Family Stress

Why do some families survive stressful situations while others fall apart? Can a family's beliefs and values be used as a predictor of vulnerability to stress? And most importantly, can family stress be prevented? In this Second Edition, Pauline Boss continues to explore both the larger context surrounding families and stress and the inner context, which includes perceptions and meanings. The author emphasizes the need for a more general contextual model of family stress that may be applicable to a wider diversity of people and families as well as a wider variety of stresses and crises than other models. The goal is to provide a framework for students and professionals engaged in helping families learn how to manage their stress.

The Third Edition of Family Stress Management by Pauline Boss, Chalandra M. Bryant, and Jay A. Mancini continues its original commitment to recognize both the external and internal contexts in which distressed families find themselves. With its hallmark Contextual Model of Family Stress (CMFS), the Third Edition provides practitioners and researchers with a useful framework to understand and help distressed individuals, couples, and families. The example of a universal stressor—a death in the family—highlights cultural differences in ways of coping. Throughout, there is new emphasis on diversity and the nuances of family stress management—such as ambiguous loss—plus new discussions on family resilience and community as resources for support.

The first comprehensive text on stress and crisis management specifically tailored to courses focusing on the family Organized by stress model, this book helps readers understand the relationships among models, research, crisis prevention, and crisis management with individuals and families. Providing a balance of theory, research, hands-on applications, and intervention strategies, this innovative text presents a comprehensive overview of the field. Intended Audience Individual and Family Stress and Crises is ideal as a core text for upper division undergraduate and graduate students in courses such as Family Crisis, Family Stress & Coping, and Dysfunctions in Marriage & Family.

The authors reexamine the theoretical literature in search of a better way of understanding stress and its management in families setting aside traditional positivist notions in favor of a family systems paradigm that allows them to view stress as a multifaceted phenomenon with multiple causes and coping strategies. Using a series of qualitative an.

An informative anthology of recent theory and research developments pertinent to family stress.

Provides an overview of the causes and treatment approaches for counseling families under stress, and focuses on several examples of extreme tension.

In spite of the increase in stress-coping research, little is known about how stress is actually perceived by children in the family setting. This is due in part to the real difficulties involved in collecting data on children's subjective experiences. In addition, what we currently know about children's stress and coping has traditionally derived from adult reporters, rather than from the children themselves. Filling a gap in the literature, this volume explores theoretical and methodological issues related to the study of children and families in general, and to stress-coping phenomena from the child's perspective in particular. The book challenges traditional deference to adult assessment of stress and coping among children by drawing data from both parents and children, revealing significant contrasts between the two. Through open-ended, qualitative measures of children's diaries and drawings, the book offers a glimpse into the inner world of the child and gives scholarly expression to the fact that children can, and readily will, articulate needs and perceptions if given an appropriate vehicle. The book's well-documented chapters discuss traditional approaches to stress and coping, implications for current child and family study, specific needs related to the study of children within the family, and implications for theory and methods. Taxonomies of children's stressors, coping responses, and coping resources are drawn from the data and examined in detail. The book concludes with suggestions for future research and clinical practice. Providing fascinating insight into children's actual experience of stress and coping, this volume lays the groundwork for ongoing research, scholarship, and therapeutic practice. Academicians, practitioners, and graduate students in family studies, child development, psychology, and nursing will find this book invaluable in shedding light on the often overlooked culture of children.

This book is aimed at practitioners working with couples and families dealing with the impact of a traumatic/stressful event, with chapters considering events such as the loss of a child, infertility in a couple, sexual abuse of a partner, traumatization of a parent, traumatization of a child, impact of a homicide, and the impact of health problems of aging parents. Therapists are continually faced with these issues in their practices, and cases involving these situations are often among the most intense and emotionally demanding that they will confront. One of the supports a therapist can have available when confronted with such a situation is a practical guide to effective intervention. This book would provide the practitioner with just that -- a hands-on, practical guide that deals with how to appropriately respond to each specific stressor that is outlined in the book. Because each chapter is devoted to a different stressor, the practitioner is able to easily reference the desired material, in order to anticipate relevant issues, and plan for an intervention that will be based on the solid experience these authors will bring to the book.