential factors that allow some families to forge through a crisis while others crumble.
Boss and Mulligan describe family resilience as, “the path a family follows as it adapts and prospers in the face of stress, both in the present and over time” (65).   According to Walsh the key to family resilience lays in a family’s belief system, organizational pattern, and communication processes (26).
Belief systems consist of values, attitudes, convictions, and biases that facilitate decision making and direct action in families (Walsh 50).   Walsh emphasises three important aspects of family belief systems: making meaning out of adversity, a positive outlook, and spirituality or transcendence (26). Resilient families have the ability to view the painful event as manageable and meaningful, something they can gain insight from (Walsh 55).   Resilient families also maintain an optimistic view by seeing the positive in the situation. The family acknowledges that there was tragedy but something constructive came out of it.   Some families are able to find strength by turning to religion. Walsh maintains that, “transcendent beliefs offer clarity about our lives and solace in distress; they render unexpected events less threatening and foster acceptance of situations that cannot be changed” (Walsh 72). In other words, religion can help families during hardships by providing comfort and healing.
The second factor associated with resilience is a family’s organizational pattern.   This includes a family’s degree of flexibility and connectedness, as well the number of social resources available to the family.   Families with flexibility have the capacity of “bouncing forward, rebounding and reorganizing adaptively to...