The chapters in this part are concerned with the roles of individual and family differences in how children adapt to stressful life experiences. They highlight resilience, the positive side of the study of adaptation in children at risk due to cumulative environmental stressors.

Michael Rutter sets the stage by defining and tracing the history of interest in the concepts of vulnerability and resilience. Rutter suggests that the focus of this area must shift from identifying protective variables to identifying the processes by which protection occurs, and he brings together a diverse set of empirical findings to illustrate possible mechanisms of resilience.

The next three chapters represent three large studies of adaptation in children at risk due to adverse life circumstances. Robert C. Pianta, Byron Egeland, and L. Alan Sroufe draw on longitudinal data from the Mother-Child Interaction Research Project at the University of Minnesota to examine the role of contextual stress and earlier developmental history in understanding the adaptational competence of their sample of first-grade children. Child and family qualities associated with resilience in this sample are also identified. Ann S. Masten, Patricia Morison, David Pellegrini, and Auke Tellegen describe the evolution and results of the “Project Competence” research program founded by Norman Garmezy to study competence under conditions of stress and disadvantage. Both these chapters suggest that individual and family differences play critical roles in the achievement and maintenance of competence despite stressful life challenges. Moreover, both studies suggest that sex differences are crucial to understanding protective processes within the family.