Debate: Young people are living in unprecedented times – too much chaos or too little resilience?: an argument to talk less about resilience

Has the concept of childhood resilience become too common, its meaning obscured by its overuse? This paper provides an argument for more constrained use of the term resilience, identifying the resulting problem of young people pathologizing normative risk exposure (a concept referred to as disorderism). Instead, resilience science emphasizes the need for exposure to manageable amounts of risk for optimal development. Indeed, studies of resilience have shown that most children demonstrate resilience because of the large networks of supports they are able to access when stressed.