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Stressors or stressor events (the A factor) consist of occurrences that may be of sufficient magnitude to bring about changes within the larger family system, the parent–child subsystem and feelings of tension by parents (Boss, 2014). However, because many stressful circumstances do not occur for parents as discrete events, the general term stressor is now preferred. This distinction is important because parents may be dealing with circumstances that develop gradually over an extended time period and multiple stressors can accumulate to gradually determine the overall level of parental stress (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983; Rich, 2017).

Although a stressor has the potential to evoke systemic change and psychological responses, the occurrences that challenge parent–child relationships do not inevitably lead to the onset of stress. Stressors may threaten the status quo of families and parent–child relationships, but they are not solely responsible for fostering stress by imposing demands on individuals (e.g., parents) and relationships. By themselves, stressors (a) do not have all the necessary ingredients (i.e., the B factor, resources, and the C factor, definitions) for parental stress, (b) have no inherent positive or negative qualities, and (c) may never immobilize the parent–child relationship and bring about individual stress by parents. Instead, stressors are undefined phenomena that are capable of only applying pressures that range from developing dramatically to unfolding gradually. Rather than always being major disruptions, many stressors are of mild to moderate strength that can accumulate and “pile up” over time (Buehler, & Gerard, 2013; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983; Patterson, 2002).

Despite the fact that stressors have no inherent meaning, scholars have developed classification systems to identify common ways that parents and families tend to define and respond to them (Allen, 2017). A number of stressors often receive fairly common individual definitions that fit approximately into the categories of a classification system. Most classification systems include three common categories: normative stressors, nonnormative stressors, and chronic stressors. An important caution to keep in mind, however, is that specific stressors do not always fit exclusively within a single category, which means that any classification system inherently has imperfections.