Needless to say, the majority of families, in spite of the extreme and even catastrophic hardships they may experience, endure. Most families survive.
Most families are resilient.
Yet in spite of this common sense understanding of families, we have very little research data substantiating the process and factors which come into play and which acting together shape a positive scenario for the families over the life course. Even as the adult members age and their resources, both physical and emotional, are taxed by the process of time, how they work together as a couple and as a family to work intergenerationally and within the family unit to overcome these hardships of life remains the target of our research. The Institute for the Study of Resiliency in Families is an endowed research unit designed to carry on this line of inquiry with the anticipation that we will shed light on those complex yet vitally important factors which families have, cultivate and develop and bring into play as part of the processes of functioning to allow the family to survive in the face of adversity and carry on with their development and tasks. Through several research grants, focusing on the families over the life course, the Institute and this investigator in particular have chosen to pursue this important line of inquiry focusing on the family system operating as a unit in an effort to understand the complex processes by which the family unit or in subsystems is able to negotiate the traumas of life and endure, survive and even thrive on life s unexpected life events. To date, the investigations have focused on the development of a conceptual framework to understand the family system properties of resiliency.