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Every family comes across stress once in a while. Stress has to do with change. As Gary L. Hansen a specialist in sociology said, “stress happens whenever a family system changes.” It can happen when someone close dies, when someone gets ill, getting fired from a job, getting a new job, moving, etc. When anything happens the family has to learn how to deal with the stress. Some families learn how to adapt well to certain changes and stresses while some families don’t know how to deal well at all. One sociologist, Reuben Hill identified three factors which determine the nature and degree of stress experienced by a family (Hansen, 1997). They are; 1) the stressor event itself 2) the family’s resources or strengths at the time of event 3) the definition or meaning the family attaches to the event. A stress can either be expected or unexpected, positive or negative. Depending on what it is can either make the stress easy or hard to deal with. In some family incidents to many changes happen at one time. When that happens it is called “stressor pile-up”. These families have a lot more to deal with that causes too much stress.
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