Multicultural and Critical Race Feminisms: Theorizing Families in the Third Wave

Inner-City Single Black Mothers’ Gender-Related Childrearing Expectations and Goals

“…To avoid inaccurately essentializing women and men, critical race theory draws attention to the intersections of gender and race as well as to class and sexual orientation, imploring researchers to contextualize their findings (Few 2007). Critical race feminism, in particular, places its focus simultaneously on the individual's interlocking identities of gender and race (De Reus et al 2006). Some researchers who have studied the intersection of gender and race have described gender roles as less differentiated among Blacks than among Whites (McCollum 1997;Shelton and Sellers 2000).…”

Approaching the “Resistant:” Exploring East Asian International Students’ Perceptions of Therapy and Help-Seeking Behavior Before and After They Arrived in the United States

“…Identified themes and categories portrayed both encouraging and discouraging factors associated with help-seeking. Overall, the researchers identified support for previous assumptions surrounding (1) the influences of cultural and familial beliefs, (2) the changes in perceptions of therapy after coming to the US, and (3) the concept of intersectionality as how social institutions, organizational structures, and patterns of social interactions influence individuals' choices, opportunities, and identities (De Reus et al 2005). Three major themes and related categories emerged: (1) participants held primarily negative views of therapy before they came to the United States; (2) they held some negative notions of therapy even after entering the US; (3) encouraging factors of help-seeking behaviors were found after living in the US.…”

“…The theoretical and methodological foundations for this study are social constructionism (Crotty 2003), feminist frameworks (Okruhlik as cited in Curd and Cover 1998;De Reus et al 2005), multiculturalism (LaRossa et al 2005, symbolic interactionism (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993), and tenets of ethnography (Creswell 2007). Use of this foundation involved three major assumptions: (1) cultural and familial beliefs influenced students' perceptions about therapy, (2) cultural and familial beliefs about therapy influenced the students' help seeking behaviors in the United States, and (3) students' perceptions of therapy and their help-seeking behaviors may change after living in the United States.…”

I Wanted a Fresh Start from Where I Was: Rural Low-Income Women's Experiences of Multiple Partnership Transitions

“…We employ a critical feminist perspective that acknowledges intersectionality (see De Reus, Few, & Blume, 2005) to investigate the gendered expectations and experiences of rural, low-income women as they negotiate their intimate partnerships with men. This approach integrates the need to unveil issues of power, revealing structural conditions that oppress women as well as examines the "negotiation of a politics of location" (De Reus, Few, & Blume, 2005, p. 449).…”