ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the theoretical framework for understanding resilience and pertinent research that highlights individual and family factors essential to resilience in families living with a loved one who has an intellectual or developmental disability (IDD). Initial efforts to uncover resilience characteristics began with research into individual resilience. The findings of individual resilience studies are not always easily generalized and are somewhat limited in scope. Hence, family resilience, and more specifically, parental resilience research was born. Subsequent studies have identified resilience as a set of characteristics possessed by families and others describe it as a flexible process. An ecological framework is crucial to understand parent and family resilience in any future research or clinical support models. The interaction of the family, the parents, and the children within the meso-system, the exo-system, and the macro-system gives a complete, contextualized portrait of the family as a unit and the circumstances it interfaces with daily.
