The Effect Of A Marriage Enrichment Program On Marital Satisfaction And Gender Role Attitudes Among Africian American Couples

Filling a long-recognized need to help social workers develop a multicultural world view that responds to the increasingly complex environments in which they work with clients, this volume explores how the theoretical perspective of the ecosystem has been applied in the delivery of culturally competent social work services in a wide variety of fields of practice and settings.

This volume traces the modern critical and performance history of this play, one of Shakespeare's most-loved and most-performed comedies. The essay focus on such modern concerns as feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.

In a time when the American family has undergone dramatic evolution, change among African Americans has been particularly rapid and acute. African Americans now marry later than any other major ethnic group, and while in earlier decades nearly 95 percent of black women eventually married, today 30 percent are expected to remain single. The black divorcee rate has increased nearly five-fold over the last thirty years, and is double the rate of the general population. The result, according to The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans, is a greater share of family responsibilities being borne by women, an increased vulnerability to poverty and violence, and an erosion of community ties. The original, often controversial, research presented in this book links marital decline to a pivotal drop in the pool of marriageable black males. Increased joblessness has robbed many black men of their economic viability, rendering them not only less desirable as mates, but also less inclined to take on the responsibility of marriage. Higher death rates resulting from disease, poor health care, and violent crime, as well as evergrowing incarceration rates, have further depleted the male population. Editors M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan and the contributors take a hard look at the effects of chronic economic instability and cultural attitudes toward the male role as family provider. Their cogent historical analyses suggest that the influence of external circumstances over marriage preferences stems in large part from the profoundly damaging experience of slavery. This book firmly positions declining marriage within an ominous cycle of economic and social erosion. The authors propose policies for relieving the problems associated the changing marital behavior, focusing on support for single parent families, public education, and increased employment for African American men.

This unprecedented volume provides a primer on diverse couples and families—one of the most numerous and fastest-growing populations in the United States—illustrating the unique challenges they face to thrive in various cultural and social surroundings. In Diversity in Couple and Family Therapy: Ethnicities, Sexualities, and Socioeconomics, a clinical psychologist and couples and family therapist with nearly two decades' experience leads a team of experts in addressing contemporary elements of diversity as they relate to the American family and covering key topics that all Americans face when establishing their identities, including racial and ethnic identity, gender and sexual orientation identity, religious and spiritual identity, and identity intersections and alternatives. Moreover, it includes chapters on cross-cultural assessment of health and pathology and tailoring treatment to diversity. Every chapter includes vignettes that serve to illustrate the nuances of and solutions to the concerns and issues, as well as the strengths and resilience often inherent in diverse couples or families. Effective methods of coping with stereotypes, intergenerational trauma, discrimination, and social and structural disparities are presented, as are ways to assess and empower couples and families. This text includes experiences and traditions of subgroups that typically receive little attention from being seen as too common, such as white and Christian families, or from being seen as too uncommon, such as couples and families from specific Native American tribes and multiracial couples and families. Thus, it addresses the curricular changes needed to master the diversity found in contemporary American couples and families. The text offers a holistic perspective on diverse couples and families that is consistent with the increasing prominence of models that transcend individual diagnoses and biology to include social factors and context. Theory, policy, prevention, assessment, treatment, and research considerations are included in each chapter. Topics include African American, Asian American, Latino, Native American, white, biracial/multiracial, intercultural, LGBT, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim couples and families as well as diverse family structures. The depth of every chapter includes attention to subgroups within each category, such as African American and Caribbean couples and families, as well as those who represent the intersection between varying oppressed identities, such as an intercultural gay family, or a poor, homeless interracial couple. Additionally, each chapter provides a review section with condensed and easy-to-understand summaries of the key take-away lessons.

This exciting new text on counseling African American couples outlines critical components to providing culturally-sensitive treatment. Built around a framework that examines African American couples’ issues as well as the specific contextual factors that can negatively impact their relationships, it: • Addresses threats to love and intimacy for Black couples • Provides culturally relevant, strengths-based approaches and assessment practices • Includes interesting case studies at the conclusion of each chapter that illustrate important concepts. The chapters span the current state of couple relationships; readers will find information for working with lesbians and gays in relationships, pastoral counseling, and intercultural Black couples. There is also a chapter for non-Black therapists who work with Black clients. Dispersed throughout the book are interviews with prominent African American couples’ experts: Dr. Chalandra Bryant, relationship expert Audrey B. Chapman, Dr. Daryl Rowe and Dr. Sandra Lyons-Rowe, and Dr. Thomas Parham. They provide personal insight on issues such as the strengths African Americans bring to relationships, their skills and struggles, and gender and class considerations. This must-read book will significantly help you and your clients.