The process of coping that involves using available resources and the parents’ perceptions are conceptually distinct phenomena but often are interrelated in reality for many circumstances. The types of coping responses that parents use can vary with the specific stressor or crisis that is faced (Hennon et al., 2007; Hennon et al., 2008). For example, parents who face serious financial stress that can add to parenting distress, are better prepared to deal with this circumstance when they maintain positive self-evaluations, beliefs in their own mastery, and abilities to take charge of and resolve their financial difficulties. Coping strategies for chronic economic problems include financial problem solving, receiving social support (e.g., from a relative or financial counselor), acceptance of the situation, positive thinking, finding supplemental employment, and seeking positive distractions at select times to manage the accumulation of parental stress (Dewar, 2016; Morse et al., 2014).
Several additional strategies for coping with parental stress, such as cognitive coping, can be found in the literature on parent–child relationships. Cognitive strategies include passive approaches like denial or avoidance, as well as active approaches involving positive reappraisal and problem-focused response strategies (Crnic et al., 2005; Crnic & Low, 2002; Dewar, 2016). Parents who face economic problems or children with mental health issues can cope (i.e., reduce their stress) through positive reframing, problem solving, clear communication, affective responsiveness, and behavioral control (Dewar, 2016; Morse et al., 2014). These “active” coping strategies are more successful for reducing stress and restoring constructive parental behaviors than are “passive” cognitions involving a fatalistic acceptance of one’s circumstances. Other coping strategies involve drawing on or orchestrating resources from the social environment, perhaps in the form of parent education, to learn more about high-quality parenting, child development, and how stress can be managed (Dewar, 2016; Hennon et al., 2007; Hennon et al., 2013).
Parents are more likely to become less stressed when they can become more capable of practicing better parenting through the actual use of social support that is available (DeHoff et al., 2016). Moreover, exposure to parent education that provides knowledge of child development, realistic expectations for the young, and the development of quality parenting skills can be effective means of coping. Subsequently, these parents are likely to be more capable of accessing resources, managing their responses, and developing the necessary social support networks to buffer stress levels and maintain high quality parenting (Hennon et al., 2007). Critical attributes for parental coping are the willingness and ability to take advantage of potential parenting resources and available social support (Hennon et al., 2013). For example, a single mother who is struggling to supervise a delinquent teenage son might gain assistance from her social network of parents, siblings, neighborhood friends, local social service agencies, online sources, and family life educators (DeHoff et al., 2016). Similarly, Tiffany is fortunate to have her aunt who not only provides emotional support and direct instrumental assistance through childcare, but also helps Tiffany to connect with community resources (e.g., parental groups, agencies, and online resources that specialize in autism). However, failure to actually use potential resources may occur if parent’s feelings of pride, embarrassment, personal responsibility or exhaustion become obstacles to making use of these supports.
Parental Adaptation
Family stress theory also identifies adaptation as another important recovery factor, which refers to the ability of parents and other family members to recover from stress and crisis. Recovery in the family system and parent–child relationships may occur either by eliminating relationship disruptions and returning to preexisting patterns or by moving to new levels of relationship organization and stability (Hill, 1949; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983). Recently, the concept of adaptation has been expanded to view the recovery process as family resilience, which involves thinking about the multiple ways that parents and families face hardships, express strengths, and use protective factors to keep growing and changing (Henry et al., 2015).
A prominent example of parental adaptation research is the work on the experiences of parents following marital separation or divorce (Braver & Lamb, 2013; Demo & Buehler, 2013; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 2002; Pedro-Carroll, 2011). Stress is a common experience for custodial mothers when role transitions are forced on them as ex-marital partners withdraw and become less involved in parental roles. Subsequently, many custodial mothers must shoulder new responsibilities as providers, build new support networks, and incorporate aspects of the father’s role into their parenting repertoires. Such changes often occur under difficult economic circumstances that contribute to psychological problems such as distress, anxiety, and depression. Subsequently, these negative mental health conditions place mothers at risk for declines in the quality of their performance as parents. During early phases of separation and divorce, custodial mothers who experience increased irritability and stress often become (a) less capable of monitoring children, (b) more permissive in their parenting, (c) more punitive in their parenting, and (d) more inclined to engage in coercive exchanges with children (Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 2002). Fortunately, the stressful circumstances for many of these mothers subside over time as they cope more effectively (Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 2002; Pedro-Carroll, 2011). A frequent outcome of a stressor or crisis initiated by divorce or separation is that parents eventually begin to define their situation as more manageable, actively cope more effectively to manage stress, and restore the quality of their child-rearing behavior approximately 1 to 2 years after the divorce stressor began (Braver & Lamb, 2013; Demo & Buehler, 2013; Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan, 2002; Pedro-Carroll, 2011).
Parental Definitions: Factor C
Family stress theory also proposes that events or phenomena by themselves do not create the actual experience of stress or crisis. Instead, parents and other family members impose subjective “definitions” or personal cognitive appraisals on their circumstances. These definitions are shaped, in part, by varied expectations for parenting that are prevalent within different cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic groups (Finegood et al. 2017; Jones et al., 2009; Marsiglio & Roy, 2013; Peterson & Bush, 2013). Consequently, the meanings that individuals and families assign to phenomena (the C factor) help to determine whether they experience stressor or crisis events in the form of positive, negative, or neutral definitions (Boss, 2002; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983; see Chapter 1).
Although the appraisals of each person or family are at least somewhat unique, a typology of appraisals has been developed based on general patterns that have been identified (Hennon et al., 2009). Benign appraisals, for example, signify that a stressor situation is not hazardous, whereas, challenges are demanding appraisals that may pose some difficulty but are likely to be handled appropriately. Appraisals classified as threatening, in turn, are circumstances having the potential to cause considerable harm or loss to the family, though such negative outcomes have not yet happened (e.g., growing financial difficulties that may lead to bankruptcy or a child’s first signs of disruptive behavior in school). If managed appropriately, threatening forms of appraisal can be avoided. If the threatening definition cannot be dealt with effectively, however, eventual harm can result for a family or parent–child relationship. Finally, a fourth category, harm/loss, represents situations appraised as having already damaged the family system. Such conditions may arise when the progression of a child’s cancer is found to be progressing more rapidly than expected or when a teenage son’s chronic delinquent behavior results in repeated periods of problematic behavior and incarceration.
The overall significance of appraisal categories