Parental Adaptability in Families of Children With Complex Chronic Conditions

How parents sustain care for children with complex chronic conditions remains undertheorized. Using Rodgers’ evolutionary method, we analyzed parental adaptability across 25 articles. Our analysis conceptualized parental adaptability as a parent-enacted, bivalent caregiving process in which responsiveness, balancing, and care management operate iteratively across parent, family, and social system levels as child needs change. Adaptability may support child functioning, family adjustment, and care continuity, yet coincide with unrelieved psychological, physical, and relational strain for parents—adaptive exhaustion, in which caregiving nonetheless remains effective. This conceptualization offers attribute-specific targets for nursing assessment and measurement while directing interventions toward conditions that sustain caregiving.