Primacy of Perception in Family Stress Theory and Measurement

A selection of interdisciplinary family stress literature is cited to illustrate that perceptions, even more than resources, predict which families manage high stress and which fall into crisis. Paraphrasing symbolic interactionist W. I. Thomas (1928), if family members define their helplessness as real, then their helplessness is real in its consequences. Cautions are given about measuring only shared common perceptions. Giving preeminence to a common perception may obscure gender and generational differences in families and could be ethically problematic. Research on boundary ambiguity is presented as 1 example of measuring individual and shared perceptions in distressed families.