Contemporary Family Stressors

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The description of how contemporary family’s exhibit togetherness or dysfunctional characteristics could be explained with the understanding of how family stressors and family strengths work. If a family faced with many different life factors that ultimately cause them to have conflict on a daily basis or are they more focused on the strengths they have a family, causing them to be more united? These factors generally influence the structure of a contemporary family and how well the flow of living will go. Families, in a sense, can be compared to a circuit box. When majority of things go wrong, a circuit box overloads and becomes dysfunctional. However, when things are going good, the circuit box is active and working, similar to when a family …show more content…
To better identify family stress and provide a defined term for it, the demands in the family are commonly referred to as stressors. A stressor can be a life event or alteration that can happen in a family. Although they can often be negative as indicated by the key word of stressor being “stress”, they also can be positive, still causing a change in the family’s coping pattern. Examples of stressors could be an event like the birth of a child, death of a loved one, or divorce. Other stressors could be a hardship such as increased medical expenses because of an ill child. When hardships come due to money, increased irritation due to the restriction of not being able to provide for the family becomes apparent. (Kunz …show more content…
A. Wong, Y. Wong, and Obeng (2012) summarized the family strength theories given by 6 studies done on contemporary Asian-American families by scholars. The theories formed all have things in common such as communication, appreciation and respect. In addition, A. Wong, Y. Wong, and Obeng (2012) summarized previous research on cultural families and their strengths. In cultural families, they stated that by honoring the cultural components of an immigrant families' traditions that have helped parents from their mother raise their children well, they can show to have great ability to have great strengths as a family. However, despite their differences in approach, the studies of family strengths reinforce the idea that both family relationships and also family behaviors are important in the consideration of family