Research in focus – A series of reflections on research conducted at SFU Paris
Today, we invite you to a short but thought-provoking read based on the article published by Viola Sallay, Tamas Martos and Petra Simon-Zámbori at the official journal of the National Council on Family Relations : PATTERNS OF BONDING AND COPING IN COUPLES RAISING CHILDREN WITH ATYPICAL AND TYPICAL DEVELOPMENT
Is a diagnosis a “family sentence”?
What makes families respond differently to the same experience? Do typical families necessarily have better relationships?
The announcement of atypical development in a child is often automatically seen as a “sentence” that is paid by the entire family. Carrying the weight of difficulty and uncertainty, the experience of receiving such news can bring increased demands, changes in family routines and, sometimes, strain on the couple’s relationship.
But the diagnosis itself does not determine the family’s future. What if couples who resist the “temptation of divorce” as a way out can nevertheless find their own “happy ending”? What makes this possible? And, perhaps just as importantly, do families raising atypically developing children necessarily experience more difficulties than those raising typically developing children?
A recent study, co-led by Petra Simon-Zámbori, Prof. Viola Sallay and Prof. Tamas Martos, invites us to look at family functioning from a different perspective. Instead of looking separately at maternal parenting, paternal parenting, marital satisfaction and parental stress, the research analyses the combination of these elements by focusing on two key concepts: dyadic coping and parental bonding. The first relates to the capacity of one partner to support, communicate with, listen to and help the other. The second brings us to the twofold dimension of parental care and parental overprotection. Once these relational and emotional dimensions were mapped across families, including those raising typically developing children and those raising atypically developing children, the researchers identified four distinct profiles of family functioning, ranging from more resilient to more vulnerable patterns.
The result? Were the more resilient families those that did not carry the weight and stigma often associated with raising a child with atypical development? Not quite. The “vulnerable” profile was not composed exclusively of families raising children with atypical development; it included both families of children with typical and atypical development. This suggests that the diagnosis alone does not tell the whole story. How couples communicate, how they organize roles and responsibilities, the social support available to them, and how they cope, both individually and as a couple, all contribute to the way the family functions as a system.
This perspective is particularly important when we think about professional practice. Understanding a child with typical or atypical development also means paying attention to the relationships surrounding them and to the family as a whole, as a living system. The child’s experience cannot be separated from that of the parents, the couple and the relationships within the family. Taking this broader view may help professionals better understand what allows families to develop more adaptive and resilient ways of functioning. It also invites us to shift the question from “What does a diagnosis do to a family?” to “What do families do with the challenges they face?”, recognizing that these challenges are not necessarily defined by diagnosis alone, but are part of the broader experience of parenting and family.
Read the full article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fare.70035
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fare.70035