Bringing It All Back Home: How Outside Stressors Shape Families' Everyday Lives

ABSTRACT— Families are dynamic systems that are permeable to influences from the outside world, such as daily stressors at work and at school. Our research uses naturalistic methods to investigate how family interactions change in response to such experiences and how other family members contribute to that process. We argue that the short-term effects of daily stressors on family dynamics can have cumulative, long-term implications for family health and functioning. Naturalistic studies that incorporate daily diary, observational, and physiological measures can offer new insights into families' everyday stress responding and coping processes.