Family Resilience
entry by Julie M. Marx, Global Family Expert at Expat Valley
The capacity of a family system to withstand, adapt to, and grow through significant adversity and stress, including the disruptions of repeated international relocation. Family resilience is understood as a systemic property (residing in the relationships, communication patterns, and shared belief systems of the family unit) rather than merely the aggregate of individual family members’ resilience.
Comparable terms
Family adaptability (family systems research — related; emphasizes flexibility in roles and rules) · Family cohesion (family systems research — the relational closeness dimension of family functioning) · Family coping (clinical, research — the behavioral strategies families deploy under stress) · Relational resilience (clinical — emphasizes the interpersonal dimension of resilience)
Why this matters
Focusing on the “expatriate family” rather than just the assignee reframes who the stakeholder is. Family adjustment strongly predicts assignment outcomes and retention. It also highlights that there is no single “typical” family configuration in global mobility.
Cross-references
Resilience (Wellbeing & Mental Health); Expatriate Family (Family Dynamics); Spousal Adjustment (Family Dynamics); Moveable Family (Family Dynamics); Social Network Building (Family Dynamics); Anticipatory Socialization (Family Dynamics); TCF (Family Dynamics). The moveable family entry describes the positive family outcome that high family resilience produces; social network building is one of the most effective behavioral interventions for strengthening it. Anticipatory socialization is the pre-departure process that builds family resilience before a move; TCF describes the cross-cultural family identity that resilient internationally mobile families typically develop across multiple postings.
Sources
Walsh, F. (2006). Strengthening Family Resilience (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. The foundational clinical text on family resilience as a systemic construct, providing the three-domain framework — belief systems, organizational patterns, and communication processes — most widely used in research and practice.
Research consistently demonstrates that families with a supportive internal climate, good communication, and a shared positive orientation toward the international assignment experience significantly more successful adjustment across all family members, with healthy partner relationships identified as the central organizing factor. Caligiuri, P.M., Hyland, M., Joshi, A. & Bross, A. (1998). Testing a theoretical model for examining the relationship between family adjustment and expatriates’ work adjustment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(4), 598–614.
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