ABSTRACT

Resilience has garnered extraordinary attention from researchers and in the popular culture over the past three decades (Gardner & Troupe, 2006; Liebenberg & Ungar, 2009; Luthar & Brown, 2007; Suskind, 2005; Tillman, 2000; Walsh, 2006) in part because it offers a message of hope about people who manage to overcome circumstances which, more often than not, are impediments to success. Resilience gained prominence as an early harbinger of the positive psychology movement, characterized by a focus on successful adaptation and thriving (Benard, 2004; Morrison, Brown, D’Incau, O’Farrell, & Furlong, 2006; Patterson, 2002). The concept of resilience originated as a model explaining successful life trajectories in vulnerable children raised in circumstances that commonly overwhelm normal development and impede desirable adult outcomes (Werner & Smith, 2001). By defi nition, high risk is a necessary context for resilience. That is, it does not describe typically developing children raised in warm, supportive, and intact middle-class families with no mental health problems. Rather the research is concerned with homeless children (Israel, Hernandez, & JozefowiczSimbeni, 2009; Obradović et al., 2009), survivors of wars and natural disasters (Elder & Clipp, 1989; Lawson & Thomas, 2007; Vogt & Tanner, 2007), children of parents with serious mental illness (Tebes, Kaufman, Adnopoz, & Racusin, 2001; Mowbray & Oyserman, 2003), individuals with life-threatening diseases (Becker & Newsom, 2005; Rabkin, Remien, Katoff, & Williams, 1993), children at-risk for academic failure (Finn & Rock, 1997; Waxman, Gray, & Padrón, 2002), and studies of children with and at-risk for both mild and severe disabilities (Guralnick, 1998; Morrison & Cosden, 1997; Msall, 2009). Resilience is a longitudinal

phenomenon; it manifests over time. Individuals and families that are not resilient at one stage of the lifecycle may attain it later or vice versa. The concept of resilience began as a study of individuals and has been transferred belatedly to the study of families as the unit of analysis. Werner and colleagues’ (Werner, Bierman, & French, 1971; Werner & Smith, 2001) classic study of the children of Kauai has followed children from high-risk family environments for 40 years from birth into middle age, fi nding that some individuals who were troubled in childhood and adolescence were able to right themselves well into their 30’s. With this long view researchers have identifi ed turning points which can occur well beyond childhood and adolescence. This line of research has identifi ed protective factors and risk factors including both characteristics of individuals and their social ecologies.