Читать книгу Families & Change - Группа авторов - Страница 40

The area of family stress includes many components, but central in the study, understanding, and explanation of the scholarship on family stress is how families respond to stress and stressors. This chapter focuses on the role of mindfulness, one of several contemplative practices, in how families and their members respond (or react) to stress and stressors. We approach this chapter with a discussion of the current family science literature on stress and coping (or change) followed by an introduction to mindfulness. We then bring this discussion to life by providing two case studies highlighting how mindfulness practices can be an effective tool to help families cope with stress and stressors.

Key to this discussion is the effectiveness of the tool, mindfulness in this case. All families face stress, and thus, have to respond to that stress (or stressors) in some way or another. What matters is the effectiveness of the tool being tried. We hope to make a case for the value of mindfulness as a tool to help families best adapt to changing environments. First, we review some models for understanding family stress.