Family Process最新文献

Power dynamics, generally defined as the patterns of partners enacting or resisting influence, are inherent in all relationships. Power structures and processes play a role in people's perceptions of themselves and others, their feelings and emotions, and both their implicit and explicit behaviors. As such, understanding power dynamics is crucial for fully conceptualizing and intervening within relationships. Although power was not always given high priority in many of the early systemic family therapy models, that has changed over the years, with scholars working to address how power is manifested in relationships, how power imbalances affect relationships, and how power can be addressed more explicitly in treatment. Nonetheless, there is much additional work needed to ensure that systemic therapists have an appropriate depth of understanding regarding power dynamics to fully recognize their manifestations in relationships and then intervene appropriately. To help in these efforts, this paper aims to synthesize relational power research into a more complete description of what power is and how it is enacted in couple relationships. To do this, we introduce relevant perspectives of power not fully integrated with family therapy theories. Overall, we provide a brief history of power-oriented research in the fields of family therapy, outline couple research regarding the sources of power that can inform therapeutic case conceptualizations and interventions, describe how power is addressed in specific couple therapy models, and highlight some important clinical applications that can help systemic therapists more fully address power.

Due to the rapid sociocultural changes in China, Chinese parents' childrearing beliefs and practices have undergone dramatic transformations. Against this context, this study examined whether Chinese parents' endorsement of progressive and traditional childrearing beliefs would predict children's academic achievement, as well as whether parenting practices would mediate this association. This study utilized a longitudinal design and followed 206 Chinese families for 2 years from the end of preschool to Grade 2. Parents showed greater endorsement of progressive than traditional childrearing beliefs, as well as higher use of authoritative than authoritarian parenting practices. Parents' childrearing beliefs in preschool predicted children's math achievement in Grade 2 via authoritative parenting. However, parenting beliefs were unrelated to authoritarian parenting, and authoritarian parenting did not predict any of the child academic outcomes in Grade 2. The findings suggest Chinese parents' orientations toward progressive parenting beliefs and authoritative parenting practices. They also highlight the utility of parenting beliefs in explaining disparities in early academic achievement. The nonsignificant findings pertinent to authoritarian parenting call for re-examination of the cultural meaning and effects of authoritarian parenting in Chinese society.

Victoria (Vicki) C. Dickerson, Ph.D. died peacefully of a progressive illness at her home in Aptos, California, April 3, 2024, under hospice care, with loved ones by her side. She died as she had lived, fully in charge. She chose to use California's End of Life Option Act (EOLOA), also known as death with dignity process. Despite limited energy, she managed to contact many of her dearest family and friends in the days before she died to let them know of her failing health and imminent death. Despite how ill she was, her voice and clarity remained strong.

Vicki was born June 30, 1939, near Lincoln, Nebraska and grew up in Boise, Idaho, the eldest of three daughters to Violet and Harold Dickerson. She excelled at her Catholic schools and got a scholarship to a Catholic College after her father died when she was 15 and money was scarce. She double majored in chemistry and an integrated history/philosophy/literature course, going on for a master's degree in chemistry at the University of Notre Dame. She taught high school chemistry before finishing her Ph.D. in 1987 and launching a career as a clinical psychologist. It was in those years as a teacher that she realized she had a knack for reaching out to young people, who trusted her with their concerns. She decided that counseling not chemistry was her calling.

Vicki was clear that her Catholic upbringing and schooling focused her on the importance of community, relationships, and the interconnectedness of all beings. As she wrote in one of her papers, “Growing up Catholic introduced me to the notion of the ‘Mystical Body,’ which, when separated from the religious aspect, helped me understand the wholeness of the universe and of all beings as somehow connected.” (Dickerson, 2024, p. 5). This background prepared the way for what she has called a “conversion experience” when she heard Michael White, an Australian therapist, speak at a two-day workshop in 1988. The ideas she was exposed to in those 2 days led to decades of learning and collaborations with therapists from all over the world who were similarly “converted” to the theoretical paradigm that influenced Michael White: postmodernism. In a number of articles written for professional journals, Vicki traced her path from structural to systemic to poststructural therapies, staying within the narrative therapy community from 1988 onward (Dickerson, 2010, 2014).

One of her earliest collaborations, with Jeff Zimmerman, started in 1985 when both attended a 3-week externship program at the Family Therapy Program at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, a program headed by Karl Tomm. Neither she nor Jeff knew that Karl Tomm would be out of town during their externship and that they would be studying instead with co-directors, Evan Imber-Black and Gary Saunders, with whom she also maintained lifetime connections. She and Jeff eventually opened the Bay Area Family Therapy Training Associat

Attachment theory and the science of emotion provide a strong foundation for intervention at the family system level. Four therapeutic models in particular, Attachment-Based Family Therapy, Emotion-Focused Family Therapy, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, and Emotionally Focused Family Therapy, demonstrate how a broad and accurate view of attachment relationships and emotion can be utilized to effectively intervene for a variety of presenting problems in a relational and empathic way for all involved. This paper continues a conversation that began at the Summit for Attachment and Emotion in Family Therapy in 2021 and aims to foster openness, collaboration, and affirmation between four different models of family therapy with shared theoretical roots. The presenters at the Summit and the authors of this paper view similarities across these models as validating and differences as opportunities to serve more families in unique ways, learning from one another's creativity to promote healing within families in the most effective and efficient ways possible. The paper frames the value of attachment theory and emotion science for family therapy, discusses the importance of learning from a variety of models with shared theoretical roots, presents brief summaries of the four models presented at the Summit, compares the models for similarities and complementarities, and shares highlights from each of the presenters from the Summit.

Co-parenting, the undertaking of parents working together to raise their children, is well documented as an important consideration of children's adjustment in Western countries, but we know less about the role of co-parenting in other cultures. In China, for example, co-parenting has only recently emerged in the social science literature. This study aimed to examine the cultural sensitivity of the CoPAFS instrument among Chinese Mandarin-speaking parents. CoPAFS is a 27-item survey designed to assess co-parenting across married and unmarried family structures originally developed in English. Data were collected from 729 Chinese-speaking and 348 English-speaking respondents. Factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the overall model fit for the translated co-parenting measure was acceptable in Mandarin. However, the five CoPAFS subscales (trust, respect, communication, acrimony, and value) differed across comparison groups, with communication notable for its lack of endorsement among Chinese couples. Implications of measuring co-parenting within Chinese families are offered.