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ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the emerging challenges and resilience of families in later life, grounded in a developmental family systems perspective. It examines salient issues with retirement and financial security; grandparenthood; caregiving with chronic illness; and end-of-life challenges and the loss of loved ones. Core principles in a family resilience framework are presented. Clinical guidelines and case illustrations are offered to address common challenges and to encourage the potential for personal and relational well-being and growth in intimate, companionate, and intergenerational bonds.
THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONAL RESOURCES FOR RESILIENCE
Most resilience research and practice have focused on individual strengths in overcoming adversity. Notably, the positive influence of significant relationships has stood out across many studies (Walsh, 2003). Individuals' resilience is nurtured in bonds with others who are invested in their well-being, believe in their potential, support their best efforts, and encourage them to make the most of their lives. For resilience in later life, relational resources are especially important to counter stereotyped expectations of aging as inevitable decline and despair.
A family systems orientation considers the broad network of relationships, identifying and recruiting potential resources for resilience in the immediate and extended family. In fostering the resilience of aging family members, positive contributions might be made by siblings, adult children and godchildren, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren, even former spouses, and other informal kin and close friends. Even in troubled families, "relational lifelines" for resilience can be found.
A Family Resilience Framework
Beyond seeing individual family members as potential resources for older adult resilience, the concept of family resilience focuses on the family as a functional unit. Family resilience can be defined as the ability of families to withstand and rebound from disruptive life challenges, emerging strengthened and more resourceful (Walsh, 2003, 2006). Family resilience involves dynamic transactional processes that foster positive adaptation.
Major stressors or cumulative stress can derail family functioning, with ripple effects throughout the system. The family response is crucial: key processes for resilience enable the family to be proactive, rally in response to crisis, buffer stress, reduce the risk of dysfunction, and support optimal adaptation. For instance, how a family prepares for an anticipated loss, manages disruption, effectively reorganizes, and reinvests in life pursuits will influence the immediate and long-term adaptation...