Short-Term Resilience Processes in the Family

Abstract

The authors review naturalistic studies of short-term processes that appear to promote resilience in children in the context of everyday family life and argue that warm and supportive family interactions foster resilience through their cumulative impact on children's emotional and physiological stress response systems. In the short-term, these family interactions promote the experience and expression of positive emotion and healthy patterns of diurnal cortisol. Over time, these internal resources - a propensity to experience positive emotion and a well-functioning hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis system -enhance a child's capacity to avoid, or limit, the deleterious effects of adversity. This article highlights naturalistic research methods that are well suited to the study of these short-term resilience processes and points to clinical applications of our conceptual and methodological approach.

Keywords: diurnal cortisol rhythm; naturalistic research methods; parent-child interaction; positive emotion; resilience.

Figure 1

Gears as a Metaphor for Illustrating the Links Between Daily Positive Family Interactions and Resilience Over the Long Term.