Biobehavioural triadic dynamics of stress resilience transmission in families

Resilience, understood as the ability of people to resist and bounce back after a stressful and adverse event, protects parents and children against the development of psychopathology. Because daily family life requires constant adaptation to changing challenging situations, there is an urge for research to underpin programs strengthening family resilience. In the TRIAD project, we will study the transmission of stress resilience between mother, father, and child, to identify biobehavioural dynamics and factors contributing to resilience transmission in 500 Belgian families with children aged between 10 and 12 years. Resilience transmission is a dynamic process whereby family members mutually affect each other’s capacity to recover from stressful events. We expect that resilience transmission is related to biobehavioral family factors such as family (epi-)genetic, physiological, endocrinological, and climate profiles. We will also investigate the spontaneous synchronization between parent and child social behavior, and their physiology when confronted with emotional and stressful situations. Studying biobehavioral synchrony in the context of resilience transmission is highly innovative. It can lead to scientific breakthroughs, expanding our understanding of resilience and strategies to support families’ resilience in the face of distress.