Family Crisis

I’ve been doing some research into the causes and results of crises within a family. This topic is really interesting to me because it seems to be a really big struggle for a lot of people. Whether struggles experienced as a child or struggles experienced in the family you’ve raised, they all seem to have a pretty big effect on the overall happiness of the family unit and can ultimately tear a family apart or strengthen a family. I’d like to cover the different aspects of family crises to hopefully help all of you prepare to handle these challenges within your own family. To do so, I want to cover, first, the different types of crises or stressor events that can occur in life, and then I’d like to talk about how we can address those stressors in a healthy and constructive way to strengthen our families.

To help understand and analyze the different stressors and the different responses that can be associated with them, I’d like to present what is called the ABCX family crisis model. This was developed by Robert Hill to try and account for the differences in responses to stress among different families. (A) is the stressor event itself. (B) is the management of the stress through coping resources that the family has. (C) is the way the family defines the event. (X) is the interaction of these three which is the crisis.

In order to help you see how to use this model I will use an example. 2 different families have experienced the loss of a loved one (A). The first family is grieved by the loss, but they choose to believe that the person is in a better place and they want to honor them by living their best lives (B). They see this loss as a necessary part of life that happens to everyone (C). These reactions do not result in a crisis (X). However, for family two, they are grieved by the loss and decide to give up hope for the future, by turning to drugs and alcohol (B). They view this event as an “end of the world” event (C). This results in a crisis (X). You can use this model in your own life to see how you are responding to stressor events and try to prevent leading it into a crisis.

There are many different kinds of stressor events. The book “Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy” lists the different stressors in pairs. Internal and External, Normative and Nonnormative, Ambiguous and Nonambiguous, Volitional and Nonvolitional, Chronic and Acute, Cumulative and Isolated. You can try to look at past stressor events that have happened in your life and categorize them in one of these areas and use the ABCX model to analyze your response. This can help you understand and prepare for similar events in the future.

One of the most common stressor events in families is abuse. Abuse comes in many forms such as neglect (the most common form), physical abuse, sexual abuse, phycological abuse, and medical neglect. A study found that 90% of parents in the study admitted to having used some form of psychological aggression on their children by the time they were 2 years old. This statistic shocked me when I first saw it. It really puts into perspective how big of a problem abuse is in the home. The effects of abuse on children can be life changing. They include a greater likelihood of running away from home and living on the streets, behavior problems at home and at school, higher levels of anger and aggression, lower intellectual and academic development, emotional problems, including anxiety, depression, and thoughts of, and attempts at, suicide, abuse of alcohol and other drugs, problems of low self-esteem, health problems, including higher rates of chronic diseases, feelings of isolation, difficulty in trusting others, difficulty in forming meaningful intimate relationships, and lower levels of intimacy in the relationships, generalized unhappiness. 

After seeing all of the research on family crises and especially their effects on children, I have such a strong desire to avoid such crises in my own family and now I have a little more knowledge to help me do so. I hope I have inspired all of you to analyze your own families and work to avoid crises and further build upon your family relationships.