to explain the ways in which family members’ experiences of potentially stressful events may be linked to relational outcomes. In our application of Karney and Bradbury’s model, we treat everyday hassles as stressful events and explore how they interact with enduring vulnerabilities and adaptive processes to predict family well-being. In addition, the opportunities and constraints afforded by the ecological niches that family members inhabit are viewed as central to each element of the model, and we illustrate the adapted model in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1 Adapted Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model
Source: Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. N. (1995). The longitudinal course of marital quality and stability: A review of theory, method, and research. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 3–34.
At the most basic level of their model, Karney and Bradbury (1995) identified three elements that contribute to our understanding of the links between everyday hassles and family relationships. Adaptive processes, which play a central role in the model, are the ways in which individuals and families cope with everyday hassles. They are critical to our application of the model because they moderate the associations between daily hassles and family well-being. Family well-being and functioning changes as a function of the way family members behave in response to everyday hassles, and, in turn, family well-being can affect how family members appraise daily hassles. For example, some studies suggest that employed spouses and parents withdraw from family interaction following workdays characterized by interpersonal difficulties and high work demands (Repetti & Wood, 1997a; Schulz, Cowan, Cowan, & Brennan, 2004). This type of social withdrawal has short-term benefits, in that solitary time can rejuvenate spouses and parents and buffer children and partners from the transmission of negative emotions. Rejuvenated parents and protected children are then better able to deal with additional hassles as they unfold. However, the short-term benefits of emotional withdrawal for the individual and the family may be offset over time as repeated instances of withdrawal may erode feelings of closeness in the family, leading to negative interactions, resentment, and more hassles which ultimately decrease family functioning and overall well-being (Story & Repetti, 2006).
The model also proposes a reciprocal relationship between adaptive processes and daily hassles. The level of stress is partially determined by the number, severity, and centrality of daily hassles that the family and its members encounter (Almeida, Wethington et al., 2002; Randall & Bodenmann, 2009). Interpersonal tensions or arguments have been linked with both physical symptoms and psychological distress, whereas everyday hassles that disrupt daily routines, threaten physical health, or generate feelings of self-doubt are rated as highly psychologically distressing by adults (Almeida, 2004; Stawski et al., 2013). Furthermore, the manner in which family members deal with hassles can exacerbate or alleviate family stress. To put it simply, certain days, weeks, and months are better than others; some hassles are easier to manage than others; and some people cope with everyday hassles better than others (Almeida, 2004).
In a study of divorced single mothers, Hodgson, Dienhart, and Daly (2001) found that careful planning, scheduling, and multitasking were important coping strategies for mothers of young children. To the extent that the mothers in their study were able to navigate daily hassles, they maintained a sense of control over their family routines. For example,
I have a certain amount of minutes allotted to get in and out of the daycare center … then I have half an hour to get to work so I have it timed to about, I have like six minutes to get them in and out …. I can’t always, things don’t always go that way, smoothly, you know those six minutes to get him dropped off in the morning, I can’t guarantee that that happens five days a week, 52 weeks of the year…. if I didn’t leave the daycare right at the right minute then there’s a school bus that I follow all the way down [Highway] 21 … there was construction last fall on 21, you know, and there have been situations where I’ve forgotten things or (child) hasn’t settled into daycare…. He needed a few extra minutes of comforting…. I drop him off the minute it opens and the minute it closes is the minute I’m there to pick him up. (Hodgson et al., pp. 14–15)
This mother’s words illustrate that, as the model suggests, even with the most careful planning around rigid work and childcare schedules, chance events (e.g., bad weather, road construction, forgetfulness, an upset child) can lead to unanticipated hassles, disrupted plans, and the need for additional adaptation. For single mothers with young children, backup plans and the anticipation of the unexpected are essential coping strategies for dealing with daily hassles.
A family’s ability to adapt to daily hassles is also influenced by the enduring vulnerabilities that the family and its members possess. Karney and Bradbury (1995) defined enduring vulnerabilities as family members’ relatively stable intrapersonal characteristics (e.g., personality, child temperament) and family background variables (e.g., structural and behavioral patterns in family of origin). In her seminal research using daily diary methods, Repetti and colleagues (e.g., Repetti & Wood, 1997a) documented that the extent to which parents are able to refrain from engaging in negative interaction with their children following high-stress depends, in part, on the parents’ own general level of psychological functioning. Using mood data collected at the end of study participants’ workdays as well as self-report and observational data collected in the first few minutes of mother–child interaction at a work-site childcare center, Repetti and Wood found that mothers with higher levels of type A behaviors, depression, and anxiety were more likely than other mothers to engage in aversive interactions with their preschoolers on days during which they had experienced either overloads or negative interpersonal interactions at work. Such enduring vulnerabilities can both contribute to family members’ appraisals of daily hassles and affect how they adapt to those hassles.
In the VSA model, adaptive processes are hypothesized to be positively associated with family well-being; that is, families and their members function better to the extent that they deal with daily hassles in constructive ways. In addition, the model proposes an inverse association between family well-being and enduring vulnerabilities and family well-being and daily hassles. High levels of enduring vulnerabilities and daily hassles are linked with low levels of family well-being. However, adaptive processes are expected to moderate this link in such a way that families with average levels of enduring vulnerabilities and daily hassles have lower levels of family well-being when adaptive processes are poor and higher levels of family well-being when adaptive processes are average or good.
A strength of the VSA model is that it provides an integrative framework that scholars can apply to gain a better understanding of everyday hassles and family stress. The components of the applied model—daily hassles, enduring vulnerabilities, and adaptive processes—and the general paths in the model can help us understand the complex and reciprocal processes operating among the model’s components. The model is limited by its inattention to the ecological niches and sociocultural characteristics that families and their members inhabit, which leads it to ignore the potential variability that may exist in model paths based on between- and within-family differences. For example, contemporary American families are likely to work evenings, nights, rotating hours, or weekends, and some have access to workplace policies, such as telecommuting and flextime that may enhance their ability to manage everyday hassles (Berg, Kossek, Misra, & Belman, 2014). However, low-income families are disproportionately more likely to work nonstandard shifts with little access to family-supportive workplace policies than their high-income counterparts who are disproportionately more likely to utilize and have access to these policies and also the associated gains to well-being (Mills & Täht, 2010). Though some parents may organize nonstandard shift work to reduce daily hassles (e.g., working opposite shifts to allow one parent to be home with the children), constraints created by a work schedule that is “out of sync” with family life and compounded by limited financial resources pose significant challenges for managing everyday hassles:
We interviewed Betty Jones, a low-income solo African American mother who worked the late afternoon and evening shift as a custodian