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Unit 10. Cohesiveness, Adaptation and Resilience

Family cohesion is a dynamic and collaborative process that depends primarily on individual members’ commitment and understanding of their socio-familial responsibilities to make the family a unified and harmoniously functioning unit in society.

2. What are the features of Indian families that affect cohesion?

Features of Indian families that affect cohesion are:

• its structure, 
• functions of individual members, 
• emotional closeness that they experience and 
• sensitivity to others’ needs.

3. What are some of the barriers to family cohesion?

Barriers to family cohesion can be:

• unequal distribution of resources,
• discrimination among members, 
• insufficient appreciation of their roles and
• inappropriate perception of rights and duties by individual members.

4. What are conflicts? Mention the types of conflicts.

Conflicts are the undesirable effects or implications of a problem or an issue that needs to be resolved.

Conflicts could be chronic or episodic in nature - they could take place on repeated, intermittent basis or spontaneously, in episodes due to some sudden turn of events.

5. How are chronic conflicts different from episodic conflicts?

Chronic conflicts:

• keep re-occurring and remain largely unresolved. 
• They are predictable, multiply everyday stress and can turn into serious issues within the family.
• Unless individual members resolve to sort it out, there is limited scope for individual reflection in chronic conflicts.

On the other hand, episodic conflicts:

• are circumstantial. 
• They occur because there is a change in familial or individual circumstances.
• They can change (for better or worse) with time or can become chronic.
• Individual members can reflect on the changes in the family circumstances that surround the conflict and deal with them effectively.

6. What are some strategies to resolve family conflicts effectively?

Some strategies to resolve conflicts are:

• keeping communication channels open, 
• creating an atmosphere of trust and belongingness, 
• evaluating situations and opinions objectively and 
• creating realistic and achievable alternatives.

7. What is resilience?

Resilience refers to the capacity to withstand stressful and challenging circumstances and essentially operates within the individual. 

Resilience can also be explained as the capacity of individuals to ‘stretch’ themselves or their qualities in response to stressful situations, without breaking up or damaging their physical and mental health.

8. What is adaptation?

Adaptation is a conscious, reactionary process enabling the individual to acclimatize with changes and new circumstances in the environment so that they can either sustain previously used behaviours or devise newer, more efficient behaviours to successfully deal with environmental challenges.

Adaptation is essentially an intra-psychic process, but when applied to families, many individual members (together) may need to adapt to unfamiliar situations that affect them.

9. How are the processes of family cohesion, adaptation and resilience interrelated?

10. With the help of examples, explain which factors influence cohesion and adaptation.

11. What could happen if families or individuals lack resilience? How can these families or individuals be helped to adapt or build their capacities to be resilient?

12. Identify factors in families which contribute to conflicts / disagreements. With the help of examples, explain how families can resolve some conflicts.

13. Identify resources in your locality which can help families in difficult circumstances.