Family Resilience: Moving into the Third Wave

Family resilience has progressed through two waves and is poised for Wave 3. During Waves 1 and 2, family resilience perspectives were conceptualized, researched, and applied as a strengths-based approach focused on positive family adaptation despite significant risk using an integration of concepts from individual resilience, general systems perspectives on families, and family stress theory. For Wave 3, the authors advocate for increased consistency in terminology and present the family resilience model (FRM) within which existing models interface with family adaptive systems (meaning systems, emotion systems, control systems, maintenance systems, and family stress-response systems). The authors also argue for increased focus on trajectories and cascades, and enhanced prevention, intervention, and policy. The authors provide a hypothetical case study applying the FRM.