SUMMARY

56 CHAPTER THREE

expectations, beliefs, values, attitudes, goals, and opportunities. Generally speaking, men and women, beginning early in life, learn different problem-solving techniques, cultivate different communication styles, develop different perspectives on sexuality, and hold different expectations for relationships. For example, while women traditionally are socialized to develop attitudes and behavior that derive from a primary value of affiliation (cooperation, nurturing, emotional expressiveness, compassion), men are likely to be raised to value autonomy (power, aggressiveness, competitiveness, rationality). While both sexes are subject to gender-role expectations, Hyde (1996) suggests that women are more apt to face social disapproval and punishment for refusing to acquiesce to socially determined rules and expectations. A woman may be pejoratively labeled as“ballsy”if she exhibits too much of what is considered the masculine characteristic of assertiveness. Similarly, men may be disparaged as “wimps” if they appear too passive, emotional, sensitive, or vulnerable—qualities that are considered the province of women. The pairing of an overtly “bossy”woman and a“meek, compliant” husband often provokes discomfort in others and subsequent hostile or denigrating remarks precisely because of its unexpected role reversal.

These gender differences in perception and behavior result from a complex interactive process between culture and biological forces. As Levant and Philpot (2002) observe, while the emergence of the “new woman” (assertive, self-sufficient, ambitious, rational, and competitive) has taken place in recent years, many of the traditional values of early gender socialization continue to exist and result in gender-role conflicts and gender identity struggles for many of today’s women. In some cases, society’s reluctance to accept change has hampered successful adaptation for the many women who strain to juggle work and family responsibilities, to say nothing of balancing expressions of aggression, competitiveness, and similar behaviors with what society has traditionally viewed as acceptable“feminine”behavior.

While men’s lives are apt to follow a more or less linear course, largely laid out to them early in life, women’s lives in general are more varied, with starts, stops, interruptions, and detours as they are called upon to accommodate to the needs of parents, husbands, children, and other family responsibilities (Shapiro, 1996; Bateson, 2001). Men and women typically enter marriage (or alternative relationships) and, later, parenthood with different ideas of what will be expected of them; not surprisingly, they have different family experiences. Traditionally, it has been the woman who makes the major adjustment to her husband’s lifestyle (Goodrich, Rampage, Ellman, & Halstead, 1988). While overlapping perceptions and behavior certainly exist, this gender dichotomy is likely to lead men and women to assign differing priorities to different values, personality characteristics, and behavior patterns. The roles of sex, physical and psychological intimacy, ease and frequency of open communication, relationships with family members, power in the family domain, emotional responsiveness, fidelity, household responsibilities, and financial concerns may all differ in the perceptions of husbands and wives (McGoldrick, 1999). Moreover, those differing experiences and expectations may lay the groundwork for future conflict, clashes resulting from their polarizing gender training, outlook, priorities, and senses of entitlement.

The family therapy field has been relatively slow in recognizing the extent to which the gender-role messages all of us experience during our lifetimes typically affect our current family life (Enns, 1997). As McGoldrick, Anderson, and Walsh (1989) point out, many early family therapists operated in a gender-free fashion, as if family

GENDER, CULTURE, AND ETHNICITY FACTORS IN FAMILY FUNCTIONING 57

members were interchangeable units of a system with equal power2 and control (and thus equal responsibility) over the outcome of interactions occurring within the family. The larger social, historical, economic, and political context of family life in a patriarchal society generally was overlooked; therapists by and large felt comfortable taking a neutral stance regarding a family’s gender arrangement, thus running the risk of tacitly approving traditional values oppressive to women. The overall result, typically, was for family therapists to perpetuate a myth of equality between men and women within a family seeking their help, ignoring political (that is, power-related) differences between men and women in most relationships (Hare-Mustin & Maracek, 1990).

However, beginning in the late 1970s an increasing number of family therapists, primarily women at first, began to challenge the underlying assumptions about gender that put women at a disadvantage; those assumptions, the therapists claimed, are the basis of the family therapy field (and the culture that created it). Several pioneering studies (Miller, 1976; Hare-Mustin, 1978; Gilligan, 1982; Goldner, 1985; Avis, 1985) faulted existing family therapy models for failing to pay sufficient attention to gender and power differences in male-female relationships, in effect ignoring how these gender patterns influence internal family interaction, the social context of family life. Not yet offering an alternative feminist family therapy position3—that was to come in the late 1980s—these critics nevertheless argued that family therapists, reflecting the larger society, often (wittingly or unwittingly) reinforced traditional gender roles (Avis, 1996). Underlying such formulations, they asserted, is an endorsement of traditional male/female roles that depreciate qualities (dependency, nurturing, emotional expressiveness) traditionally associated with women while extolling qualities (aggressiveness, competitiveness, rationality) held in high regard by men. Attempting to correct this gender bias, these feminist-informed therapists began to challenge the social, cultural, historic, economic, and political conditions that shaped not only the unique development and experiences of women but also their relationships with men.

Several early noteworthy undertakings deserve special attention. Jean Baker Miller (1976) at the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies at Wellesley College, seeking to advance a feminist theory of personality development, addressed the special role that relationships and connections to others play in a woman’s sense of her self. To Miller, the center of a woman’s development is in her connections to others. Unfortunately that development can become derailed, she contended, in the face of disconnections within families, leading to a woman’s sense of loss of empowerment.

2Power within a family typically is gained in a variety of ways: by gender, age, earning power, respect, or fear. In society at large, power is unequally distributed based on such factors as gender, class, race, religion, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, profession, and degree of physical ability (Fontes & Thomas, 1996). Although gender roles are in transition, and women have assumed powerful positions (business executives, astronauts, Supreme Court justices, foreign heads of state), Risman (1998) points out that overall men still have more power and status than women in all cultural groups.

3There is no single entity labeled feminist family therapy, since there are therapists practicing from all of the approaches we will consider later in this text who may regard themselves as feminist-informed and thus may take a variety of approaches with families. Rather, as Avis (1996) emphasizes, feminist family therapy is a “perspective on gender relations, a lens through which a therapist views his or her clients” (p. 223). Regardless of theoretical outlook, all address gender and power imbalances in their clients’ lives and all advocate empowerment and egalitarianism as goals (Worell & Remer, 1992; Enns, 1997).

GENDER, CULTURE, AND ETHNICITY FACTORS IN FAMILY FUNCTIONING 59

influence of broader social and cultural forces (Simon, 1997). By calling attention to the constraining experiences of women, the foursome has helped to develop a practical, nonsexist set of therapeutic interventions that take gender considerations into account.

Gender from a Feminist Perspective

Since the field of family therapy was largely defined by men in its earlier years, inevitably male language and attitudes dominated early theories. As McGoldrick, Anderson, and Walsh (1989) observe, one consequence was to consider certain behaviors (for example, emotionality, tenderness) as less mature or less desirable than other behaviors (rationality, objectivity); the result, they noted, was to “unwittingly promote family patterns in which women are devalued, blamed, and made to feel guilty for patterns and lives they have little freedom to change” (p. 10). Hoffman (1990) endorses the notion that a male bias was built into family concepts that take the heterosexual, patriarchal family as the norm, arguing that terms such as “overinvolved mother”or “enmeshed family”are sexist and tend to blame mothers in particular for family problems.

Feminist-informed therapists consider such cybernetic concepts as “circular causality”(to designate a repetitive pattern of mutually reinforcing behavior in a malefemale relationship) especially unacceptable. They insist this systems-based concept implies that each participant has equal power and control in a transaction, which they dispute. Particularly in the case of physical abuse (rape, battering, incest) by men against women, they reject the cybernetic notion that both partners are engaging in a mutual causal pattern and that it is the subsequent behavioral sequence, for which they are both responsible, that results in the violent episode (Goldner, Penn, Sheinberg, & Walker, 1990).

Critical of the implication that no one therefore is to blame—a violation without a violator—thus clearing the aggressor of responsibility, feminists emphasize greater masculine power in human relationships, the superior physical strength of men, and the corresponding vulnerability of women. They contend that the cybernetic epistemology tends to blame the victim for colluding in her own victimization either as a co-responsible participant or by remaining in the relationship. Avis (1996) points out that implying that all interactional behavior originates within the interaction itself makes it impossible to search for causes outside the interaction; here she cites such external possible causes as “cultural beliefs about appropriate gender behavior, a preexisting propensity to use violent behavior, or differences in power with which each partner enters the relationship”(p. 225).

A woman, according to Gilligan (1982), tends to define herself within the context of relationships, on which she in turn relies (while men are more likely to value autonomy, separation, and independence). That is, a woman’s sense of self and of morality are likely to be interwoven with caring for other people, and to be embedded in interdependence with them. Gilligan contends that male-dominated theories of psychological development have tended to downplay or devalue that need for affiliation or relatedness, viewing it as a frailty rather than an expression of strength. She believes that such theories, because of their inherent male bias, equate maturity with independence, rationality, individuality, achievement, and action. Such qualities as caring for the needs of others, warmth, compassion, and emotional expressiveness, which our society defines as necessary for feminine behavior, are at the same time

62 CHAPTER THREE

resumed careers or other activities outside the home. If serious marital tension leads to divorce, as it sometimes does at this stage, McGoldrick contends that women are especially vulnerable. Not only are they less likely than men to remarry, but their embeddedness in relationships, their orientation toward interdependence, their lifelong subordination of achievement to caring for others, and their conflicts over competitive success may make them especially susceptible to despair.

Finally, since women are apt to outlive men, many may find themselves alone and financially impoverished. Very likely they will turn to their daughters (or perhaps daughters-in-law) for support and care, since women in our society shoulder most of the eldercare, with the possible exception of managing finances for the elderly.

Men’s Studies and Gender-Role Awareness

To be gender-sensitive (or feminist-informed) is to be aware of the differences in behavior, attitudes, and socialization experiences of growing up masculine or feminine, especially differences in power, status, position, and privilege within the family and in society in general. Brooks (1992) observes that past“gender-blindness”on the part of family therapists was first detected by women—not surprising, considering they were most likely, at least overtly, to be harmed by sexist attitudes—and thus focused principally on the woman’s perspective. However, he reminds us that men too have been subjected to substantial role constraints and disadvantages as a result of their masculine socialization experiences. They too may have suffered from sexist therapeutic interventions that have condoned restricting men to a narrow range of family roles (such as breadwinner) while robbing them of the experience of participating in roles (say, child rearing) usually assigned to women. Levant and Philpot (2002) suggest that this type of gender-role restraint is inherently traumatic to men because it truncates their natural emotionality. Brooks (1992) contends that just as the feminist perspective has started to be incorporated into family therapy practices, so should the perspectives of “men’s studies”theorists.

Men’s studies, a recent addition to the field of gender examination in our society, attempts to extend feminist explorations by attending to role restrictions in men’s lives. O’Neil (1982) draws attention to the traditional “masculine mystique”that programs men toward curtailed emotional expressiveness, obsession with achievement and success, restricted affectionate behavior, and concern with power, control, and competition. Homophobia is often a characteristic of such a mystique, resulting in a man’s fear that becoming close to another man might cause others to consider him gay. Proof of masculinity from this perspective often derives from the ability to display power and control, most likely at the expense of women and children.

Doyle (1994) identifies five elements that further define common male genderrole socialization experiences: (a) an antifeminine element, in which young boys learn to avoid in their own behavior anything considered feminine; (b) a success element that values competition and winning; (c) an aggressive element, physically fighting when necessary to defend oneself; (d) a sexual element, the belief that men should be preoccupied with sex; and (e) a self-reliant element, calling for men to be independent and self-sufficient and not to seek help from others. In areas ranging from job performance to sexual performance, athletic skills or mental alertness, men typically compare themselves with other men and concern themselves about how they rank (Philpot, Brooks, Lusterman, & Nutt, 1997).

GENDER, CULTURE, AND ETHNICITY FACTORS IN FAMILY FUNCTIONING 65

provoked it”). Brooks (1992) is especially concerned that the treatment of violence in men ignores the cultural context—and societal sanction—in which violence in men takes place, since for many men socialization toward violence is part of their upbringing. He argues that to be successful, any antiviolence program must be gender-sensitive and include the preventive antiviolence resocialization of men so that they will not rely on violence as an interpersonal strategy. As he observes (Brooks, 1992):

Just as young girls deserve the opportunity for socialization into achievement and self sufficiency, boys deserve to be freed from the extreme emphasis on physical violence and emotional toughness as proof of masculine worth. (p. 31)

In the previous example, a social worker attempts to deal with a difficult case of wife abuse, using a genogram (see fuller discussion in Chapter 8) to help the couple recognize their family histories in regard to the use of alcohol, and in the husband’s case, of violence.

Therapy from a Gender-Sensitive Perspective

Gender-sensitive family therapy is intended to liberate and empower both male and female clients, enabling them to move beyond prescribed roles determined by their biological status to ones in which they can exercise choice. In practice this means overcoming internalized social norms and expectations for every client; gender stereotypes in male as well as female clients require examination (Good, Gilbert, & Scher, 1990). Therapy that is gender-aware is action oriented, not merely nonsexist in viewpoint (see Table 3.1).

Whereas nonsexist counseling attempts to avoid reinforcing stereotypical thinking regarding gender roles and power differentials in most male-female relationships, proactive gender-sensitive family therapy goes beyond this goal, deliberately helping clients recognize the limitations on their perceived alternatives imposed by internalizing these stereotypes. As Lewis (1992) observes, clients are better helped when they

Text not available due to copyright restrictions