For a minority of families, childhood illness is not a transitory event but rather a major disruption to family routine as a result of the need to attend medical appointments, periods of hospital admission or the ongoing requirements of special treatments. For families in which there is a child with a chronic illness, it is hard to escape the intimate connection between family life and the child's illness. In this article the authors provide an overview of past research and discuss the close relationship between parental adjustment, family functioning, and the psychological, social and biological outcomes for children with chronic illness.