Resilience in Ethnic Family Systems: A Relational Theory for Research and Practice

Theory building and research on resilient family systems has evolved over time, beginning with family stress theory focused on factors that protected the family system from entering into a crisis. With the addition of the postcrisis recovery processes of adjustment and adaptation, the foundation of family resilience theory was established (for an overview of over 2 decades (1976–2003) of family systems theory building and research see Hansen and Johnson (1979), McCubbin and McCubbin (1996a, 1996b), Patterson (1988, 2002), and Walsh (1996, 2002, 2003)). With the rapid development of psychological theories and research on resilient children and adults, family scholars drew from these theories and research methods to advance their own body of work on ethnic family systems and their resilience. Research on ethnic family systems followed along the psychology-guided pathway with the inclusion of dimensions of ethnicity as categorical variables inserted in the equation to explain variability in the chosen indices of resilience. Consequently, the in-depth study of ethnicity in family systems and the advancement of a systems theory of resilience have been limited.