Family Stress Management: A Contextual Approach

Why do some families survive stressful situations while others fall apart? Can a family’s beliefs and values be used as a predictor of vulnerability to stress? And most importantly, can family stress be prevented?

The Third Edition of Family Stress Management continues its original commitment to recognize both the external and internal contexts in which distressed families find themselves. With its hallmark Contextual Model of Family Stress (CMFS), the Third Edition provides practitioners and researchers with a useful framework to understand and help distressed individuals, couples, and families. The example of a universal stressor―a death in the family―highlights cultural differences in ways of coping. Throughout, there is new emphasis on diversity and the nuances of family stress management―such as ambiguous loss―plus new discussions on family resilience and community as resources for support.

Pauline Boss, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota; a Fellow in the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR), the American Psychological Association, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. She was visiting professor at Harvard Medical School (1994–95) and the Moses Professor at Hunter School of Social Work (2004–2005). She is former president of NCFR and a family therapist in private practice. In 1988, Dr. Boss wrote the first edition of Family Stress Management with a subsequent edition in 2002. For the third edition, she invited Chalandra Bryant and Jay Mancini to be her co-authors. Each edition has considerably advanced the Contextual Model of Family Stress.

            With groundbreaking work as scientist-practitioner, Dr. Boss is the principal theorist in the study of family stress from ambiguous loss, a term she coined. Since then, she has researched various types of ambiguous loss, summarizing her work in the widely acclaimed book, Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (Harvard University Press, 1999). In addition, Loss, Trauma, and Resilience (Norton, 2006), presents six therapeutic guidelines for treatment when loss is complicated by ambiguity. These guidelines are based on her years of work with families of the physically missing during the Vietnam War, after 9/11, and in Kosovo, as well as in clinical work as a family therapist. For families, Dr. Boss wrote the book, Loving Someone Who Has Dementia (Jossey-Bass, 2011), which outlines strategies for managing the ongoing stress and grief while caring for someone who is both here and not here, physically present but psychologically absent. For more information, see her website, www.ambiguousloss.com.

Chalandra M. Bryant is currently a professor of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Georgia (UGA) where she teaches courses in family development, intimate relationships, and family theories. Before moving to Georgia, she served as a faculty member at Iowa State University (1998-2003) and the Pennsylvania State University (2003-2010). Her research focuses on close relationships and the ability to sustain close intimate ties. She is particularly interested in the manner in which social, familial, economic, and psychosocial factors are linked to marital and health outcomes. After earning her PhD at the University of Texas, she completed a two-year National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) post-doctoral fellowship. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Family Theory and Review. The International Association for Relationship Research presented her with the New Contributions Award (honoring significant contributions to personal relationships research) in 2002. In 2004 she received the National Council on Family Relation’s Reuben Hill Research and Theory Award (presented for an outstanding research article in a family journal). In 2005 she received the Outstanding Young Professional Award from the Texas Exes Alumni Association of the University of Texas. In 2015 she was recognized as a Faculty Member Who Contributed Greatly to Career Development of UGA Students. Her favorite hobby is hiking. Her nature photographs have been published in a hiking guide.   

Jay A. Mancini is the Haltiwanger Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Georgia and Emeritus Professor of Human Development at Virginia Tech. Mancini was the 2013 Ambiguous Loss Visiting Scholar at the University of Minnesota. He received his doctoral degree in child development and family relations from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Mancini is a Fellow of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). His theorizing and research focuses on the intersections of vulnerability and resilience, and over his career, his research projects have focused on families and time-use, family gerontology, psychological well-being in adulthood, sustainability of community-based programs for at-risk families, community context effects on families, and quality of life among military families.