Doing Therapy with Intercultural Couples

A Pastoral Theological Study of Premarital Counseling

Sunita Noronha

• Verlag: Pickwick Publications
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781725271159
• Thema: Psychology
• Thema: Interpersonal Relations in Psychology

Marital concord between couples from different racial and ethnic backgrounds is an issue that needs serious attention to bridge the vast chasms. America welcomes people from all over the world. People of all religions and ethnic backgrounds come here to study and migrants arrive here to work. Interracial marriages are common but the radically different background of each couple can create discords and prove to be bumps on the highway of conjugal life. This can have serious repercussions on the offspring and on the couple and their lives as well. This book seeks to investigate how cultural realities can be addressed within intercultural premarital couples counseling. Using a cultural focus approach couples' stories around their particular culture and relationship were analyzed. Themes related to relationship, family and social ties, and parenting bi-cultural and bi-racial children were examined. Issues of religious and social influence, money, race, ethnicity, extended family, immigration, and biases in family of origin, are explored as are roles and responsibilities, communication, respect, trust, and gender-stereotyping. The book adopts a pastoral theological approach in working towards a deeper understanding of premarital relationships of partners who represent cultural difference and diversity. In conclusion recommendations to therapists and care givers for counseling intercultural couples are made.

Chapter I

Understanding Intercultural Ethos

Introduction

In a world where marriage seems to be the end-all of most Indians, especially a girl if she is of marriageable age and a boy if he is an eligible bachelor, there are innumerable hurdles to cross over to fructify the same in marriage. These hurdles may be in terms of parental approval, matching horoscopes, cultural compatibility, language, region, and so on. As matrimony is a question of money, the couple in question need to be suitably and financially matching too. Cultural and ethnic differences are varied as India has a multicultural community of different religions, eating and dining habits, dresses, etc. With all these, the question of caste, class, and clan can also creep in to further clarify the suitability of marriage. Since marriages are traditionally arranged, love marriages are not rare now. Even when the marriage takes place, as per the horoscope, the question of dowry haunts the bride and her parents for a long time. And the problems thus continue over. As such there is hardly any counseling at the proposal stage or even after marriage. This in brief is the Indian situation.

The situation in America is very different for obvious reasons. For one, interracial and interethnic marriages have come to stay among the locals and the immigrants among the opposite sex. Same-sex marriages too have been not rare in recent years, approved as such by the church. And also premarital relationships and live-ins are not rare.

In terms of their living and contributions to the local social activity interracial or interethnic couples make a significant contribution to the diversity of US society according to the US Census Bureau. In 2010, there were 5.4 million opposite-sex interracial or interethnic married-couple households. These married couples were 9.5 percent of all married-couple households, i.e., approximately one in ten of all married-couple household are interracial. This is an increase of 28 percent since 2000, when 7.4 percent of married-couple households were interracial or interethnic and intercultural couples.1 There is a higher percentage of unmarried partners who are interracial or interethnic than married couples. Nationally, 10 percent of opposite-sex married couples had partners of a different race or Hispanic origin, compared with 18 percent of opposite-sex unmarried partners and 21 percent of same-sex unmarried partners.2 This is a clear indication that mixed racial marriages are on the increase and people are faced with the new reality of intercultural and interfaith marriages and raising bicultural and biracial children. This is also the century of advancement in various walks of life, intermingling of cultures, opportunities to meet together as world students, working together in various fields such as medicine, information technology, and social networking sites, as well as a surge in the tourism industry. This is making it relatively easier to get to know people from different backgrounds and cultures than before. Hundreds of immigrants are choosing to come to America every day to pursue the “American Dream” and make America their home. The influx of immigrants, refugees, students, families of immigrants, and new citizens and fiancées from all over the world, is a recurring phenomenon and not a temporary event.

Immigrants can be categorized in the following ways: The first-generation immigrant as it applies to one’s nationality or residency can be understood in two ways. One as in a “foreign-born citizen” or “resident” who has immigrated to a new country of residence as in “first-generation migrant” or a “native-born citizen” or “resident” of a country whose parents are foreign born as in “first-generation American” but “second-generation immigrant.” According to Rumbaut and Portes, professors and prominent Cuban-American sociologists and leading experts on immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States, the term 1.5 generation or 1.5G refers to people who immigrate to a new country with their parents or alone during their early teens (thirteen to seventeen years of age).3 They are not born in the country of adoption but immigrate bringing with them traits and traditions from their country of birth. They continue the process of assimilation and socialization into their new adopted country thereby forming a new identity of a third culture. They are considered halfway between their country of birth and country of adoption thus halfway between the first generation and second-generation. Such individuals are often bilingual and find it easier to be assimilated into the local culture and society than their parents. Many 1.5 generation individuals are bicultural, combining both cultures—the culture of the country of origin with the culture of the new country.4 The second generation refers to the second generation of a family to inhabit or else be native born in the new country. These are often referred as US-born children of foreign-born parents. Generally, if they are born in the United States they cannot be considered as immigrants. Intercultural couple partners can make up any of the above combinations and bring with them any number of concerns pertaining to their specific immigration status.

It is imperative to begin to sit up and take notice of the growing reality of intercultural, interfaith, and interethnic marital alliances. American Professor of Social Work, educator, and therapist Judith Mishne states that, “these newly arrived populations compel us to consider and examine the impact of the migration experience, as part of a culturally sensitive response to race and ethnicity.”5

Couples invariably find themselves intermingling with individuals from other cultures. After a while they realize that this is not going as expected, that there are several hurdles to cross and begin to look for someone who will understand them and provide guidance and support. They often feel “stuck” and search for a professional whom they can go to and who will help them move forward. In the last five years this is why many intercultural couples have come for premarital couples counseling. In my clinical experience, these couples are not necessarily looking for premarital counseling but they are at the crossroads, and are seeking “discernment” about their relationship in the light of the differences and difficulties that they may be experiencing. Dugan Romano, a cross-cultural trainer and counselor, lists several potential trouble spots for intercultural marriages. These are values, food and drink, sex, male-female roles, time, place of residence, politics, friends, finances, in-laws, social class, religion, raising children, language and communication, responding to stress and conflict, illness and suffering, ethnocentrism, the expatriate spouse, and coping with death and divorce.6 Romano argues that most of these are potentially problematic to all marriages and not just to intercultural marriages. However, in intercultural marriages some of these concerns appear to be not j...