Parental and Family Influences on Resilience in Young Children: A Scoping Review

This scoping review explores the ways in which resilience is defined, measured, contextualized, and promoted in young children (under the age of six) and their families. This review follows Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) five stage process for conducting a scoping review. Articles included were published after Luther and colleagues (2000) clarifying work defining resilience and included articles focused on resilience in young children and their families. The final sample includes 32 empirical articles all of which used quantitative methodologies for measuring resilience. These articles represented a wide variety in statistical methods, risk contexts, resilience factors, and competence measures, highlighting the complex nature of resilience processes. Findings suggest that research on childhood resilience shows consistency when defining resilience, but shows heterogeneity when considering risk categories, measures of competence, and protective factors, signifying that there are multiple pathways to resilience. This suggests that practitioners striving to promote resilience should tailor interventions to consider the individuals risk factors.