Abstract:
Every year thousands of core families disintegrate through divorce, and in the ensuing restructuring
of the family system the child has to cope with various development challenges, such
as divided membership of two micro family systems and complexities that result at the
mesosystemic level. Achieving positive development outcomes in the presence of challenging
living circumstances entails complex interactive processes. The aim of the study was to
understand the concomitant, reciprocal and/or responsive dynamics of middle adolescents’ use
of their inherent resilience potential in their movement back and forth between their two reconstituted
family systems after the parents’ divorce. The study was grounded in the qualitative
interpretivist paradigm, and used a multiple case study as research design and a narrative
format for description. A purposive sample of four white Afrikaans-speaking middle adolescents
participated in the research. Findings revealed that middle adolescents of divorced parents
utilise their resilience potential in a systemic manner, which requires a solid base provided by
the meso system. Hence the utilisation of resilience relies at the very minimum on a functional
relationship of cooperation between the biological parents.
