CH 10 SF Book Notes - Models of Family Stress and Coping PDF

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Models of Family Stress and Coping...

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CH 10: Models of Family Stress and Coping Family stressors: the “discrete life events or transitions that have an impact upon the family unit and produce, or have the potential to produce,change in the family social system” Family stress: the response of the family to the stressors; it involves the tensions that family members experience as a result of the stressor ● Family experiences stress when they do not have the requisite variety of rules to meet the challenges of certain stressors ● They do not have the means to handle the change that is necessitated by the stressor while still fulfilling their basic goals and functions Types of Family Stressors ● Normative family stressors ○ Involves those changes or progressions in family life that occur for most families, usually coming with the passage of time ○ Ex. marriage, birth of the first child, death of an elderly member ○ Viewed as ubiquitous in that they occur in most families ● Non Normative family stressors ○ Difficult to foresee ○ Ex. serious illness of a child, divorce ○ Do not occur in every family ○ Often experienced as traumatic for family members ● Both normative and non normative stressors contribute to morphogenesis ○ Morphogenesis: the tendency of a family to develop and change over time ● During periods of relative calm, families also experience morphostasis ○ Morphostasis: the tendency to remain at a steady state, or follow the status quo ● Two distinct dimensions to family stressors (Adams 1975) ○ How temporary vs permanent the family stressor is ○ The voluntary vs involuntary nature of family stressors ■ Voluntary stressors carry with them more personal responsibility and blame that can create considerable mental anguish for family members ● More recent theory of family stress conceptualizes stress as occurring at one of three different levels of abstraction (Burr & Klein 1994) ○ Based their conceptualization of different levels of stress on group theory and the theory of logic types ■ Group theory: explains how change can occur within a system that as a whole stays constant ■ The theory of logical types: explains how members experience a metamorphosis whereby they move from one logical level to a higher one ○ Level I stress: causes the family to cope by changing its role expectations or rules

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If changes are effective at handling the stressor, the family is assumed to enter into a period of recovery as they gain mastery over the stressor ■ Ex. birth of a child ■ When level I processes are unsuccessful, the family is in a more difficult situation, characterized as level II stress Level II stress: rearranging rules or making simple changes in roles is not sufficient to allow the family to effectively deal with the stressor ■ Family must make more fundamental changes, usually in their approach to relating to each other ■ Ex. instead of just assuming that the parents’ rules and intentions will be automatically followed, they may need to reconsider how they relate to the child or come up with adverse consequences Level III stress: the experience of this level stress causes the family to question its most basic assumptions, and the very fabric of the family in trouble ■ Family’s most basic orientation and philosophy of life must be examined, and often changed or discarded ■ Ex. child gets involved with criminal activity, parents may have to psychologically relinquish at least part of their relationship with and emotional connection to their child in order to cope with the stressor ■ Have to deal with the fundamental questions of whether people are good or bad, their spiritual beliefs, and how much emotional distance between family members is necessary and desirable

Models of Family Stress The ABC-X Model ● Developed and described by Hill (1949) as part of the stress of separation and reunion following WWII research ● A Factor: stressful events or situations ○ Stressful event: “an occurrence that provokes a variable amount of change in the family system” ○ Stressful event is focused on change ○ Underlying assumption is that anything that alters the status quo has the potential to produce stress ● B Factor: family resources ○ Resources are traits, abilities, and qualities of individual family members, the family system, and the greater community in which the family is embedded that can be used to address the demands imposed by the event or situation ○ Resources may act as a buffer against the potentially negative consequences of stressful events ○ Some families may lack resources, lack of resources can create vulnerability to stress ● C Factor: Family Perception ○ Their appraisal, assessment, or definition of the event or situation

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How people appraise life events and situations is strongly tied to how stressed they are in response to those situations ○ Families that cope best with stressful events are those who are able to recast or reframe the event in a positive light ○ ^This allows families to ■ Clarify issues, hardships, and tasks and render them more manageable ■ Decrease the intensity of emotional burden created by the event ■ Encourage members to carry on with the family’s fundamental tasks ○ Like resources, positive appraisals can buffer against the ill effects associated with potentially stressful events ● X Factor: stress and crisis ○ Thought to be a product of the event, the family’s resources, and the family’s perceptions of the event ○ The family’s stress experience is their reaction or response to the event or situation (filtered through their resources and perceptions) ○ Stress and crisis are two different types of reaction to challenging events and situations ■ Crisis: an overwhelming disturbance in the family’s equilibrium that involves severe pressure on and incapacitation of the family system ○ When a family is in a state of crisis, they are in genuine disorder and unable to function normally or effectively ○ Customary roles and routines are often abandoned and boundaries are dramatically changed when a family is in crisis ○ Stress denotes a change in the family’s steady state, stress is a continuous variable The Double ABC-X Model ● ABC-X Model refined by McCubbin and Patterson (1982) in recognition of the fact that family stress unfolds over time, and that families develop new perceptions and new resources after they initially experience an event or situation ● Model is divided into pre crisis and post crisis stages ○ Post crisis factors were included to better explain how and why families adapt to the stressful situation once its encountered ● Stressor Pileup (aA) ○ Several types of stressors that contribute to stress pileup in the family ■ Initial stressor event ■ Family life changes ■ Consequences of family coping ○ Family stressors rarely occur in isolation and that the pileup of stressor has a major impact on family outcomes ● Existing and New Resources (bB) ○ Two types of family resources ■ Family’s existing resources at the time of the initial stressor

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Coping resources: personal, family, or social resources that are developed or strengthened in response to the initial stressor ○ Ideally, the family’s post crisis resources will be factors that help to minimize the negative effects of the stressful event or situation while allowing the family to effectively adapt to this new challenge in their lives ● Perception (cC) ○ Family’s perception of: ■ The initial stressor event ■ The stress/crisis produced by that event, as well as any stress pileup that followed ○ The double C factor in this model is an explicit recognition of the fact that perceptions are not static, they evolve and change overtime ● Family Crisis and Adaptation (xX) ○ The family’s ultimate adaptation to the crisis ○ Adaptation: “the process of stimulus regulation, environmental control, and balancing to achieve a level of functioning, which preserves family unity and enhances family system and member growth and development” ○ The x factor in the post crisis stage is a continuum ○ The family’s degree of adaptation can range from maladaptation on the low end to bonadaptation on the higher end ○ A family in the state of maladaptation is in a crisis ○ A family in the state of bonadaptation is probably functioning better after the stressor than before ● Additional concepts in the model ○ Vulnerability and regenerative power are useful for understanding how families defend themselves against a crisis and how they recover from a crisis ■ Vulnerability: the family's ability to prevent stressors from creating a crisis situation ■ Regenerative power: the family’s ability to bounce back and recover from a crisis ○ Research on the double model has highlighted the role of boundary ambiguity ■ Boundary ambiguity: occurs when family members are unsure about who is in or out of the system and who occupies the roles The Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response Model ● The FAAR model focuses on how the family maintains a balanced level of functioning based on its resources and coping behaviors as it confronts various stressors ● Model starts out with the assumption that all families must confront and meet certain demands ○ Can be stressors or strains ○ Demands can pile up ● The family’s capabilities offsets the burdens of demands ○ Includes resources and coping behaviors ● Patterson argues that family coping can address demands by seeking to

○ Directly reduce the number or intensity of demands ○ Allow for the acquisition of additional resources ○ Maintain existing resources ○ Manage tension with ongoing strains ○ Reappraise the meaning of a situation to make it more tolerable ● The combo of demands and capabilities influences the meanings that the family assigns to their situation ○ Almost identical to the perception/C factor in the Double ABC-X Model ○ Family meanings are thought to exist at both the situational and global level ● The FAAR model also assumes that the family goes through an adjustment phase where there are stable patterns of family elimination (getting rid of demand) or assimilation (accepting the demand) ○ During the crisis phase, families are in the thick of dealing with demands for which their current interaction patterns and capabilities are not sufficient ● Model presumes that families eventually end up in an adaptation phase where they work to restore balance to their system Olson’s Systems Model of Family Stress ● Families need to adjust their adaptability and cohesion in response to both situational stressors and ordinary progressions through the family life cycle ● Predicts that families will first draw on internal resources before using external resources to manage family stress The Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model of Marriage ● Proposed by Karney and Bradbury (1995) ● Specific to marital subsystem ● Model assumes that marital partners have pre existing vulnerabilities that color husbands’ and wives’ reactions to stress ● Model assumes that the presence of stress affects the stability and satisfaction of the marriage ● Stressful events are assumed to have an impact on adaptive processes in the marriage (path A) ○ Adaptive processes: those behaviors that spouses exchange, such as positive communication and problem solving, that allow them to adjust their roles within the marriage and to cope with challenges that they encounter ○ Experience of stress can have a negative influence on these processes ● Model assumes that spouses bring with them certain backgrounds or enduring vulnerabilities that influence both adaptive processes (path B) and the experience of stressful events (path C) ○ Enduring vulnerabilities: backgrounds and traits that husbands and wives bring into their marriage ● Model assumes that adaptive processes will influence the likelihood of encountering stressful events (path E) ● Adaptive processes are seen as proximal and reciprocal causes of marital quality (paths F and G)

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Marital quality: the couple’s overall evaluation of and satisfaction with their marriage Marital stability (path H): the duration of the marriage Model has proven to be a useful tool for predicting the course and trajectory or newlywed marriages, and marital communication appears to be an important adaptive process Research shows that one of the problems associated w many neg personality traits (enduring vulnerabilities) is that they are associated w a number of destructive communication practices, or lack of functional practices (adaptive processes) that in turn corrode marital quality and lessen marital stability

Family Coping With Stress ● Family coping involves the active strategies and behaviors that families enact in order to manage and adapt to stressful situations ● Effective family coping behaviors are thought to decrease vulnerabilities to stressors ● Family coping strategies can strengthen or maintain family resources such as cohesiveness, organization, and adaptability ● Effective coping in the family can reduce or eliminate stressor events and their negative consequences ● Family coping behaviors may actively alter the environment by changing social circumstances surrounding the stressor and its experience Taxonomies of Family Coping Strategies ● Eight basic strategies that families use to cope with stress (Plutchik & Plutchik, 1990) ○ Mapping: coping with a problem by try8ing to obtain more info about it ○ Avoidance: coping by removing the family members from situations that produce the stressor ○ Help-seeking: asking for help from other family members, neighbors,m coworkers, or experts ○ Minimizations: attempt to cope by psychologically reducing the importance, significance, or seriousness of the stressor ○ Reversal: act the exact opposite of how they feel ○ Blame: try to make themselves feel good by assigning responsibility for the problem to other people or external factors ○ Substitution: families employ indirect methods to solve a problem ■ Ex. family members who feel stressed out by jobs and school will often take a vacation ○ Improving shortcomings: a technique that families use when they carefully consider how they contributed to the stressor and then try to improve aspects of their lives in order to deal with the stressor and prevent its recurrence ● Seven highly abstract strategies that emerged from research on family coping (Burr & Klein, 1994) ○ Cognitive ○ Emotional ○ Relationships

○ Communication ○ Community ○ Spiritual ○ Individual development ● At least three ways that family coping strategies can actually be a source of stress ○ Some coping strategies may indirectly damage the family system ○ Some strategies cause direct harm to the family system ○ Some mechanisms create further stress be interfering with the adaptive behaviors that could enhance the family’s wellbeing ● As families cope with stressors they encounter, they directly and indirectly teach coping mechanisms to their children ○ Coaching: parents directly instruct their children on how to handle the various problems they encounter ○ Modeling: children pick up behaviors from parents by observing Family Coping and Stress Appraisal ● Primary appraisal: the assessment of stressors and the degree to which they are threatening ● Secondary appraisal: assessment of coping resources for dealing with those stressors ● Family coping strategies are effective when they alter primary appraisals by removing the stressor and/or making it seem less threatening, or when they alter secondary appraisals by enhancing perceptions of family members’ ability to handle the stressor ● Ventilation coping strategy Communal Coping ● Communal coping: when families cope with problems together as a unit ○ Refers to appraising and acting on a problem in the context of a relationship by pooling resources and efforts to address the problem ● “Our” problem vs “my” problem ● Three main components ○ Communal coping orientation: the belief that the family must join together in order to effectively address the problem ○ Communication about the stressor ○ Cooperative action: family members collaborate to develop strategies and enact remedies to deal with the stressor ● Communal coping is generally associated with positive outcomes for families dealing with stressors Family Social Support ● Social support is one of the most important and fundamental forms of family communication ● It could be argued that a primary function of the family is to provide social support to its members ● Availability of social support significantly enhances people’s general wellbeing and happiness in addition to their ability to withstand a variety of major stressors

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People who lack available social support appear to be at risk for developing a range of physical and mental health problems Enacted through interpersonal communication and sometimes through instrumental behaviors Buffering Model (Cohen & Willis, 1985): social support mitigates the ill effects of stress by reducing the appraised threat and reducing the stress response that typically follows physical or psychological threat Main Effect Model: involvement in caring relationships provides a generalized source of positive affect, self worth, and belonging that keeps psychological despair at a minimum In the family context most acts of social support could be classified into one of three general categories ○ Emotional support: the availability of a family member with whom one can discuss problems, concerns, and feelings ○ Instrumental support: offered when a family member provides assistance with various tasks ■ Ex. ride to school, help with chores ○ Informational support: give guidance, feedback, and resource information that is helpful in addressing a problem ■ Parents often do this for children Among adults, family social support is positively associated with life satisfaction, health, and positive mood Children who do not receive very much social support from their families are more harmful to others, uncooperative, withdrawn, and exhibit higher levels of hopelessness Among high school students, low levels of support are associated with a substantial increase in alcohol use There are numerous pathways between family social support and positive outcomes ○ Reduce negative effect ○ Promote health-protective behavior ○ Promote positive effect...