Project: Biobehavioral triadic dynamics of stress resilience transmission in families

2022-01-01 – 2025-12-31

Abstract

Resistance to stress and adversity is crucial because daily family life requires constant adaptation to changing challenging situations. This refers to resilience, which protects parents and children against the development of psychopathology. In light of this, there is an urge for research to underpin programs strengthening family resilience. We will study transmission of stress resilience between mother, father and child, to identify biobehavioral dynamics and factors contributing to resilience transmission in 500 families with children aged between 10 and 12 years. We start from the assumption that resilience transmission is a dynamic process whereby family members mutually affect each other’s capacity to recover from stressful events. We predict that resilience transmission is related to biobehavioral family factors such as matching versus discordant family (epi-)genetic and endocrinological profiles, and family climate. We will also investigate whether transmission is linked to biobehavioral synchrony between family members. This latter refers to spontaneous synchronization between parent and child social behavior, their physiology, and between physiology of one and behavior of the other when confronted with stressors. Studying biobehavioral synchrony in the context of resilience transmission is highly innovative. It can lead to scientific breakthroughs, expanding our understanding of resilience and strategies to support families’ resilience in the face of distress.