SOCW 647 Social Work And Families Lecture No. 3

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SOCW 647 Social Work And Families Lecture No. 3
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Carter and McGoldrick ( 1999 )

• Carter and McGoldrick ( 1999 ) generations have a
  life-shaping impact on each other as families
  move through the family life cycle stages. As
  one generation deals with aging, another is
  coping with children leaving home. Another maybe
  planning careers or beginning to experience
  intimate relationships.
• Social class lifestyles and cultural
  background are interlinked.
• Degrees of ethnic identification, social
  class, religion, politics, geography, the length
  of time the group has been in the country and the
  severity of discrimination experienced as a
  group. All of these factors influence their
  attachment to tradition ( Hines, Garcia, Preto,
  McGoldrick, Almeida and Weltman, 1999 ).
• Acculturation generally occurs over
  several generations after immigration (
  Hernandez And McGoldrick 1999) Risk of labeling
  behavior can occur, i.e. Latina womans devotion
  to her family above her own welfare.
  Asian-American mans insistence that his parents
  live with him, to the consternation of his
  Caucasian wife.

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Interpersonal conflicts

• Interpersonal conflicts that develop within a
  family may signal the familys inability to
  negotiate a particular life cycle passage or
  transition point, here the family is thought to
  have become stuck between stages of the life
  cycle and in need of reorganizing in order to
  better accommodate to the changing needs of its
  members.
• Contemporary middle class American
  society expects adolescents to behave differently
  from adults, young adults, economic circumstances
  permitting, are encouraged to develop
  independence and autonomy. Developmental
  competencies in inner-city environment may call
  for survivor skills that the larger society may
  find inappropriate. Different times, such as
  periods of war often require different survival
  skills.
• Newly married couples must develop a
  process for gaining greater closeness and
  interdependence, the nature of their involvement
  with one another inevitably changes once they
  have a child. Parents must remain involved with
  young children in a way that would be smothering
  for adolescents (Minuchin, Lee and Simon, 1996).
  Life cycle concepts generalizations should be
  seen within the context of particular class,
  culture and historical period. Young Native
  Americans seek to escape from poverty, find a
  lack of opportunity on the reservation,
  frequently move to urban areas, weakening ties to
  traditional kinship network of Native American
  family life and its customary stages of
  development ( Sue and Sue 1999 )\

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Eco systemic work

• Eco systemic work with Latino families ( Falicov
  1998 ) contends family therapy encounter is
  really an engagement between the therapists and
  the familys cultural and personal constructions
  about family life.
• Predictable marker events, phases of
  families i.e. marriage, birth of a first child,
  children leaving home, death of grandparents,
  each stage precipitated by particular life events
  ( Zilbach 1989 ) family stage marker. These
  passages may occur due to change in family
  composition i.e. birth of twins, perhaps due to
  major shift in autonomy, family members start
  kindergarten, entering adolescence, moving away
  from home. External factors may also stress
  family, demand, new adaptations, a move to a new
  community, a change in career, coping with
  natural disaster, change in economic interest.

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Most families will experience a normal
developmental process of change

• Most families will experience a normal
  developmental process of change ( See Table 2.2
  Goldenberg text ) Some families will experience
  destabilization as its members struggle to
  accommodate change. An example of this is the
  father and mother who develop violent
  disagreements about how late their teenage
  daughter may stay out on Saturday night and what
  friends she may be with), stress will be evident.
  One or more family members may become symptomatic
  (the daughter may become angry and withdrawn the
  mother becomes depressed, the father feels
  isolated and alone, and the parents marriage
  deteriorates). The more rigid the familys
  interactive system and pattern, the less likely
  the members will be able to negotiate
  differences, the more the family will struggle
  against and be stressed by the need to change,
  and the more likely symptoms will develop within
  the family.

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( Zilbach 1989 )

• ( Zilbach 1989 ) notes , during each stage,
  family development proceeds through family task
  development, and family characteristics of the
  previous period are carried over into the next
  stage. If the carrying out of any particular set
  of tasks is incomplete, impeded, or disturbed,
  then development is delayed or suspended and
  these difficulties are carried out into the
  subsequent stages of family development. For
  example, parents may experience fears of
  separating from a young child and allowing that
  child to move out of the immediate family to day
  care, preschool or kindergarten. That same fear,
  unresolved, may later cause conflict between
  parents and the child in adolescence as
  separation again becomes a family issue when the
  adolescent seeks greater freedom and
  self-direction still later, it may delay
  separation from the family as a young adult.

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Family changes

• Family changes can be harmonious or they can
  become disruptive. A family may be confronted by
  unexpected catastrophic events ( serious
  financial reverses, a terrorist attack, death of
  a young child by drowning, random drive-by
  shooting ) Such crises disrupt the familys
  normal developmental flow and inevitably produce
  relationship changes within the family system.
• ( Neugarten-1976) points out the
  inappropriate and unanticipated timing of a major
  event may be particularly traumatic precisely
  because it upsets the sequence and disturbs the
  rhythm of the expected course of life. Neugarten
  cites the death of a parent during ones
  childhood, teenage marriage, and a first marriage
  postponed until late in life, or a child born to
  parents in midlife. Hoffman ( 1988) particularly
  points out to those events that affect family
  membership- events representing family gains (
  children acquired through marriage ) or family
  losses ( separation of parents, death ).

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Some families

• Some families will develop effective
  collaborative ways of coping with adversity and
  hardship- what Walsh (1999b) calls relational
  resilience, may emerge hardier from crises or
  persistent stresses or the demands for life cycle
  transitional changes. A childless couple may
  postpone having children for fear of the child
  restricting mobility, increasing responsibility,
  interrupting sleep, constricting their social
  life or they may welcome parent hood to
  strengthen the family and to invest in its
  future. The discontinuous changes brought about
  by remarriage may result in disequlibrium, role
  confusion, heightened conflict in the new family,
  or they may provide a second chance to form a
  more mature stable relationship.

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Carter and McGoldrick ( 1980 )

• Carter and McGoldrick ( 1980 ) broadened the life
  cycle concept to include a multidimensional ,
  multicultural, multigenerational perspective.,
  further expands the concept to include
  individual, family and sociocultural
  perspectives.
• Two wage earners families versus one wage
  earner, ( stay at home parent with children) and
  its home life needs to be factored into the
  consideration of family development besides high
  divorce rates, single parent adoptions, children
  born to teenagers who are unmarried, or born
  later in life to older women, unmarried couples,
  gays, lesbians and transgender people and
  numerous single stepfamily arrangements
• Have complicated the oversimplified picture of
  normal family development.

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Structural position

• Structural position Here the position is argued
  that problems develop within a family with a
  dysfunctional structure when the family
  encounters a transition point but lacks the
  flexibility to adapt to the changing conditions.
  For example a young husband and wife who have not
  achieved sufficient separation from their parents
  to be able to establish their own independent
  marital unit may experience considerable
  distress, confusion and conflict as they enter
  the next phase of their family life- the birth
  and rearing of their own children.

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Strategists ( Jay Haley 1979 )

• Strategists ( Jay Haley 1979 )
• Jay Haley argues that some families may
  need therapeutic help ti solving problems evoked
  by a young adult member ready to leave home and
  embark on a more independent life. Haley views
  individual symptomatology as arising from an
  interruption of the familys normal developmental
  process. He is likely to direct his efforts at
  helping the family as a whole resolve the impasse
  that they are experiencing as a group.

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Barnhill and Longo 1978 )

• Barnhill and Longo 1978 ) contend that families
  can become fixated and arrested at a certain
  level of development and thus fail to make the
  necessary transition at the appropriate time.
  Barnhill and Longo suggest that symptoms
  appearing in any family member ( for example
  adolescent delinquent behavior ) are evidence
  that the immediate family life task has not been
  mastered. Anxiety and distress are thought to be
  at their maximum at transition points as the
  family tries to cope, rebalance, realign and
  restore stability.

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McGoldrick and Carter (2003 )

• McGoldrick and Carter (2003 ) encompassing,
  intergenerational view of the family, impact of
  multiple stressors on a familys ability to
  navigate transitions. There are vertical and
  horizontal stressors.
• Vertical Stressors include any biological
  heritage, genetic make-up, temperament and
  possible congenital disabilities within the
  family. Any racism, sexism, poverty, homophobic
  attitudes as well as family prejudices and
  patterns of relating carried over from previous
  generations add to these vertical stressors.
• Horizontal stressors describe the events
  experienced by the family as it moves forward
  through time, coping with changes and transitions
  of the life cycle, various predictable
  developmental stresses as well as the unexpected,
  traumatic such as an untimely death, birth of a
  handicapped child, serious accident, migration,
  Traumatic
• Experiences- terrorism, war, economic depression,
  natural disasters, social polices.

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Any horizontal axis

• Any horizontal axis stress like the revelation of
  a teenage girls pregnancy or the coming out of
  a homosexual adolescent boy can cause great
  disruption to a family whose vertical axis is
  already intensely stressed ( excessive family
  concerns about appearance of moral rectitude ).
  In general, the greater the anxiety inherited
  from the previous generations at any transition
  point, ( anxieties over being parents and
  raising children, passed on by a womans parents
  ) the more anxiety producing and maladaptive this
  point will be for that young mother expecting her
  first child. When horizontal ( or developmental )
  stresses intersect with vertical ( or
  transgenerational ) stresses, there is a quantum
  leap in anxiety in the system. Concurrent
  external stresses- death, illness, financial
  setbacks, moving to a new and unfamiliar
  community- as family progresses through its life
  cycle adds to the stress.

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With immigration,

• With immigration, there is the challenge of
  undocumented individuals learning to survive in a
  strange environment dislocation process is
  filled with duress alongside hope for a better
  future.
• Family elders may lose status within a
  family as a result of assimilating more slowly to
  the language and lifestyle of the new land than
  do their adolescent family members. For example a
  parent who was an engineer in the old country or
  teacher in the old country may be able to find
  work only in lower-status jobs as a construction
  worker or manicurist.
• The reasons for migration (war,
  famine, political, religious persecution ) are
  often significant along with problems of
  employment, housing, language, xenophobia, and
  discrimination may be traumatic and affect life
  cycle development.
• Wong and Mock (1997) describe role
  reversals in Asian-American families where
  children gain quicker proficiency of English than
  their parents, undermining traditional cultural
  norms of parental authority.
• Falicov (1998) cross-cultural
  dilemmas as Latino families try to make sense of
  adapting to American life and raise children
  according to the style of the dominant culture.
• Mexican-American families, migration
  may be more than a one-time event. Illegal border
  crossings may be frequent due to previous
  unsuccessful attempts. They may be deported again
  and will try again for re-entry., or simply leave
  returning as work is available. This on-going and
  prolonged process includes parent-child
  separations, parents attempt to immigrate ahead
  of their children, or in other cases send their
  children ahead in either case , the breaking of
  ties within the nuclear family may have long-term
  negative consequences ( Santisteban,
  Muir-Malcolm, Mitrani And Szapocnik, 2002 ).

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Combrinck Graham (1988

• Combrinck Graham (1988) believes that family
  life through time is cyclical, or more
  accurately proceeds in a spiral. There are
  certain times when family members are tightly
  involved with one another, i.e. when a child is
  born or serious illness with a family member, as
  centripetal periods. At other times (starting
  school, beginning a career) , individual moves
  take precedence, and centrifugal periods occur..
  Combrinck Graham contends that three
  generational families are likely to alternate
  centripetal and centrifugal states( keeping
  family members together and pushing them apart )

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Brenlin ( 1988)

• Brenlin ( 1988) states that family development
  occurs as gradual oscillations ( or
  micortransitions ) between stages as the family
  makes its way to the next developmental level.,
  it involves multiple simultaneous transitions in
  as various members are undergoing differing
  degrees of interlocking life changes.
• Laszloffy ( 2002 ) finds two
  problems with traditional family development She
  states that not all families , regardless of
  composition and culture, develop in the same
  order, ignoring the infinite variations possible
  between families. She also argues that the life
  cycle approach is biased towards a single
  generation ( such as launching a family member )
  and fails to attend to the intergenerational and
  interactional complexities of families( launching
  a and reciprocal leave staging ).

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In middle-class families

• In middle-class families separation from parents
  is made more difficult due to longer periods of
  education, prolonged financial dependency,
  inopportune economic conditions, delayed
  marriages due to career demands, fear of sexually
  transmitted diseases like AIDS, general
  acceptance of later marriages and apprehension
  about the longevity of marriage, or fear that
  marriage will not work at all make a commitment
  to a new relationship more tenuous.
• White middle and upper class women
  especially are likely to live away from family
  and be on their own before marrying, putting off
  marriage until they complete their education and
  launch careers. Working class people can find
  themselves marrying sooner, often viewing
  marriage as a sign of defining themselves as
  adults (Rank 2000 ). They may move from a family
  home to a marriage without having experienced
  living alone and being economically
  self-sufficient. This can be true for some
  members of some religious groups i.e. Orthodox
  Jews, Christian Fundamentalists.

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( Ludtke 1997 )

• ( Ludtke 1997 ) Some poorer African-American
  women may find little reason to delay having
  children due to experiencing fewer prospects for
  pursuing education or a subsequent career, and
  may sincerely doubt that their socioeconomic
  opportunities will ever improve.
• Independence to inter-dependence,
  what Gerson (1995 ) called coupling., whether in
  heterosexual marriage or cohabitation or
  same-sex pairing. With marriage there is a
  change in the two established systems and the
  development of a subsystem. (New couple), primary
  allegiance to one another, secondary allegiance
  to families of origin. Sometimes early marriages
  may represent a cultural norm for some (e.g. some
  Latinos ) or an effort to escape their families
  of origin and create the family they never had (
  McGoldrick 1999 ) Or fear of intimacy and
  commitment may delay marriage for many men and
  women, for older women with careers, there maybe
  fear of loosing independence once married.

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Napier ( 2000 )

• Napier ( 2000 ) states that marriage involves
  learning to be separate and together, to allocate
  power, to pool financial and emotional resources,
  to shape a sexual life, to share intimate as well
  as mundane feelings, and most challenging, to
  raise the next generation . It also involves
  negotiating levels of emotional intimacy, working
  out power arrangements, deciding whether to have
  children and when, determining the degree of
  connection to their extended families and
  friends.

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Family traditions

• Family traditions to retain, abandon or modify.
  We have two separate cultures with differing
  customs, values, rituals, beliefs, gender roles,
  prejudices, aspirations and experiences. Part of
  the paradigms have to be retained to that each
  person maintains a sense of self the two
  paradigms must be reconciled in order for the
  couple to have a life together. New transactional
  patterns emerge accommodations or tacit
  agreements to disagree.
• Connection can be fraught with hesitations
  reluctance to abandon the life lived as a single
  person,maintaining separate bank accounts, taking
  separate vacations, pursuing weekend activities
  with friends or with separate families of origin
  rather than spending time together. Learning to
  cooperate and compromise over differences takes a
  long time, sometimes never achieved.

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The arrival of children

• The commitment of husband and wife, or
  significant committed partners to become parents
  presents a significant transition in a familys
  life, changing forever the roles of mates who are
  childless.
• Gerson ( 1995 ) husbands and wives who
  become parents become part of a supra-system ,
  they take care of the younger generation, ,
  parental siblings uncles and aunts ,nieces and
  nephews also move up in the system. A vertical
  realignment occurs for the new family and
  extended family. Husband and wife need to
  redefine and re-distribute household and
  child-care duties, decide possibly how they will
  earn a living with one breadwinner for a period
  of time, and determine how to resume sexual and
  social activities. ( Kaslow, Smith and Croft 2000
  )

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Older parents

• Older parents have to accommodate young children
  in an already established or perhaps fixed
  pattern of relationships, often without being
  able to call upon elderly grandparents for
  support. Hines (1999 ) observes that the birth
  of children harkens a young couples need to
  connect ( or reconnect ) to the extended family
  network, perhaps for occasional child care and
  almost certainly for emotional if not financial
  support.

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With adolescence

• With adolescence, there is restructuring of the
  family process to allow the teenager more
  independence. The task can become more
  challenging for immigrant families, as the
  adolescent normal striving for self-directed
  behavior is accelerated through assimilation into
  mainstream American society. For some poorer
  African-American, Latino or Asian families,
  adolescents can be expected to fulfill adult
  caretaking roles for younger siblings, or to
  contribute financially to the home, yet to remain
  obedient and respectful of parents ( Preto 1999
  ). In such cases, becoming independent may not
  have the same family value as it may have for
  Anglo-American middle class groups. Rule
  changing, limit setting, role renegotiations are
  all necessary..

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All of this can occur

• All of this can occur during mid-life
  transitions for parents, where questioning
  choices of careers can occur with questioning of
  marital partners. For some women its a the first
  opportunity to pursue a career without child-care
  responsibilities. There can also be the reality
  and responsibility of caring for aging parents,
  grandparents,necessitating role reversals between
  parents and now-dependent grandparents.
• Once again with some Latino families
  children can remain in the home until they are
  married or are in their early twenties (
  Santisteban,Muir-Malcolm,Mitrani 2002)

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Reorganizing Generational Boundaries

• Couples will now reassess their relationship to
  one another now that the children are gone. I.e.
  chance to travel or pursue other interests not
  before financially feasible. Marital strains
  covered over while children were raised may
  emerge. Some feelings of depression and
  loneliness may emerge. A major transitional point
  for a middle-aged adult will be the death of
  elderly parents.
• Donald Williamson (1991 ) older
  hierarchical boundaries are replaced by a greater
  peer relationship between generations,
  particularly when children reach the age of forty
  and older.. Elderly deal with dependency upon
  children, possibly relinquishing power and
  status, coming to terms with illness, limitations
  and death.
• Retirement and widowhood
• Retirement can mean more than a loss of
  income, it can include loss of identity, status,
  purpose and losing being an important part of the
  community, family relationships must be
  renegotiated. A grandparents death may be the
  young childs first encounter with separation and
  loss. may be a reminder to parents of their own
  mortality.

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Divorce

• Approximately, one million divorces occur in the
  United States., divorce has a powerful effect on
  all members of the family (Simon 1996) families
  can survive divorce better if there is a
  commitment towards co-parenting by both spouses.
  Divorce can be marked by stress, ambivalence,
  self-doubt and uncertainty.

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Single parent led families

• Now in the United States, one parent households
  now represent one in four households with
  children under the age of eighteen.
• A divorced person ( 84 percent women, 16
  percent men ) with child custody
• An unmarried mother with planned or unplanned
  child
• An older unmarried biological mother with a
  planned or unplanned child
• A single person, male or female, gay or straight,
  who adopts a child
• An unmarried woman, gay or straight, who chooses
  impregnation through donor
• Insemination.
• A widow or widower with children or stepchildren

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Joint legal custody of children

• Joint legal custody of children is becoming more
  common, members of extended families,
  grandparents, aunts, uncles continue to play key
  roles ( Everett and Volgy Everett 2000 ) Half of
  all African-American children live with single
  parents ( Fine, McKerney and Chung 1992 ) and
  informal adoptions ( relatives of friends care
  for children ) have a long history. Single parent
  families now represent the fastest growing family
  type in the United States ( Cox 1996 ) Close to
  twenty million children under eighteen live with
  one parent Heatherington, Isabella and Bridges (
  1998 ), theyt also predicit that 50-60 percent of
  children born in the 1990s will at some point
  live with single parents.

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Divorced mothers

• Divorced mothers with physical custody of
  children deal with no only lowered economic
  status but also with grief, self-blame,
  loneliness and an inadequate support system.

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Single fathers with children

• Single fathers with children will also experience
  financial pressures. Frequently, they extend to
  family members, girlfriends and ex-spouses to
  help with child care. (Anderson 2003 ) notes that
  single fathers, in contrast to single mothers,
  are viewed as noble for their parenting efforts.

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The Bi-nuclear family ( Ahrons and Rodgers 1987
)

• Children may reside with one parent, but both
  parents have equal access to them. Former marital
  partners have to be willing to cooperate here,
  have relatively equal and consistent parenting
  skills, and be able to work together without old
  animosities.
• Carter and McGoldrick (1999) consider
  divorce a disruption or detour or dislocation
  regarding the family life cycle. Thus, divorce
  adds another family life cycle stage, families
  regroup and try to deal with physical and
  emotional losses

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Remarried families

• Single life is short lived for divorced people
  the median interval for remarriage for previously
  divorced men is 2.3 years, for women its 2.5
  years. About thirty percent of all divorced
  persons remarry within twelve months of getting
  divorced ( Ganong And Coleman 1994 ) There are
  eleven million remarried households in the United
  States, one out of three Americans today is a
  step-parent, stepchild, step-sibling or some
  member of a step-family. Different households,
  different rules, different responsibilities.
  Integration from a former household to an
  integrated step-family household ( Visher, Visher
  and Palsy 2003 )

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Rivalries

• Rivalries between step-children can occur as
  well as between biological mother and
  step-mother.. Here involves disorganization,
  reorganization, sometimes relocation and
  reassigning of roles ( Berger 2000 )

35
Gay and Lesbian Families

• They learn to cope with living with stresses due
  to stigmatization within society. Prolonged
  unmarried status leads others to consider them
  erroneously as not fully functioning adults. Some
  families are childless, others have been formed
  after unsuccessful heterosexual marriages. Some
  parents may find comfort that their child is in a
  stable relationship, less likely to run the risk
  of indiscriminate sexual encounters. Other
  parents may be distressed since they can no
  longer ignore or perhaps deny their childs
  same-sex commitment. ( Fulmer 1999) argues that
  young lesbians are apt to bond earlier into
  stable couple hood than do gay men, because their
  identity is expressed as part of a partnership,
  they may be more likely than gay men to present
  themselves as a couple to their families. Many
  couples chose adopting a child and for some
  lesbian couples, artificial insemination or
  utilizing a surrogate becomes the mode of choice
  for having children.

36
Still experience marginalization

• Still experience marginalization by the greater
  heterosexual society, possess limited civil and
  legal rights, frequently face accusations of
  immorality , must deal with unwelcome and unsafe
  environments and the threat of violent assault (
  Laird 2003 ) In some states, it is unlawful for
  gay and lesbian couples to adopt., while other
  states will allow it. Adams and Benson (2005 ) if
  adoption occurs previously rejecting family
  members may more readily accept their new role (
  grandparents, aunts, uncles , perhaps having
  children makes the adopting couple seem more like
  a mainstream family.

37
(2000 ) census

• (2000 ) census revealed over a half a million
  same-sex unmarried households in the United
  States spread across all counties. In the United
  States. ( US Census Bureau 2003 ). Estimates that
  there are one to three million gay fathers (
  Silverstein And Quartironi 1996 ) and one to five
  million lesbian mothers who have given birth to
  children ( Gartrell 1996). Same sex couples who
  have children through donor insemination or
  through surrogate mothers there may be twelve to
  fifteen million children residing in homes with
  gay parents in the United States (Goldenberg and
  Goldenberg 2005). Nearly a quarter of all gay and
  lesbian couples are raising children (Adams and
  Benson 2005).

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There is the challenge

• There is the challenge of figuring out how to
  help their child fit into the mainstream with his
  or her peers while maintaining the parents
  sexual identity. (Carlson 1996 ). There is no
  evidence that gay or lesbian adults are less fit
  parents than their heterosexual counterparts (
  Gartrell, Deck, Rodas, Peyser and Banks 2005 ).
  Children of same-sex relationships rejecting
  their parents lifestyle may be especially
  fraught with conflict. The negative impact of
  marginalization, social disapproval, and
  discrimination by the majority culture should not
  be underestimated and has many effects similar to
  those experienced by other minority groups ( Snow
  2004 ).

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Family therapists,

• Family therapists, particularly structuralists (
  Salvador Minuchin ) and strategists ( Jay Haley,
  Chloe Madannes ) are especially interested in how
  families navigate transitional periods between
  stages.
• As Chloe Madannes says Family Therapy
  is screwball comedy in need of a plot twist.