Resilience and Resources During Development: From Early Childhood to Adulthood

Resilience refers to the ability to successfully deal with stressful life circumstances and experiences and to cope with them. Based on data from the Mannheim Study of Children at Risk, which follows a sample of children at risk from birth to adulthood, the present paper provides convincing evidence demonstrating how protective factors in the child and his/her family environment operate during the course of development to contribute to the development of resilience. As shown, a major role is assigned to positive early parent-child relationships (both mother-and father-child interactions). Moreover, positive interactive experiences at the child's age of 2 years play a significant role. These experiences consistently contribute to a positive child development in the face of adversity. In addition to characteristics of the social environment of the child, cognitive, social-emotional, and internal competencies during childhood, youth, and young adulthood play a major role in the development of resilience. These competencies enable children at risk who are growing up in psychosocial high-risk families or in poverty to successfully cope with conditions of high adversity. Moreover, the findings presented here demonstrate that resilience may be conceived as a personal characteristic that exhibits high stability since young adulthood. With these findings, the present study points to the significance of resilience in predicting the long-term outcome of children at risk.