In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Introduction to This MPQ Special Issue
  • Julie Wargo Aikins (bio) and Hilary Horn Ratner (bio)

The concept of resilience has been of particular interest to social scientists and practitioners, given the observation that children developing in adverse circumstances demonstrate a range of outcomes. Stress and adverse life events are well known to pose serious risks for child and adolescent development, yet not all youth facing difficult life circumstances exhibit negative outcomes; many demonstrate competence and optimal psychosocial adjustment in the face of numerous challenges (Harrison-Hale, McLoyd, & Smedley, 2004; Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000). Understanding which children might recover or under what circumstances positive development occurs even in the context of difficult beginnings is not only intriguing to researchers but also speaks to the possibilities for change.

Garmezy, a pioneer in resilience theory in the 1970s, was influenced by Bleuler’s (1978) research that demonstrated positive social and occupational outcomes for some children whose mothers had schizophrenia. Garmezy (1974, 1985) went on to study other contexts of risk, including poverty and prejudice, and noted across many of the studies of the time that resilience was a process attributable to the interaction between the characteristics of the person, their environments, situations, and events rather than a static trait of the child. In this sense, whereas some stressors are significant [End Page 1] and may be exacerbated by children’s biological predispositions, family environments, and broader social contexts, these factors may also serve to mitigate risk and potentiate more positive outcomes. Trailblazing research over the next several decades focused on children across a variety of challenging contexts—for example, Isle of Wight (Rutter, 1979; Rutter, Cox, Tupling, Berger & Yule, 1975) Kauai studies (Werner & Smith, 1982); and children growing up during war (Fields, 1977; Zuckerman-Bareli, 1982)— and all pointed to the importance of personal dispositions, nurturing family relationships, and supportive and significant relationships with competent and prosocial adults in promoting positive outcomes.

This emphasis on multiple and nested contextual spheres of influences reflects Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1986, 2000, 2004; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998), as well as Cicchetti’s integrative ecological–transactional model (Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993), in both of which is an exchange between the individuals and their environments. Ungar, Ghazinour, and Richter (2013) integrate models of resilience with Bronfenbrenner’s approach and emphasize that individuals’ ability to secure psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources enhances their likelihood of achieving positive developmental outcomes (i.e., resilience). From this perspective, understanding resilience requires considering the resources that individuals bring to situations of adversity, as well as their ability to garner further resources through their interactions with the environments in which they are embedded, potentially promoting more positive adaptation. As such, these considerations span both contextually proximal and distal levels of influence and interaction. The articles within this special issue emphasize interactions, highlighting primarily the role of the microsystemic contexts in the interplay between families and children in contributing to more positive adjustment during early development. Whereas microsystemic family processes have been well studied across a number of risks—for example, maltreatment (Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993), young maternal age (Easterbrooks, Chaudhuri, Bartlett, & Copeman, 2011), and socioeconomic risk (Rutter, 1979)—and protective factors—for example, cohesion (Pianta & Walsh, 1998), and adaptability and parenting effectiveness (Black & Lobo, 2008)—the articles in this special issue extend what is known about resilience in two important ways: (a) by conceptualizing family relationships as particularly salient moderators of risk during the developmental period of early childhood (i.e., infancy through the preschool years) and (b) by considering how joint constructions of regulation reflect the interactions between individuals and their family that in turn support resilience. [End Page 2]

Although resilience research to date has identified multiple proximal and distal levels of supports (e.g., individual, family, and community) and has provided many examples of how these manifest across situations of risk, placing this work within a developmental framework may be key for understanding when and which systems are central and optimally mobilized when trying to temper outcomes of adversity. Perhaps, there are prime developmental periods in which one system is more likely to catalyze change than another. For instance, given the salience of parent–child relationships during early childhood, the...

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