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Family stress is neither inherently positive nor negative; but rather an event (stress) initiating the need to change or respond (See Price, Bush, Price & McKenry, Chapter 1 in this Volume). The influence that a particular stressor (or pressure to change) has on a family system depends on a wide range of factors. These include, most importantly, the family’s perception of the stressor, the coping ability of individual members and the family system as a whole, access to resources both within the family system and external to the family, and characteristics of the stressor itself (Lavee, 2013; McCubbin & McCubbin, 2013).

As previously mentioned the family stress literature consists primarily of two broad components: (1) stressful events or experiences that families may have, and (2) how families respond to or cope with said experiences. This chapter will focus more on how families adapt or respond to stressful experiences, whether chronic or acute. The prevailing thought is that the more tools or resources that families have to adapt to stress the better off they are going to be. Mindfulness is one such tool at the disposal of families, and we will discuss here the research and theory that place mindfulness in the context of family stress literature. Moreover, our approach will show how mindfulness can fit into prominent family stress theories (ABC-X and AaBbCc-Xx; Hill, 1958; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983).