Family Resilience in a Resource‐Cursed Community Dependent on the Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

The economic and social well‐being of rural, “resource‐cursed” communities can depend on the boom‐bust cycles of a single industry like oil and gas. This study used a constructivist, inductive approach to identify the challenges placed on families in one such community and the processes that strengthen family resilience. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 35 adult residents (30–76 years old, 19 women) from a community in Alberta, Canada, that has specialized in oil and gas extraction for 70 years and experienced its worst economic downturn while the study was underway. Results showed that many families have experienced an endless cycle of poor work–life balance and income instability throughout the economic cycle. Family life often lacked social cohesion as a consequence of demanding work schedules and economic pressures. Additional challenges were the perceived negative effects of rigid gender roles, substance abuse, family conflicts, and domestic violence. Crucial strengthening processes for family resilience were fundamental financial and living standard adaptations (e.g., living within or below one’s economic means; having both spouses become earners), maintaining regular contact by having a flexible home routine, and mutually agreeing to change roles during busts (former earners take responsibility for caregiving and running of the household and vice versa). Alternatively, accepting economic volatility and its impact on normal family life processes were essential for family resilience. Findings suggest the need for clinicians to help families foster resilience in communities that depend on resource extraction industries with concurrent adaptations required by individuals, families, and socio‐political and economic systems.

Work-Family Interface in the Context of Social Responsibility: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The most analysed perspective in the literature on the work-family relationship has been the negative one, whose core concept is work-family conflict. In their study, Greenhaus and Beutell [4] highlight three types of conflict or relationship; transposing it to this research, they identified the following: (i) the first, temporal-based, arises from the time required to perform one role interfering with the time available to perform another, reducing said role [46,93,94]; (ii) the second refers to pressure conflicts and is based on the conception that the pressure caused in one domain will affect the other domain [35,41,44] and, (iii) the third refers to the type of behavioral conflict that concerns the incompatibility of behaviors expected in each of the roles [33,39,43].…”

“…For the authors Jones et al [38], there is an urgent need for institutional leaders to implement programs that can promote awareness and normalization of caregiving challenges, in addition to providing funding and other tangible resources to reinforce a broader culture that affirms the presence of work-family relationship challenges. The study by Höltge et al [39] addresses the economic and social well-being experiences of communities that depend on the boom-and-bust cycles of a single industry, such as oil and gas. The results point out that many families experienced a never-ending cycle of work-life balance and income instability throughout the economic cycle.…”

“…Additional challenges were the perceived negative effects of rigid gender roles, substance abuse, family conflicts and domestic violence. Crucial empowering processes for family resilience were financial and living standard adaptations, such as economic volatility [39]. When work problems emerge, negative consequences are observed in the work-family relationship; Tonelli and Alcadipani [40] found, for example, that the amount of work directly affects family life.…”

Building family resilience in the wake of a global pandemic: Looking back to prepare for the future.

“…Decades of research on adversity in families illuminate their capacities for resilience in varied contexts, cultures, and family forms, including during normative experiences in the family life cycle, in the face of loss and bereavement, collective trauma, serious illness and disabilities, and in multistressed families (Walsh, 2015(Walsh, , 2023. For instance, in a rural "resource-cursed" community that has longstanding economic instability, families demonstrated key elements of resilience including flexibility in family routines and roles as well as acceptance of economic volatility (Höltge et al, 2021). Adaptive family processes are evident in families with incarcerated parents, wherein children, youth, and families cope with the challenges of having an incarcerated parent in adaptive and varied ways, including continued contact and closeness with incarcerated parents and strengthened parent-child relationships with the parent who is not incarcerated (Arditti & Johnson, 2022).…”

Family resilience of stroke survivors within 6 months after a first-episode stroke: A longitudinal study

“…One of the most extensively applied frameworks is the Walsh's ( 6 ) family resilience clinical practice framework, which outlines three important domains of family resilience: family belief systems, organizational processes, and communication processes, which made understanding family resilience feasible. Moreover, an increasingly important area of family care practice is identifying, strengthening, and promoting family resilience ( 9 , 10 ). However, empirical studies on family resilience of stroke survivors and its predictors are limited, which is not in favor of targeted interventions for the families of post-stroke patients.…”