Most families face a number of common challenges.  Children get older.  Adults switch jobs or retire.  Families are reshaped by birth, adoption, marriage, divorce, sickness, and death.  Families move to different communities.  Family relationships are most likely to remain healthy and strong if family members adapt to these changes.  The development of a stable family pattern is necessary to deal with all the things a family must face, decide, and accomplish in daily life.  But a family must also be able to adapt to new needs and circumstances.  Families must deal with developmental changes within their family as well as with situations outside the family that can be stressful or potentially damaging.  A family that is structured and flexible rather than rigid and chaotic is likely to most adaptable. 

Family strengths influence a family’s ability to respond to a variety of stressors (e.g., accord, celebrations, communication, financial management, hardiness, health, leisure, personality, support network, time and routines, and traditions).  Family adaptability involves issues of leadership, negotiation, discipline, rules, and roles.  Families whose response style reflects extremes (rigid or chaotic) vs. balance (structured or flexible) tend to have difficulty adapting to change and therefore experience more dysfunction during stressful times (Olson, Russell & Sprenkle, 1989).  Often, events are not stressful in themselves, but resultant stress is a product of a family’s perception of the events in conjunction with their family  resources (i.e., both internal and external; emotional and material capacities). 

Adaptability is a major component element in Olson’s Circumplex Model.  In fact, much of Olson’s research is focused on a family’s ability to overcome stress and crises.  Olson (1989) defines adaptability as “the ability of a marital or family system to change its power structure, role relationships and relationship rules in response to situational and developmental stress” (p. 12).  Olson hypothesizes that when family members are satisfied with family dynamics, they function effectively.  Further Olson et al.’s (1989) research indicates that family require different levels of adaptability as they progress through different events in the life cycle (e.g., birth, school, adolescence). 

McCubbin et al. (1996) utilize the Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment and Adaptation to explain  how families negotiate change and stressful life events.  McCubbin et al. note that in major crisis situations, a family often adapts by instituting changes in the family’s pattern of functioning, legitimating changes through modifications with family schema, paradigms, meanings and situational appraisal, and by changes in the family’s relationship with the outside world.  This process is directed at reestablishing a satisfactory and growth-producing level of harmony and balance within the family. 

Component elements  

The following family behaviors serve as examples for developing more specific outcome objectives based on the critical component elements of Adaptability.  Family members exhibit adaptability when they: 

 

	Effectively manage everyday stress
	Effectively manage unpredictable stress

 
Definition 
 
Families who exhibit “adaptability” are able to manage both everyday and unpredictable stress (Krysan, Moore & Zill, 1990). 
 

Brief summary with application to State Strengthening Projects 

Families can be strengthened by helping them build their personal resources.  Some of these important resources are intangible, but vital to the families ability to achieve harmony and balance.  McCubbin (1996) has identified eight categories of these personal resources: 

 1.  The innate intelligence of family members 
 2.  Knowledge and skills acquired from education, training and experience 
 3.  Personality traits 
 4.  Physical, spiritual and emotional health of family members 
 5.  A sense of mastery (i.e., the belief that one has some control over life 
      circumstances) 
 6.  Self-esteem 
 7.  Sense of coherence 
 8.  Ethnic identity and cultural background of the family 
 
State strengthening projects focusing on family strengths can appropriately address one or several of these personal resource categories when seeking to increase adaptability of families. 
 
References 
 
Krysan, M., Moore, K. A., Jill, N.  (1990). Identifying successful families: An overview of constructs and selected measures. Washington, DC: Child Trends, Inc. 

        McCubbin, Hamilton I., Thompson, Anne I & McCubbin, Marilyn A. (1996)  Family assessment: Resiliency, coping and adaptation.  Madison:  University of Wisconsin Publishers. 

        Olson, D. H., Russell, C. S., & Sprenkle, D. H. (1989).  Circumplex model:  Systemic assessment and treatment of families.  New York:  Haworth Press. 
 

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