Supporting the Healthy Development of Strong Families

Families are faced with a variety of positive and negative challenges throughout the family life cycle. Many families who manage these challenges effectively typically possess nine components that contribute to their strength and resilience: communication, emotion regulation, family cohesion, family recreation and leisure time, financial management, prosocial family values, resilience, religiosity and spirituality, and routines and rituals. Further, strong and resilient military families possess a tenth component: military readiness. This report defines these ten key components for strong family functioning and reviews the importance of families acquiring, developing, and sustaining these ten key components. In addition, a framework for family behavior change is provided and the role of informal and formal networks in creating family changes is discussed. Lastly, an overview of the barriers families face with regard to help-seeking is presented as making familial cultural and behavioral changes can be difficult and often present challenges that need to be overcome.