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ChiefTurtle3211
CHAPTER 3 Gender, Culture, and Ethnicity Factors in Family…
CHAPTER 3 Gender, Culture, and Ethnicity Factors in Family Functioning
Gender Issues
53. Which of your parents played a more nurturing role in raising their children? Did this activity have high or low status in the family?
54. You often hear the phrase “It’s a guy’s thing.” Discuss a recent incident you have experienced where gender might have provided an explanation for the behavior.
55. How do you experience women who are assertive and driven and men who are passive and emotionally vulnerable? Take an honest assessment of your views. How might your thoughts and feelings influence your work as a therapist?
56. Did you grow up with same-sex or opposite-sex siblings or both? Where were you in the birth order? How did these experiences affect your attitudes regarding gender issues?
Gender, Values, and Power
57. How was power distributed in your family? Who was in charge of what? What role did gender play in forming these assignments? What happened within the family if one member tried to step outside of their assigned gender role?
58. Did you experience directly or hear about domestic violence growing up? How did you react? What impact has the experience had on your current primary relationships? Whether from direct experience or from general awareness, does knowing the gender of the perpetrator and victim influence you in terms of your gender views? How? How might your views on gender and violence affect your work with female clients? Male clients?
59. List in two columns the values that had the highest and lowest valences in your family of origin. Include the following (and any others you wish to add) in your list.
Autonomy Relationships
Nurturance Dependency
Control Caretaking
Independence
HIGH VALENCE LOW VALENCE
___________________ ___________________
___________________ ___________________
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60. Did your family approve of your behaviors in terms of gender? How did their approval or disapproval affect you?
61. Name and describe some ways in which a gender-based rule or sexist attitude or stereotypic sex role assignment affected the kind of adult you became.
Gender, Work, and Family Life
62. Did your mother work outside the home? How did that affect the distribution of power in the family?
63. Did your father ever lose a job or suffer significant economic loss? If so, how did it affect him? Did it affect the distribution of power in the family? If so, how?
Gender Role Training
64. What kinds of toys were you given as a child (e.g., dolls, trucks)? Did you play with them under a gender schema of what was considered masculine or feminine? To what extent did such play enhance or inhibit your development from a gender perspective? What kinds of toys will you give your children? Why?
65. What strengths, if any, have you acquired by bypassing traditional gender roles? Any special enjoyments from breaking the rules? Any significant mishaps?
66. To what extent do the following qualities stereotypically attributed to men characterize the men in your family? What were the consequences to your developmental experience?
(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
(e) a self-reliant element, calling for men to be independent and self sufficient and not to seek help from others.
Multicultural and Culture-Specific Considerations
67. Are there specific groups around whom you feel uncomfortable (gays, welfare recipients, transsexuals, child molesters, wife batterers, religious groups)? As best you can, trace the origins of those feelings.
68. Draw a cultural genogram extending over at least three generations, charting your family’s social, racial, religious, and migration history.
69. Did you grow up with people culturally and ethnically like yourself? If so, how did that contribute to your stability and sense of belonging? If you grew up in an environment where you felt different, how did that affect your sense of yourself and your acceptance by others?
70. Which social class best describes the one in which you grew up? (Select one)
Working class Lower middle class Middle class Upper middle class Upper class
How does this background affect your attitudes regarding class differences? Are there areas in your thinking that might affect your ability to work therapeutically with members of classes different from your own?
71. When and under what circumstances did your family immigrate to this country? How did this event affect your current attitudes regarding immigration of others?
72. Family therapists must try to distinguish between a client family’s patterns that are universal (common to a wide variety of families), culture specific (common to a group, such as African Americans or Cuban Americans or perhaps lesbian families), or idiosyncratic (unique to this particular family) in their assessment of family functioning. Identify patterns in your family that seem universal, culture-specific and idiosyncratic. Identify any conflicts among these patterns and describe how they affected you.
73. Describe how it might feel if you, as a member of the racial or ethnic majority culture in your area, work as a therapist mostly with minority populations. Or, how do you think that you, as a member of a minority working mostly with people from the majority culture, will feel. Identify potential obstacles and opportunities that you imagine will be unique to you.
74. Describe your family’s economic status. How has that status affected you view yourself and other people?
