ObjectiveIdentify the role(s) and support(s), if any, that family members provide to first‐generation and historically marginalized doctoral students, including strengths and challenges of this support.BackgroundNonfinancial family support is important for the success and retention of first‐generation and historically marginalized graduate students. More empirical studies of the role(s) and support of family members of these doctoral students are needed.MethodDuring an intervention designed for first‐generation and historically marginalized doctoral students and their families, we conducted four focus groups with doctoral students (n = 22) and three focus groups with the family members they chose to accompany them (n = 15). Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsTwo themes emerged from the data: support and connection. In addition to providing distinct types of support, families play both supportive and connective roles. There are challenges to family roles and support in areas such as communication, doctoral student stress, and different ways that family members and doctoral students think about and approach life.ConclusionThe study provided key insights to understanding the roles and support of family of doctoral students; more efforts are needed across graduate schools in the United States.ImplicationsFamily science faculty and graduate schools may collaborate to provide meaningful interventions for graduate students and their families for the goal of promoting graduate student retention and success.
The practice of critically reflexive feminist autoethnographyor connecting one's personal experiences and beliefs to professional and political processes-can be a challenging and often invisible process. Nonetheless, it is a method worthy of engagement, given the impact one's positionality often has on one's scholarship. In this article, I reflect on how I understand myself as an intersectional Black, bisexual woman. Furthermore, I discuss the ways in which the personal relates to my professional and political academic life. In making broader connections to larger societal forces, I discuss how I came to study diverse individuals and families with intersecting identities and outline my struggles with my own academic growth and scholastic improvement. I also unpack the uncertainties I have faced in attempting to find my place in academia. Finally, for other intersectional scholars, I offer some suggestions for self-reflection on research and practice within the academy.
Undergraduates are becoming an increasingly more diverse group in many aspects. As the landscapes of U.S. society and higher education classrooms change, so must teaching – to incorporate a more culturally competent pedagogy. Cultural competence discourse has been found to be beneficial for teachers, students, and clients in the helping professions. However, discussing cultural competency in the classroom can be challenging to implement. Successful cultural competency discourse requires skilled teachers, invested students, and supportive institutions. The authors provide background literature around the development, benefits, and challenges associated with cultural competency discourse. Additionally, they provide their own personal experiences and offer some suggestions for best practice in encouraging and facilitating the discussion of cultural competency in the classroom.
Parenting is no easy feat. I am not a parent, but I am part of a family and a family scientist, so I understand how it can be full of rewarding experiences among so many challenges. Internal familial interactions should be considered of course in understanding why and how families "do family", but so too must the societal and institutional contexts in which families exist, especially, those families at the margins, who are often invisible. Author Sandra Patton-Imani uses an intersectional and narrative framework to share the experiences of lesbian and queer mothers across the nation from varied family structures, race/ethnicities, and social classes in Queering Family Trees: Race, Reproductive Justice, and Lesbian Motherhood. Through her analysis of her interviewees' and her own experiences in queer mothering, I was able to reflect on my own experiences (e.g., assumptions, challenges, and privileges) of living as a queer woman of color in the United States; on inequities inherent in our society around family formation, protection, and belonging; and on the importance of reflexive qualitative scholarship in family science.In Patton-Imani's introduction, she recounts an experience at her Des Moines, Iowa YMCA. It was 2002, and she and her wife had been going there for a year without incident, always scanning in with their membership cards under their family account. One day, they forgot the cards, and needed the woman at the front desk to sign them in. Upon seeing a Black woman with the same last name as a White woman, the receptionist questioned the legitimacy of their "family." They were not allowed back to the YMCA after the end of the prepaid month. They had violated that particular YMCA's policy about who "counted" as a family, which mirrored the Iowa state and U.S. law at the time-not allowing or recognizing same-sex unions. From 2004 to 2010 Patton-Imani interviewed queer mothers with similar stories of discrimination, invisibility, and illegitimacy. Whereas she provides no official sample description, the book is filled with the diverse voices of several families and comparisons of experiences by race/ethnicity and class. Patton-Imani's introduction continues with a preview of important concepts such as marriage as assimilation or resistance and the examination of intersectionality in LGBTQ+ family-making processes and policies (e.g., welfare, immigration, and adoption) that often leave out queer mothers of color.Chapters 1 through 3 more thoroughly introduce us to the ways in which citizenship and belonging are denied to many LGBTQ+ mothers and how adoption, assisted reproduction, marriage, and choice are inherently impacted by systems of power, privilege, and oppression. In these early chapters, we are also presented with Patton-Imani's theoretical framework and methodology. She explains that "an allegorical reading, grounded in a critical intersectional approach, provides a useful lens through which to discuss the deep complexities and contradictions between the stories coming from these different sites"...
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