The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy

International Examinations of Family Policy

Anne M. Prouty Lyness

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317717737
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Psychology

Address the issues vital for women and their families

To be most effective, family therapists need to understand precisely what policies are in place and how they influence families and their relationships. The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy: International Examinations of Family Policy provides an interdisciplinary look at family public and social policies and the influence they have on families around the globeall from a feminist perspective. Diverse international family policy experts discuss policies family therapists need to know covering gender, ethnicity, religion, and age, and the effects on women and their families.

As international family public policy shifts and changes, women and their families' lives are altered in substantial and very personal ways. The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy gives therapists a clear view of policies and diverse issues involving family policy, family relationships, and mental health. The book reveals the interaction between policy and practice, interdependence as a principle of child and family policy, ways to increase women's labor force participation without causing a fall in birth rates, and intergenerational equity debates around the world. Qualitative studies are presented detailing women's experiences of family policies' effects on their lives, including their resiliency in times of disruption and their viewpoints on life-altering events that are used to disempower them.

Topics in The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy include:

• the interaction of British social policy with feminist practice
  
• supportive rather than punitive interventions in the lives of families
  
• an examination of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Babies and Bosses report
  
• evaluation of international family policies of elder care
  
• research into women's roles and the way they are shaped in areas of conflict
  
• research on Puerto Rican and Dominican women's perceptions of divorce
  
  

The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy is timely, stimulating reading for psychotherapists, family therapists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, feminists/womanists, sociologists, educators and students in family studies, women's studies, gender studies, and war studies, and professionals in family policy and family law.

Index

Adoption

closed, 31

anti-therapeutic nature of, 35

severing of parent-child relationship in, 32–33, 35, 37

lack of preventive law approach in, 32–33

open, 31

of African-American children, 37–38

among African Americans, 37

family systems theory principles of, 35

preventive law approach in, 33

therapeutic jurisprudence approach in, 33

transracial, 37–38

African-American children

in foster care system, 37

open adoptions of, 37–38

African Americans

childrearing practices of, 37

families of

“deficit view” of, 37–38

extended, 37, 42

open adoptions among, 37

“Aged as Scapegoats, The” (Binstock), 83

Agee, William, 83

Age or Need(Neugarten), 83

Al-Nakba, 115

American Association for Retired Persons (AARP), 85

Apartheid, social, 117

Appell, Annette, 38

Arditti, Joyce A., 152

Asia. See also specific countries

birthrate in, 49

Australia

birthrate in, 49

immigration policy in, 91

work-family policies in, 50

benefits for single mothers, 56

tax systems, 54

working hours, 59

Austria, work-family policies in, 50

working hours, 59

Autonomy

of adults, 29

of children

relationship to self-constructed identity, 30

as right, 27

Baby-boom generation, intergenerational equity and, 83, 84

Barbier, Christophe, 88

Becker, Gary, 84

Belgium, retirement age in, 90

Benefits systems. See also Welfare benefits

effect on women's labor force participation, 50–56, 61, 68, 69, 70

Berlusconi, Silvio, 94

Birthrate

decrease in, 80

effect of women's employment on, 49–50

in social-democratic ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• Editor's Foreword
• Feminist Examinations of Family Policy
• The Morphing of Family Therapy and Family Support: How British Social Policy and Feminist Practice Are Interacting
• The Notion of Interdependence and Its Implications for Child and Family Policy
• Babies and Bosses: Family Policy Directions in the OECD
• A Response to the Babies and Bosses Report: The Effects of Policies on Therapy and the Influence of Therapists on Politics
• Aging Societies and Intergenerational Equity Issues: Beyond Paying for the Elderly, Who Should Care for Them?
• Wisensale's Analysis: Thoughts from a Feminist Family Therapist
• Feminist Research of Women's Experiences
• Counter-Spaces as Resistance in Conflict Zones: Palestinian Women Recreating a Home
• Puerto Rican and Dominican Women's Perceptions of Divorced Women
• Index