Mexican American and Other Hispanic Couples’ Relationship Dynamics: A Review to Inform Interventions Aimed at Promoting Healthy Relationships

Public policy initiatives have set out to promote healthy relationships among low-income racial and ethnic-minority couples. Interventions used, however, are based on decades of research with primarily White, middle-class, college-educated couples and have yielded disappointing results. The aim of this literature review is to provide the reader with the current state of knowledge on relationship dynamics among the fastest growing ethnic-minority group in the United States: Mexican American (MA) Hispanics and other Hispanic subgroups. Thirty-seven empirical journal articles focusing on the following domains of interest were reviewed: (1) patterns of union formation and dissolution, (2) ideals and views about marriage, (3) relationship satisfaction and quality, (4) communication and conflict, and (5) unique themes. MA couples have higher marital rates, a decreased risk of marital dissolution, and report greater relationship satisfaction than African American couples. First-generation and less acculturated MA couples have a decreased risk of experiencing marital dissolution and dissatisfaction than second- and third-generation MA couples. Cultural variables such as family values and religion seem to play an important role in MA and other Hispanic couples’ relationship satisfaction and stability. In the interest of enhancing the effectiveness of intervention efforts directed at these couples, future research should focus on elucidating the mechanisms by which acculturation impacts MA couple functioning, examining the impact of other facets of relationship quality (e.g., emotional intimacy, support) on marital satisfaction, broadening samples to include other Hispanic subgroups, and exploring the types of services and method of delivery that MA and other Hispanic couples would like to receive. Limitations and strengths of the existing literature are discussed.     

Relationship education research: current status and future directions

The overarching aim of this article is to review the research on relationship education programs and approaches that has been published or accepted for publication since the last review article in 2003. This article provides a critical overview of the relationship education field and sets an agenda for research and practice for the next decade. A theme weaved throughout the article is the ways in which relationship education is similar and different from couples therapy, and we conclude that there can be a synergistic, healthy marriage between the two. We then provide recommendations for future directions for research in the relationship education field. Finally, the coauthors comment on our experiences in both the relationship education field and the couples therapy field as both researchers and interventionists.     

Marriage Expectations Among African American Couples in Early Adulthood: A Dyadic Analysis

Using Family and Community Health Study data consisting of 168 unmarried, primarily African American couples, the current study sought to understand the dyadic interplay among school, work, and partner-specific marriage expectations in early adulthood. Drawing on the economic prospects, adult transitions, and work - family literatures, the authors hypothesized and found ample support that expectations to marry a romantic partner were linked not only to one's own school and work-related experiences but also to those of a partner. These associations held while controlling for relationship satisfaction, general views of marriage, and other covariates that have been posited to explain racial inequalities in relationship and marriage patterns. Furthermore, the authors found that actor covariates of marital expectations differed from partner covariates, a finding that highlights the advantages of dyadic analyses in helping researchers understand marriage as both a developmental and interpersonal process.     

Is Communication a Mechanism of Relationship Education Effects Among Rural African Americans?

Enhancing communication as a means of promoting relationship quality has been increasingly questioned, particularly for couples at elevated sociodemographic risk. In response, the current study investigated communication change as a mechanism accounting for changes in relationship satisfaction and confidence among 344 rural, predominantly low‐income African American couples with an early adolescent child who participated in a randomized controlled trial of the Protecting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) program. Approximately 9 months after baseline assessment, intent‐to‐treat analyses indicated that ProSAAF couples demonstrated improved communication, satisfaction, and confidence when compared with couples in the control condition. Improvements in communication mediated ProSAAF effects on relationship satisfaction and confidence; conversely, neither satisfaction nor confidence mediated intervention effects on changes in communication. These results underscore the short‐term efficacy of a communication‐focused, culturally sensitive prevention program and suggest that communication is a possible mechanism of change in relationship quality among low‐income African American couples.     

Can Marriage and Relationship Education Be an Effective Policy Tool to Help Low-Income Couples Form and Sustain Healthy Marriages and Relationships? A Review of Lessons Learned

This review summarizes and synthesizes what researchers and practitioners have learned about the potential of public policy support for marriage and relationship education (MRE) to help lower income individuals and couples form and sustain healthy marriages and relationships. In short, this review documents modest, early evidence that low-income couples participate in well-designed MRE programs when they are offered, enjoy the educational experience, and report that the program is helpful. Practitioners have been going through a fast and steep learning process to figure out how best to recruit and maintain participation and adapt curricula to meet unique needs and situations. The evidence from the early outcome studies provides some support for the notion that MRE programs can have positive, modest effects on low-income couples' relationships, at least in the short run. However, much more research is needed to answer this question more definitively. Fortunately, more high-quality evaluation research will be coming over the next few years.     

Working With Urban,African American Fathers: The Importance of Service Provision,Joining, Accountability,the Father–Child Relationship,and Couples Work

Urban, African American fathers have been a difficult population for social workers and other helping professionals to effectively serve. This article, based on interviews with front-line African American service professionals at a father-focused program, who also participated in writing this article, provides information about and suggestions for working with young fathers. Providing father-friendly service, joining with fathers, holding them accountable for their behavior, and addressing their relationship with their child and the mother of their child through couples work are suggested, along with other interventions.     

Perceptions of Emotional Closeness and Commitment Among African American Couples: Implications for Promoting Relationship Stability

This study investigated how married and cohabiting African Americans define and experience emotional closeness and commitment because these processes have been shown to be directly linked to relationship stability. Thirty married and 30 cohabiting African American couples participated. Couples were between the ages of 21 and 45 years and had been in their relationship between 3 and 15 years. Interviews were conducted with the couples in their homes and were aimed at yielding a co-construction of couples’ views of these constructs. Specifically, this co-construction involved an examination of the ways men and women in married and cohabiting relationships define and experience emotional closeness and commitment. Special attention was devoted to examining the themes elicited from these interviews and illuminate the specific ways in which married and cohabiting African American couples consider emotional closeness and commitment. In general, few differences were apparent in their perceptions of emotional closeness. However, married couples were more likely to report that commitment played a large role in their decision to be together. Conversely, cohabiting couples expressed different views of commitment, often stating that commitment played a minimal role in their relationship or that they experienced commitment in ways that were not linked to the legal affirmation of their relationship. Implications for future research and practice include the importance of pinpointing the individual and cultural deterrents that affect the relationship stability of low income African American couples.     

Challenging implicit bias: preparing students to practice with African American families

ABSTRACT

The disparity of African American families in the foster care system is a concern in the field of child welfare services and the social work profession. African American families experience unique challenges related to discriminatory practices and implicit biases in the child welfare system and by mandated reporters. To address these inequalities, state and local agencies have implemented prevention and intervention services to support minority families. Additionally, child welfare agencies have invested in professional development training for their workers to alleviate possible intolerant practices. This article describes implicit biases and considers how they could contribute to the disparity of African American families involved in the child welfare system. Furthermore, the article presents approaches to help social work students to identify and challenge their implicit biases to support culturally sensitive practices while working with African American families. It concludes with implications for social work education.     

A Culture of Mutual Support: The Impact of Giving and Receiving of Practical and Emotional Support on African American Marital Satisfaction

Although the literature has discussed the extensive family network ties of African Americans and its implications for marital satisfaction, few studies incorporate primarily African American samples in studies of marital satisfaction and social networks. This study draws on a sample of African American married couples from the National Survey of American Life and explores the impact of mutual support, giving and receiving of practical and emotional support, on the marital satisfaction of husbands and wives. Results from the ordinal logistic regression analyses reveal that emotional support received from family and support given to friends are significantly related to husbands’ marital satisfaction whereas emotional support received from family and negative interaction with family contributes to wives’ marital satisfaction. Research and practice implications with African American married couples are discussed.     

Trainee multicultural case conceptualization ability and couples therapy

Previous literature on the assessment of multicultural counseling competence has been concerned only with counselors' abilities when working with individual clients. We expanded this line of research by investigating trainees' multicultural case conceptualization ability in the context of working with couples. Despite the fact that trainees self-reported a high level of multicultural competency, trainees were largely inattentive to racial factors in their case conceptualization responses to vignettes involving both African American and European American clients presenting for couples therapy. On the whole, despite didactic, clinical, and extracurricular training in multiculturalism, marriage and family therapy trainees did not sufficiently incorporate cultural factors into their clinical case conceptualizations. We discuss implications for teaching, practice, and future research.     

Untangling Inequalities: Gender,Race, and Socioeconomic Differences in Depression1

In their important paper, Link and Phelan (1995) argue that socioeconomic status is a fundamental cause of variation in well‐being and that the social resources associated with socioeconomic status constitute the fundamental cause of variation in well‐being. In this article, I elaborate on the fundamental cause perspective in three respects: by suggesting an expansion of the definition of resources, by examining how race and gender influence variation in the relationship between resources and mental health, and by developing a model of the relationship between social class, race, and gender that takes account of the potential asymmetry in the influence of resources across race and gender. Using the 2003 National Health Interview Survey and ordinary least squares regression, I find that black and white men are significantly less depressed than black and white women. However, women accrue greater mental health advantage from marriage, home ownership, and education. African‐American men experience less depression as a result of being unmarried and non‐Hispanic white women experience less benefit from full‐time employment, relative to African‐American women and men. Results are discussed in terms of implications for future research on race, class, and gender differences in health.     

Reducing Risk for Youth Violence by Promoting Healthy Development with Pyramid Mentoring: A Proposal for a Culturally Centered Group Mentoring

This article proposes ways to promote healthy psychosocial development among at-risk young African American males with a multigenerational culturally centered group mentoring intervention. The potential for addressing commonalities of risk factors for both internalized and externalized responses to environment stressors is discussed. The authors propose an innovative group intervention that is influenced by social learning theory, the triadic theory of influence, identity, and cognitive development theory. The article also highlights research that suggests benefits of culturally and therapeutically centered group mentoring. The focus of the proposed intervention is on psychosocial assets that are utilized to nurture life skills developed within the framework of a culturally centered multigenerational group mentoring process called pyramid mentoring.     

Not just maternalism: marriage and fatherhood in American welfare policy

The United States' 1996 welfare reforms are often interpreted as a historical break in transitioning from supporting motherhood to commodifiying women's labor. However, this cannot account for welfare reform's emphasis upon heterosexual marriage and fatherhood promotion. The paper traces continuities and shifts in over a century of familial regulation through American welfare policy, specifying the place of marriage promotion within welfare policy. Up until 1996, families were key sites of intervention through which the American welfare state was erected, especially through single women as mothers - not wives. However, as of the 1960s, concern with African American men's "failed" familial commitments turned policymakers toward concern over marriage promotion for women and men. While marriage "disincentives" for aid recipients were lifted in the 1960s, the 1996 reforms structured a new form of nuclear family governance actively promoting marriage rooted in, but distinct from, the previous. Given the historical absence of welfare policies available to poor men, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families' (TANF) marriage promotion policies have positioned poor women as nodes connecting the state to poor men, simultaneously structuring poor women as breadwinners, mothers, and wives. Recent welfare reform has also started to target poor men directly, especially in fatherhood and marriage promotion initiatives. The article highlights how, in addition to workfare policies, marriage promotion is a neoliberal policy shifting risk to the shoulders of the poor, aiming to produce "strong families" for the purposes of social security.     

Substance Abuse Treatment with Adolescent African American Males

Abstract

The use of substances by adolescent African American males is of particular concern because of the damaging effect that drug abuse has not only on the individual and his family but also on the African American community. The literature is scant regarding treatment services and few therapeutic interventions have been specifically designed to holistically meet the needs of these youth. This article proposes the use of Afrocentricity and Reality Therapy as therapeutic bases for substance abuse treatment with this population.     

Marginalization by the Marginalized: Race,Homophobia, Heterosexism,and “the Problem of the 21st Century”

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States. This historic election occurred 105 years after W. E. B. Du Bois proclaimed in the introduction to The Souls of Black Folk, “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line” (1994, p. v). According to Du Bois, the problem of the color line is racialized segregation and oppression. This article posits, however, that “the problem of the 21st century” is the further marginalization within already marginalized groups, and this article focuses on the history and occurrence of homophobia and heterosexism within the African American community as well as its links to gender discrimination. Special focus is placed on the Black Church as a possible causal factor for homophobia and heterosexism in the African American community. Possible solutions are also proposed, which consist of a nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage and African American leaders actively and publicly supporting lesbian, gay, and bisexual members of the African American community.     

Exploratory Analysis of Factors Associated with Participation in Self-Directed and Traditional Marriage and Relationship Education

Although self-directed marriage and relationship education (MRE) has the potential to reach a larger or different audience than traditional MRE, little has been done to examine the characteristics of self-directed MRE participants. This study examined whether various individual, couple, family, and sociocultural context variables predicted participation in both self-directed and traditional MRE programs. A series of logistic regressions were conducted on a cross-sectional data set. Different factors predicted participation for each intervention. For self-directed programs, factors predictive of involvement included older age, religiosity, higher education, being more self-regulated, having a neurotic partner, more open relationship boundaries, a history of divorce, more relationship problems, and more family-of-origin problems. A wider range of factors predicted participation in traditional programs. Some factors increasing odds for participation in one intervention decreased odds in the other. Implications for MRE are discussed. This study provides evidence that some higher risk couples may choose self-directed MRE over more traditional programs.     

Personality Similarity-Dissimilarity and Underlying Psychopathology in Couples Seeking Marital Counseling

Two hypotheses related to the conceptualization of marriage as an interaction relationship and marital dysfunction as interpersonal pathology were tested empirically. Thirty first-married couples asking specifically for marital counseling from a community counseling service were administered Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. Husband and wife inter-correlations on each of the 16 first order and 2 second order factors were derived. Male and female mean sten scores on Neuroticism and Psychoticism were also derived. Data analysis revealed support for the second but not the first hypothesis.     

Revising Premarital Relationship Interventions for the Next Generation

In this article, we review research on contemporary social trends that influence the next generation's ability to form and sustain a healthy marriage. As a result, we argue for greater attention to premarital interventions for engaged couples to help the next generation address the potential challenges created by these trends. After we briefly review the current state of premarital education and counseling, we examine four general, interrelated social trends: individualism and commitment ambivalence, changing attitudes about marriage, premarital relationship histories, and the omnipresent media environment. In addition, we offer four general proposals corresponding to these trends that we believe will enhance the future effectiveness of premarital interventions. We urge premarital educators and counselors to evaluate their current interventions with these proposals in mind.     

Perceived Admiration and Transition to Parenthood for Black and White Married Couples

Perceived admiration was examined in this study as a mediator of marital quality and transition to parenthood among Black American and White American couples. Positive and negative dimensions of marital quality were assessed for husbands (n = 148) and wives (n = 155) during their 1st and 3rd years of marriage in a large-scale survey. Findings revealed that transitioning Black American husbands reported lower marital tension than transitioning White American husbands. Perceived admiration mediated the link between transition to parenthood and marital well-being for wives, and between transition to parenthood and marital tension for husbands. Results suggest that perceived admiration plays a critical role in understanding the transition to parenthood, regardless of race. Insights are offered for practitioners who provide relationship or parental counseling and education to couples during the transition to parenthood.     

Marriage Promotion Policy and Family Inequality

In 1996, Congress overhauled welfare policy to promote marriage and work as ways to lift American families out of poverty. Almost all of the funding for governmental marriage promotion has been devoted to relationship skills programs intended to help couples strengthen their relationships, encourage them to marry, and thereby prevent poverty. Marriage promotion policy has sparked intense debate, especially over the connection between marriage and family inequality. While advocates of the policy argue the government should promote marriage because it fosters social and economic well‐being, critics challenge the assumption that marriage itself causes these benefits or will help lift poor families out of poverty. Recent sociological research on why poor and low‐income couples marry less finds that they tend not to marry if they cannot meet a specific economic threshold. This suggests that rather than promoting the view that relationship skills en route to marriage can help prevent poverty, marriage promotion policy could likely better serve disadvantaged families by acknowledging and addressing the socioeconomic roots of family inequality.