Our findings also provide support for the Daily Family Stress Process Model as a theoretical approach to studying family stress by highlighting how different types of family stressors hold different implications for daily health and well-being. Interpersonal family tensions, including both overt conflicts and avoided disagreements, compromised daily health and emotional well-being, whereas family network events (i.e., the problems of a close family member) were only associated with compromised emotional well-being. These findings are supported by prior research that describes interpersonal tensions as among the most upsetting stressful experiences (Bolger et al., 1989). Further, our results suggest that even though an argument may not actually occur, the unexpressed tension may still hold implications for emotional and physical health (Charles et al., 2009). Together, our findings emphasize the importance of distinguishing between different sources of family stress.
