Resilience in Children and Families

This chapter discusses resilience, defined as positive adaptation despite previous exposure to adversity. Protective factors which contribute to children’s resilience may be located within the child, the parent, the child–parent relationship, and/or the environment, including the community. The role of relationships in the study of risks and resources in early childhood adaptive functioning is crucial. Relationships play a crucial role in resilience research, as they are associated with both positive and non-optimal adjustment patterns. Originally resilience referred to children, then it was broadened to the family unit, and now it is used to include the community level. Resilience focuses on strengths rather than on deficits, and assumes that families have the ability not only to survive difficult times, but perhaps even to thrive as they emerge from those experiences. The chapter includes an extended discussion of the complexities and challenges of research on family resilience and of research paradigms which have evolved to address these challenges. These include a number of sophisticated statistical approaches, and their strengths and limitations are indicated.