Families That Express Diversity: Latino Families, GayLesbian Families

1
Families That Express Diversity Latino Families,
Gay-Lesbian Families

• Cultural information enhances options and
  broadens perspectives for therapists dealing with
  Latino families.
• A number of issues come to play
• Cultural negotiation
• Identity
• Personalism
• Socioeconomic class
• The extended family
• Prejudice
• Discrimination

2
Common clinical errors and bicultural narrative

• Three assumptions about diversity in Latino
  families needs to be emphasized
• Diversity in family interaction needs to be
  understood in a cultural context
• Diversity within and between Latino groups once
  clearly addressed, often breaks with ethnocentric
  stereotypical views
• And their absurd implications
• Diversity on the personal, familial and cultural
  levels expands and changes with the narratives of
  meaning.

3
Culture can be as simple as a song or as complex
as a symphony

• Processing, immigration experiences with the
  family can be an essential part of helping
  families adapt to United States culture and help
  with needed generational changes and
  reorganization ( Falicov, 1998, Minuchin 1980 ).
• Personalism is a concept developed in Latin
  America in response to the socio cultural caste
  system.
• Personalism or a sense of uniqueness and
  personal goodness, was at the core of
  interactions between people in the community (
  Ho, 1987 ). Personalism, is essentially a group
  norm that emphasizes the relationship formation
  must be established before a task can be
  accomplished ( Flores 1994, Levine and Padilla
  1980 ).

4
Personalism

• Personalism is an inner quality of respect and
  dignity. In contrast, majority culture can
  assign goodness or value to a person based on his
  or her actions. The accomplishment of a task, not
  the persons goodness, is what is most valued.
  The Latino concept here is that when a person or
  the community accepts me as the trustworthy
  person, then I have permission to accomplish
  something.

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Therapists

• Therapists can help Latino clients understand
  that in the dominant United States culture
  usually the task or an accomplishment comes
  before a relationship is given an opportunity to
  form.
• There is a need to distinguish between
  immigrant and United States born Hispanics.
  Central American and Cuban immigrants come to
  this country in order to escape political
  oppression and yet many remain in poverty.

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Due to acculturation

• Due to acculturation and economics immigrants
  and United States born Hispanics have different
  perspectives different needs and sometimes they
  may be from the same family. Poor immigrants
  experience psychological distress, including
  cultural shock, marginal and social alienation,
  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, psychosomatic
  symptoms such as palpitations, dizziness,
  insomnia as well as anxiety, depression created
  by uprooted values and exposure to life in the
  United States ( Falicov, 1996 ).

7
American born Hispanics

• American born Hispanics experience a variety of
  psychological states that will vary according to
  such factors as their income, degree of
  discrimination experienced, stress levels at work
  and at home, degree of bicultural ability.
  Low-income and unicultural Hispanics may suffer
  in ways similar to their immigrant counterparts.
• Some barrios (neighborhoods ), border towns,
  and inner cities have situations so desperate
  that social services is the first call of action
  before therapy can be attempted.

8
The use of the Post-Modern Social Constructivist
approach

• The use of the Post-Modern Social Constructivist
  approach to reconstruct decisions and maintain
  core Latino values.
• For example, the therapist can reframe
  living at home as one way of choosing to remain
  connected in a Latino way (i.e. possibly for a
  female client ). Its a choice rather than a
  requirement. If she chooses to leave home rather
  than stay, she remains true to the essence of her
  Latino heritage by maintaining strong familial
  connections processing whats important to the
  family culture.

9
Alpha Error

• Alpha Error- A Therapist assumes incorrectly
  that culture is central to the presenting problem
  ( Hardy Laszloffy 1994 ). A therapist may ask
  about culture when the client has made no
  reference to culture as being part of the problem
  or blames culture as the reason for the clients
  problem.
• The most obvious blunders are when a family
  is dealing with the death of a child, a financial
  problem, a divorce, a natural disaster, or any
  variety of crises.

10
Most common Alpha errors

• First case when a therapist cannot help the
  client distinguish between a situation where a
  person from another cultural group is just being
  rude, indifferent of self-centeredness and when
  that persons behavior is dues to cultural
  prejudice.

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Second case

• Second case when a therapist does not know how
  to help the client process whether a situation is
  prejudiced. The therapist can be reluctant to ask
  about prejudice, fearing he or she may appear
  prejudiced. The therapist may avoid gathering
  information from the client. In this case, the
  client is uncertain about a situation, yet jumps
  to the conclusion that the situation was a result
  of prejudice. Usually this is a client who was
  not affirmed when prejudice was in play and has
  learned to distrust situations using the ethnic
  card to escape responsibility.

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Therapists themselves

• Therapists themselves must not jump to a
  prejudiced conclusion without helping the client
  evaluate the pros and cons of a particular
  situation.
• Third case occurs when a well-meaning
  therapists holds an internal residual echo, a
  dominant Anglo cultural voice that maintains
  Hispanic culture itself is what is holding the
  client back from success and life.

13
Beta errors

• These occur when culture is central to the
  presenting problem but is ignored and dismissed
  as unrelated by the therapist ( Hardy Laszloffy
  1994 ). This type of error can pack a fatal blow
  to self-esteem and create confusion in personal
  judgment. If a person is ignored and purposefully
  not praised for a job well done, he or she
  develops doubts. This is especially painful when
  he or she sees others less competent advancing
  while he or she is not encouraged or given merit
  for work.

14
Latino families

• Latino families often express their greatest
  fear about the future as the fear of loosing
  connection with each other. The extended family
  is probably the most valuable, cherished and
  sacred characteristic that Mexican-American and
  other Latinos hold. This value appears to
  transcend national boundaries, forming a global
  community, underlying a fundamental similarity in
  Latino people.

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Primos

• Primos-cousins Primos-Hermanos,
  Primos-Hermanas- cousins-brothers or
  cousins-sisters, Tias ( aunts ), Tios ( uncles )
  Padrinos and Madrinas ( grandparents ).

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Biocultural model ( Ramirez 1983

• Biocultural model ( Ramirez 1983 ) Hispanics who
  are bilingual and/or bicultural have stronger
  ties with their culture and have a stronger sense
  of family identity ( Elizondo, 1992 Montiel,
  1978 Ortiz Arce, 1984 Ramirez, 1983 ). These
  strong ties are associated with better academic
  achievement ( Kimbell, 1968 ) and identity
  formation. Bicultural individuals and families
  are more competent and less anxious than
  Hispanics who attempt to give up their culture (
  Laframbose, Coleman and Gerton, 1993 ).

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The less connected a person is with his or her
culture

• The less connected a person is with his or her
  culture , the more poorly he or she does in
  attempting and succeeding in the United States (
  Montiel, 1978 ). The stronger a family or person
  identifies with his or her culture the more
  positive he or she feels about it and the better
  he or she does in life and with his or her own
  family.

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Fontes and Thomas ( 1993 ) Bicultural identity

• Encourage clients to value and be proud of their
  cultural background.
• Fostering self-esteem by acknowledging clients
  cultural uniqueness.
• Validating clients cultural values and
  experience.
• Acknowledging clients attempts to preserve and
  express their cultural traditions and practices.
• Encouraging the strengths of the clients
  culture.
• Recognizing clients bicultural competence.
• Acknowledging the social forces of discrimination
  that may have led them to positions of reduced
  power in society and contributed to their
  presenting issues.

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Facilitate a Bicultural narrative

• Facilitate clients attempts to craft their own
  definition of themselves as bilingual, bicultural
  persons.
• Enhance clients ability to go back and forth
  between the two world views with ease and
  enjoyment without a dualistic focus.
• Help family members understand that the new
  generation will define what it is to be Hispanic
  that is class and gender.
• Encourage clients to continue their career and
  educational pursuits based on their
  self-evaluation while acknowledging that they met
  discouragement and discrimination.
• Explore how social class and poverty issues
  within the culture can lead to family and
  community problems.
• Validate strong, emotional, cultural, linguistic
  family ties as healthy.
• Consider grief issues for immigrants as a natural
  process.
• Match language wherever possible.
• Help distinguish family of origin issues from
  cultural ones.

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Gay and Lesbian Relationships

• Forming an intimate relationship in environments
  characterized by oppression means that both
  partners are likely to be dealing with some
  internalized homonegativity as well as
  experiencing fears of how the external world,
  made up of family members, friends or co-workers
  will respond ( Atkinson, 1998 ).
• The absence of role models cause sexual minority
  couples either to try to adapt the relationship
  model created by the non-Gay persons or come up
  with their own notion of how their relationships
  will look and work ( Saunders, 2000 ).

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Researchers

• Researchers estimate that Gays in relationships
  range between 40 and 60 for men and 45 and
  80 for Lesbians. Many of these relationships
  will be lifelong ( Blumstein Schwartz, 1983
  McWhirter Mattison, 1984).

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Gay and Lesbian relationships

• Gay and Lesbian relationships do not differ from
  heterosexual relationships in terms of
  relationship satisfaction, and perceived levels
  of love ( Peplau Cochran, 1990 ).
• Further these relationships show normative
  changes over time, just like those of non-Gay
  persons ( Klinger, 1996 Kurdek,1995 ).

23
Gay and Lesbian couples

• Gay and Lesbian couples struggle to determine
  their own anniversary date. Did the relationship
  begin at the first date, first kiss, first sexual
  intercourse, or the day when they move in
  together?

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Oppression

• Oppression-some couples cut themselves off from
  the mainstream by isolating themselves in Gay and
  Lesbian ghettos where they feel more free. Other
  attempts to merge their relationships into their
  larger lives but inevitably face the question of
  bringing their partners to the office Christmas
  party or high school class reunion. Still others
  spend most of their time together and rarely let
  others be close to them.

25
Some see access to marriage

• Some see access to marriage a constitutional
  right and push for changes in state and federal
  laws. Others firmly believe that extending
  marriage benefits to Gay and Lesbian persons will
  tear the fabric that holds our social
  organizations together.

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The Defense Of Marriage Act-

• The Defense Of Marriage Act- This law permits
  the right of individual states not to honor Gay
  and Lesbian marriages that might become legal in
  other states or countries.
• (2000) the State Of Vermont recognized Gay and
  Lesbian relationships and granted them the
  equivalent rights and responsibilities. A court
  order was necessary to require Atlanta, Ga city
  officials to implement domestic partnership
  legislation that had been passed by the city
  council.

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With some Gay and Lesbian relationships

• With some Gay and Lesbian relationships there is
  the absence of extended support, dual-careers
  issues and concerns, problems with intimacy.
  Given the number of Gay men and Lesbian women who
  need but do not seek mental health services, the
  odds of finding an appropriate partner can be
  low. Often, the anxiety about being single can
  drive Gay men and Lesbian women prematurely into
  relationships that have little chance of success
  (Cole, 1999).

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Its increasingly common

• Its increasingly common to see couples
  celebrating ten, twenty or thirty years together.
  This endurance makes a strong statement about
  their ability to maneuver creatively through
  these challenges.