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ABC‐X Model of Family Stress and Coping

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DOI: 10.1002/9781119085621.wbefs313

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ABC-X Model of Family
Stress and Coping
MICHAEL ROSINO
University of Connecticut, USA
The ABC-X model of family stress and
coping, developed by Reuben Hill, is a
framework for analyzing the factors that
determine the relationship between stressful
events and crises within families. The pioneer-
ing studies that influenced the development
of this model were undertaken by Hill
(1949; 1958) in the context of the potentially
disruptive effects of World War II and the
Great Depression on family structures in
order to explain differences in the abilities
of families to remain intact and functional
when faced with the stresses of social and
economic changes. Noting that stressful
events may or may not result in crises, Hill
posed that families can mitigate the nega-
tive effects of stressors on family well-being
and functioning with the proper available
resources and definitions of the situation.
The development of the ABC-X model
was influenced by the emergence of concepts
such as “family resilience,” which suggests
that families may come out better after suc-
cessfully facing hardships, increased study
of the role of religion in family life, and the
social contexts of war and economic disaster.
The model uses social systems theory and
insights from family sociological research in
its framework and approach. In this model,
the family unit is seen as a system that must
maintain equilibrium in order to function
and provide adequate material and emotional
resources to its members. The stressor event
creates a disturbance of family equilibrium
such that the family system must somehow
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies, First Edition. Edited by Constance L. Shehan.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781119085621.wbefs313
reestablish equilibrium in order to avoid
dysfunction. The family system can also be
conceptualized as a social group or orga-
nization with specific functions. According
to Burr (1982, 7), “the family system is an
organization consisting of intricately related
social positions that have complex sets of
roles and norms.”
The existence of family dysfunction
presents a crisis situation for families. In
other words, crisis occurs in families when,
due to the stress of a change or event, they
fail to provide such functions as socializa-
tion, reproduction, resource sharing, and
emotional support (Burr 1982). The family
system contains inputs and outputs that
are represented by the specific variables in
the ABC-X model. The exogenous variables
include (A) the specific stressor event, (B)
the family’s available resources, and (C)
perceptions of the event. The endogenous
variable (X) of the ABC-X model is the degree
to which the stressor precipitates a crisis to
the extent that a family can no longer remain
intact and functional.
Variable A of the ABC-X model represents
the stressor or stressful situation or event
faced by a family. A stressor can be any
change in a family’s social context or norms
including those with both positive and
negative aspects, such as an occupational
change that entails both an increase in
monetary resources and increased time and
energy demands. Any new situation or event
that requires substantial adjustments can
be a cause of stress for individual family
members, relationships within the family, or
the family system as a whole. Family stressors
ordinarily consist of occupational, housing,
health status, or relationship changes. In the
ABC-X model, stressors are seen as changes
2 AB C- X MODEL OF FAM I LY STR ESS AN D C OPI NG
that may precipitate a crisis. While Hill’s
original ABC-X model defines stressor events
as situations that occur outside the family,
the definition has since been expanded to
consider that stressors include both internal
and external events for families such as an
illness, disability, or substance abuse problem.
Different stressors affect families in different
ways. According to Burr and Klein (1994),
both the qualitative and quantitative char-
acteristics of the stressor itself influence the
amount of change and potential stress that it
imposes upon a family.
Variable B of the ABC-X model describes
the resources available to a family, which can
help it evade crisis when facing a stressor.
Without access to the appropriate resources,
families are more likely to experience crisis
when encountering a stressor. According to
Hill (1958), coping resources are internal to
the family itself and relate to the values of
the family and the nature of its relationships.
Individual-level psychological resources such
as self-esteem and familial resources such as
family integration and mutual adaptability
can enable families to cope with stressor
events. Moreover, available resources can also
include a family’s material resources such
as wealth and assets that allow families to
evade financial strain and are fungible for
access to other resources. While Hill’s model
concentrates only on the family itself as a
closed system, further development of the
ABC-X model has enabled researchers and
theorists to place the family system within
the wider context of other social systems and
institutions (Burr 1982; Boss 1988).
The addition of social contexts to the
ABC-X model allows for the inclusion of
stress-meeting resources that are external
to the family. According to the updated
ABC-X model proposed by Burr (1982),
family resources can be provided by the
wider community and society, specific family
members, or the family as a whole. Thus, not
only individual psychological and familial
characteristics but also multilevel character-
istics (individual, familial, and communal)
determine the adequacy of families to meet
the demands of a problematic situation. A
family’s embeddedness within a community
and the amount of resources existent therein
thus help to explain why some families who
lack internal resources may still ameliorate
a stressor and thwart potential crisis. Fur-
ther building on this conception, Burr and
Klein (1994) propose specific types of family
resources including cognitive, emotional,
community, and spiritual resources as well
as relationships and individual development.
The development of a typology of resources
has helped researchers to better encapsulate
the full array of potential resources that fam-
ilies may have access to and thus use more
accurate models for explaining the process of
coping with a stressor and avoiding crisis.
Along with the existing coping resources
available to a family, it is also their collective
and individual meaning-making processes
that influence whether a stressor results in a
family crisis. Variable C describes a family’s
perceptions or definitions of a stressful sit-
uation or event. According to Hill (1958),
the perceptions of a stressor held by a family
can create a self-fulfilling prophecy such
that families that define stressors as crises
are more likely to experience a crisis than
those who do not define stressors as crises.
The perception of a stressor event as crisis
inducing can effectively paralyze families.
Families that negatively define a stressor may
become overwhelmed by stress and negative
psychological states such as depression and
anxiety, which decrease individual and family
well-being and functioning. Deriving pos-
itive or nonproblematic meaning from the
situation of a stressor through interpretation
or redefinition enables families to avoid both
negative psychological states and ultimately
crisis.
 AB C- X MODEL OF FAM I LY STR ESS AN D C OPI NG
Further, pragmatic and proactive percep-
tions of stressful situations and events enable
families to focus on dealing with the cause
of stress rather than the stress itself. In the
ABC-X model developed by Burr (1982), the
family’s perception of the stressor relies on
factors such as each family member’s position
within the family, relationships within the
family, and each individual’s influence in
the process of collective meaning-making in
response to a stressor. Overt power dynamics
within families, which can emerge along the
lines of such factors as family roles and gen-
der, thus complicate the ability of individual
members to participate in the family’s over-
all process of interpretation. The collective
meaning-making process entails assigning
blame for the stress experienced by the family
toward either an internal or external source
such as a change in situational context.
Assigning blame to an internal source such
as an individual family member can lead
to increased conflict and resentment, while
assigning blame for the stressor to an external
source outside the family can help to allow
families to deal with the stressor itself.
A family’s available stressor-meeting
resources and perceptions of the stressor
event interact to determine a family’s sus-
ceptibility and adaptability to stress arising
from a stressor event. Variable X in the model
thus represents the amount of crisis that
occurs as an outcome of the stressor event’s
interaction with a family’s available resources
and perceptions of the stressor. For families
with adequate resources and perceptions, a
stressor may not create any crisis at all. A
crisis occurs when the family, due to a lack of
appropriate available resources and inability
to functionally define the stressor, fails to
cope with the stressor, causing dysfunction,
disorganization, or disruption. According
to Burr (1982), crises can vary in their type
and effects on families in terms of the types
3
of functions that families no longer pro-
vide, such as material resources, emotional
support, or parenting and socialization of
children. Another way of conceptualizing
crisis is that it occurs when families are
immobilized by the perception of stress and
lack of resources (Boss 1988).
The ABC-X model has been highly influ-
ential in many academic and occupational
fields dealing with families such as sociology,
psychology, social work, and family coun-
seling. Though it has been reformulated and
refined by subsequent research and theoreti-
cal development to include social context and
postcrisis adaptation (Burr 1982; McCubbin
and Patterson 1982; Boss 1988), Hill’s ABC-X
model’s general conceptualization of how
families can mitigate and avoid crisis when
faced with stress remains its most important
contribution to family theory and research.
For this reason, Hill is commonly referred
to as the father of family stress and coping
theory.
Along with its lack of consideration for
social context, another major limitation of
Hill’s original ABC-X model is that it does
not deal with the processes that occur when a
family faces a crisis. McCubbin and Patterson
(1982) argue that, although the ABC-X model
has been termed by Hill as a model concerned
with “family crisis-meeting,” it focuses only
on a family’s ability to mitigate a stressor
rather than a crisis. McCubbin and Patterson
developed the double ABC-X model in order
to analyze not only a family’s responses to a
stressor but also its responses to a crisis. Thus
the development of the double ABC-X model
has helped to enlarge the temporal scope
of the ABC-X model and opened up new
pathways for researchers looking at family
stress and coping.
In examining families affected by the stres-
sor of the absence of fathers or husbands
during the Vietnam War, McCubbin and Pat-
terson (1982) found that families experience
4 AB C- X MODEL OF FAM I LY STR ESS AN D C OPI NG
additional stressors and undergo processes
of adaptation in response to crisis. These
processes involve not only a family’s internal
characteristics but also the external charac-
teristics of the surrounding community and
the family’s relationship to the community.
The double ABC-X model consists of both
the original variables included in the ABC-X
model and postcrisis variables. The crisis
variable (X) feeds into variables aA, bB, cC,
and xX. aA represents the pileup of crisis
and stressors; bB represents existing and
new resources; cC represents perceptions of
the crisis, the pileup, and existing and new
resources; and xX represents the family’s
successful or unsuccessful adaptation to the
crisis.
Beyond the addition of postcrisis variables,
there are several important differences
between the ABC-X model and the double
ABC-X model that reflect innovations in
theory development and statistical modeling.
First, the double ABC-X model is curvilinear
in that its postcrisis variables interact with
other earlier variables from the precrisis
stage, while the ABC-X model is a linear
model. Further, while the ABC-X model
is generally operationalized as a basic path
model examining the direct and indirect
effects of variables upon each other, the dou-
ble ABC-X model has been operationalized
by Lavee, McCubbin, and Patterson (1985)
as a structural equation model for latent
variable analysis, which reveals underlying
factors in the coping and adaptation process.
The double ABC-X model also allows for the
inclusion of a greater variety of processes such
as coping behaviors and potential sources of
material, social, and emotional resources and
supports within the research analysis.
Variable aA of the double ABC-X model
represents additional life stressors and strains
resulting from or connected to the crisis. It
is essential to note that the crisis, unlike the
original stressor, is not marked by a specific
event but is rather a problematic situation.
Over time, the crisis situation may be ongo-
ing and thus continue to affect a family’s
circumstances while other potentially stress-
ful events also occur. For example, a family
under the strain of a crisis caused by child
illness or parental separation may lack the
material and emotional resources to maintain
employment, thus generating a further source
of stress via unemployment. This variable,
termed “stress and change” by McCubbin and
Patterson (1982, 44), includes the pileup of
demands upon the family resulting from the
original stressor event, unrelated and related
additional stressors that have occurred since
the original stressor event, and the crisis. This
conception of the variable recognizes that
the temporal dynamic of this model entails
potentially stressful change.
Variable bB in the double ABC-X model
represents both preexisting resources used by
families in order to meet the original stressor
and psychological, social, and intrafamilial
resources that have been developed in order
to meet the crisis. For successful family
adaptation, along with material and social
resources that can be used to minimize
vulnerability to the stressor event itself, fam-
ily resources must also be sufficient to address
the crisis situation. Resources that enable a
family to address and adapt to a crisis include
social support from the wider community,
self-esteem, family integration, and mutual
support between family members (McCubbin
and Patterson 1982). For instance, belonging
to support groups composed of those in
similar situations allows families who have
children with severe disabilities or illnesses
to gain access to and cultivate important
emotional resources (Manning, Wainright,
and Bennett 2011).
Variable cC represents both the percep-
tions of the crisis, the perceptions of the
stressor, and the perceptions of available
resources held by a family. Variable cC can
 AB C- X MODEL OF FAM I LY STR ESS AN D C OPI NG
also include family members’ subjective
assessments of their social status (Manning,
Wainright, and Bennett 2011). The percep-
tions of a crisis held by a family are the
product of a process of interpretation that
is influenced by the family’s values, beliefs,
and structure. For instance, religious beliefs
can influence a family’s perceptions of a
crisis and allow for positive interpretation
(Burr 1982). The family’s perceptions of the
crisis also include the process of making the
crisis somehow meaningful and redefining
it. According to McCubbin and Patterson
(1982), in addressing a crisis situation, a
family can only act upon those resources that
it is aware of possessing or having accessible.
Additionally, family members will use their
available resources during the coping process
in accordance with their perceptions of these
resources. For instance, there may be sources
of support to which a family has access,
such as public assistance for those facing
unemployment or underemployment, that
may not be taken advantage of due to factors
such as lack of awareness or perceived stigma.
Therefore, variable cC of the double ABC-X
model also includes a family’s perceptions
of the available resources represented by
variable bB.
A major insight into family functioning
that has been infused into the double ABC-
X model is that factors such as available
resources and perceptions can only address
the situation of a crisis through the tangible
behaviors of the members within a family.
This is to say that families that have the appro-
priate available resources and perceptions to
effectively adapt to a crisis or cope with a
stressor may still fail to do so if they do not
act on these resources and perceptions in an
effective way. Thus the double ABC-X model
includes the process of coping, often repre-
sented by variable BC. The coping process
describes how resources (bB) and percep-
tions (cC) come to be manifested in the actual
5
actions of families to address and ameliorate
a crisis (McCubbin and Patterson 1982).
The coping process is related to variables bB
and cC in a reciprocal manner. Manning,
Wainright, and Bennett (2011, 323) describe
variable BC as “a bridging concept which
has both cognitive and behavioral compo-
nents wherein resources, perception, and
behavioral responses interact.” The postcrisis
section of the double ABC-X model is con-
cerned with not only the process of coping
but also ultimately how that process enables a
family to adapt to a crisis.
Variable xX is the outcome measure of the
double ABC-X model. It represents whether
or not a family adapts effectively to a crisis.
Access to and use of the proper resources
and perceptions enables families to adapt to
a crisis. While adjustment to a new situa-
tion involves short-term changes, adaptation
involves long-term changes within a family
in response to a crisis situation. Adaptation
leads to permanent or semipermanent change
in the family system to meet the crisis and
facilitate the resilience of the family. Family
adaptability is conceptualized by McCubbin
and Patterson (1982) as resulting in a range
of outcomes. The spectrum of potential
adaptation outcomes spans bonadaptation to
maladaptation. Bonadaptation is successful
adaptation to a crisis. Bonadaptation is thus
marked by resumed functionality, return to
equilibrium in the family system, and overall
resilience. Maladaptation is unsuccessful
adaptation to a crisis and thus continued dis-
equilibrium of the family system and ongoing
dysfunction.
The ABC-X and double ABC-X models
have enabled a vast research literature on
family stress, coping, crisis, and adaptation
and have provided useful concepts for family
counseling practices. The double ABC-X
model has proved to be extremely bene-
ficial in the advancement of the original
ABC-X model. While the formulation of the
 6 AB C- X MODEL OF FAM I LY STR ESS AN D C OPI NG
relationships posed by the double ABC-X
model has been contested or shown to be
inadequate in its explanatory power in some
studies, including those on stressors such as
unemployment, the model’s variables still
often hold explanatory power. The double
ABC-X model has been especially useful in
examining families faced with childhood dis-
ability and illness. With further development
in the field of family sociology, the ABC-X
and double ABC-X models are now two
of many models or theoretical frameworks
for analyzing stress and coping. However,
they remain highly influential and useful to
researchers studying families.
SEE ALSO: Coping Strategies; Family Process
(Journal); Family Resilience
REFERENCES
Boss, Paula. 1988. Family Stress Management.
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Burr, Wesley. 1982. “Families under Stress”. In
Family Stress, Coping, and Social Support, edited
by Hamilton L. McCubbin, A. Elizabeth Cauble,
and Joan M. Patterson, pp. 3–25. Springfield, IL:
Thomas Books.
Burr, Wesley, and Shirley Klein, eds. 1994. Reex-
amining Family Stress: New Theory and Research.
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
View publication stats
Hill, Reuben. 1949. Families under Stress. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press.
Hill, Reuben. 1958. “Generic Features of Families
under Stress.” Social Casework, 39: 139–50.
Lavee, Yoav, Hamilton L. McCubbin, and Joan M.
Patterson. 1985. “The Double ABCX Model of
Family Stress and Adaptation: An Empirical Test
by Analysis of Structural Equations with Latent
Variables.” Journal of Marriage and the Family,
42(4): 811–25. DOI:10.2307/352326.
Manning, Margaret M., Laurel Wainright, and Jil-
lian Bennett. 2011. “The Double ABCX Model
of Adaptation in Racially Diverse Families
with a School-Age Child with Autism.” Jour-
nal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41:
320–33. DOI:10.1007/s10803-010-1056-1.
McCubbin, Hamilton L., and Joan M. Patterson.
1982. “Family Adaptation to Crisis”. In Fam-
ily Stress, Coping, and Social Support, edited by
Hamilton L. McCubbin, A. Elizabeth Cauble,
and Joan M. Patterson, pp. 26–47. Springfield,
IL: Thomas Books.
FURTHER READING
Dreman, Solly, ed. 1997. The Family on the Thresh-
old of the 21st Century: Trends and Implications.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Price, Sharon J., Christine A. Price, and Patrick C.
McKenry, eds. 2010. Families & Change: Coping
with Stressful Events and Transitions. New York:
SAGE.