Читать книгу Families & Change - Группа авторов - Страница 12

Christine A. Price, Kevin R. Bush, Sharon J. Price, and Patrick C. McKenry

Families increasingly experience a wide variety of stressors associated with both positive and negative events. Industrialization, urbanization, increased population density (e.g., housing, traffic, demand on infrastructures), community violence, threats of terrorism, advances in technology (e.g., e-mails, texts, social media), financial challenges, and everyday hassles (e.g., errands, commuting, appointments) are frequently identified as making daily life more complicated and impersonal. Family roles are more fluid than the past, resulting in fewer social norms and a lack of support. Families have become more diverse as a result of changing family structures (e.g, divorce, single-parent families, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer-parent families, custodial grandfamilies, remarriage, cohabitation, intergenerational reciprocity), immigration, economics (e.g., increased cost of living and two earner families), geographic mobility, and other macro level factors. In addition to natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes) and societal stressors (e.g., discrimination based on race, religious beliefs, gender, and sexual orientation), U.S. families are facing the reality of wars involving American troops overseas, the threat of nuclear attack, and the reality of an ever-changing, and often divisive, political landscape. Additionally, contemporary families are still experiencing economic insecurity and stress due to the Great Recession and the associated economic downturn in the global economy (see Bartholomae & Fox, Chapter 11 in this volume). Sobering financial losses in pensions, investments, and savings accounts, employment instability, income volatility, and rising unsecured debt contribute to the financial struggle of individuals and families. Consider the accumulation of these events and it quickly becomes apparent that stress is a part of everyday life.

Families often face many unique problems, not because of one identifiable crisis, event, or situation, but because of continuous everyday societal change. Technology, for example, has enhanced everyday life in many ways but it has also brought about an increasingly overextended population that is bombarded with ongoing tweets, texts, and work-related demands. From an economic standpoint, members of the younger generation, in many families, are struggling with an increase in cost of living and overwhelming debt as they establish their independence. They are also faced with the reality that their life experiences may involve fewer opportunities and resources as compared to their parents and grandparents. At the same time, due to medical advancements improving longevity and quality of life as we age, a demographic of adult children is faced with the undefined responsibilities of caregiving for their elders. Finally, the fluidity of family structures requires most families deal with cumulative, and sometime coinciding structural transitions during the life course (Teachman, Tedrow, & Kim, 2013; Walsh, 2013b).

All families experience stress as a result of change or pressure to change, whether or not change is “good” or “bad.” The impact of change or the pressure to change depends on the family’s perception of the situation as well as their coping abilities (Boss, 2013; Lavee, 2013; McCubbin & McCubbin, 2013). Boss (1988, 2002) defines family stress as pressure or tension on the status quo—a disturbance of the family’s steady state. Life transitions and events often provide an essential condition for psychological development, and family stress is perceived as inevitable and normal or even desirable since people and, therefore, families, must develop, mature, and change over time. With change comes disturbance in the family system and pressure, what is termed stress (Boss, 2002; Boss, Bryant, & Mancini, 2017; Lavee, 2013). Changes affecting families also occur externally (e.g., unemployment, natural disasters, war, acts of terrorism), and these also create stress in family systems. This instability becomes problematic only when the degree of stress in a family system reaches a level at which family members becomes dissatisfied or show symptoms of decreased functioning (i.e., ability to carry out regular routines and interactions that maintain stability).