Single Parent, Divorced and Blended Families Flashcards Preview

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Flashcards in Single Parent, Divorced and Blended Families Deck (31)
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1
Q

Custody?

A

Important to assess custodial rights of parent when they inquire about services.

2
Q

Advantages of Growing Up in “non-traditional” family.

A
  • Adaptability and flexibility
  • More opportunities for finding a charismatic adult.
  • Kids have more responsibilities in single parents households which can help them to develop important life skills.
3
Q

Who Gets Divorced?

A
  • couples who marry under 20.
  • people who are less educated or have less income.
  • people in the west have higher divorce rates than people in the east.
  • divorce rate among AAs is twice that of whites and latinos.
  • Asian Americans have the lowest divorce rates.
  • Catholics and Jews have lower divorce rates than protestants.
4
Q

Divorce as a Life Event

A
  • Not necessarily a disaster nor inconsequential.
  • Ranks at the top of list of stressful life events.
  • A transitional crisis that interrupts developmental tasks and requires adjustment from family.
  • A traumatic decision to make; the process of disengaging from one’s partner starts before the decision is made.
  • rarely a joint decision between partners.
5
Q

Process of Divorce

A
  1. 5 to 3 year transition process.
    - Can bring out the worst in people.
    - results depend on how it is handle.
6
Q

The Transition Framework (Disorganization–>Reorganization)

A
Individual Cognition
Family Meta-Cognition
The Separation
Systemic Reorganization
Systemic Redefinition
7
Q

Individual Cognition

A

The Decision
-A process of leave taking may go on for years
-May come in for couples therapy to ease guilt or hand off their partner for caretaking.
The leavee is more vulnerable and angry.

8
Q

Family Meta-Cognition

A

The Announcement

  • Sometimes this shocks the system into taking steps towards change.
  • Betrayal is common
  • Vacillation is common and confusing for children-encourage parents to not share with kids until they are sure.
  • Loss of idealized family.
9
Q

The Separation

A

Dismantling the Nuclear Family:

  • orderly separations are the least destructive
  • clear boundaries are helpful
  • keeping things as stable as possible for children.
  • Children need to know what the structure will be!
10
Q

Systemic Reorganization

A

The Binuclear Family:

-The family remains a family but with a different structure.

11
Q

Types of Co-parenting relationships

A
  • Perfect Pals
  • Cooperative Colleagues
  • Angry Associates, have trouble separating parental from marital issues. More structure needed for this type of relationship.
  • Fiery Foes- cannot co-parent
  • Dissolved Duos-one parent has left completely.
12
Q

Systemic Redefinition

A

The family remains a family. New rules and rituals that are flexible with life transitions must be established.

13
Q

The Binuclear Family

A
  • Establish ground rules for living separately
  • Rules within and across various subsystems.
  • How rigid or flexible will depend on how the parents cooperate. Greater conflict=more rules and rigidity.
14
Q

The Good Divorce

A
  • The Family remains a family
  • The negative effects on children are minimized
  • The ex-spouses integrate divorce into their lives in healthy way.
15
Q

Children’s needs at divorce

A
  • To have basic economic and psychological needs met.
  • Support in maintaining relationships with members of their extended families.
  • Parents who are supportive and cooperative.
16
Q

Legal Issues

A
  • still remain largely adversarial
  • decide on as much as possible prior to legal involvement
  • mediation as an alternative
  • women in traditional long term marriages may need to have their interests protected more.
17
Q

Gender Issues

A

Traditionally women have been socialized to invest their identity in the quality of their relationship so divorce often equals a personal failure.
-Men have worked harder to not become marginalized parents. They must take concrete steps to stay connected with their children after divorce.

18
Q

Emotional Pressure Points

A
  • When the decision is made
  • The announcement
  • When money/visitation/custody issues are discussed.
  • The physical separation.
  • The actual legal divorce
  • As children graduate, marry, have children, or become ill.
  • As each ex-spouse forms a new couple relationship, remarries, has children, moves, becomes ill, or dies.
19
Q

Remarriage

A

Emotional loyalties come into play.

-Stepfamilies have no good models.

20
Q

Tasks of stepfamilies

A
  • giving up old model of family and accepting the complexity of the new form.
  • Maintain permeable boundaries to permit shifting of household membership
  • establish and maintain open lines of communication between all parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren.
21
Q

A New Paradigm

A
  • Blended families will not work if they attempt to replicate the intact nuclear family or brady bunch model.
  • The biological parent has to be the parent in charge of their own children.
  • stepparent-child relationships need to develop over time and be what they grow into without expectations.
  • –They are to be treated as parent’s spouse and deserving of respect.
  • –The younger the child the more likely relationship can grow into a parental one.
  • –latency age children may struggle the most with loyalty issues
  • –with adolescents a parental relationship may never develop, but a positive one can.
  • Step parent can not compete with children for attention
  • stereotyped gender role expectations can cause big problem.
22
Q

3 Sets of Emotional Baggage (at remarriage)

A
  • FOO
  • First Marriage
  • The aftermath of separation, divorce, death and the period before the second marriage.
23
Q

Common Mistakes

A
  • Parents are preoccupied with their own emotional experiences and neglect their children’s
  • Treating new marriage as an event rather than a complex process that will take time to transform into a working family
  • Trying to get children to resolve multiple loyalties by trying to sabotage or cut off from one parent to create clarity in the other.
24
Q

Problems

A

Emotional Issues or acting out

  • pseudomutuality or fusion
  • loyalty conflicts
  • Children need to access their full range of positive and negative feelings
  • It is unrealistic to expect the step parent to love their spouse’s children as much as his/her own.
  • Triangulation: children do best with regular contact with both parents.
25
Q

Family Connection vs. Dysfunction

A

Most complex when both spouses have children.

  • Easiest if the previous spouse has died
  • Hardest if new spouse has never been married
  • Developing a sense of belonging tasks most families 3-5 years.
  • Abuse and violence is more common in stepfamilies
  • Finances and child rearing issues are the most common problems.
  • remarriage of either spouse tends to decrease contact between biological children and fathers.
  • Need to work on balance
26
Q

Roles

A
  • Stepfathers may be caught in double bind but should not take on role of disciplinarian
  • stepmothers who are expected to step into role of caretaker are set up for failure.
  • stepmothers and step daughters tend to have most difficulty
  • daughters who are close with their mothers have difficulty with stepfathers
  • divorce appears to be harder on boys and remarriage on girls.
27
Q

Triangles

A
  • New spouses and ex
  • New spouses, the ex, and the children
  • Parent, biological children and stepchildren
  • New Spouses and the parents of either spouse.
28
Q

Clinical Guidelines

A

With Child focused problems be sure you have consent for treatment from all. And have contact with all parents.

  • Work to establish co-parent cooperation
  • Biological parents are in charge of their children
  • Email communication can take the emotion down and provide documentation
  • Working to help families have realistic expectations
  • work to help families be comfortable with children’s negative emotions.
  • Keep emphasizing the importance of children having contact with all family members.
  • Help parents have structure around visitation.
  • FOO work as needed.
29
Q

Single Parent Families

A

Resources is the major factor in what makes parenting work. Poverty plays a big role in stress about parenting. What role does loss play in the families structure? Parental death or abandonment?
Stigmatization of single parent families.

30
Q

Parental Tasks

A

provide structure and nurturance
-managing day to day tasks.
Meet own needs for intimacy, companionship and community
-positive sense of family identity.
-maintain contact with missing parent when possible and extended family.
—idealization of missing parent is common.

31
Q

The Parentified Child

A
  • Older siblings may assume responsibility for younger ones.
  • Harmful if the child is being asked to sacrifice own