Presentation Handout
The Power of Kinship: The Impact of Real/Fictive Kinships in Children from Dysfunctional Families
Sultan Magruder
Indianan University of Pennsylvania
Email: rqyp@iup
For Full Text Please Visit: http://magrudersultanrqyp.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/final-draft/
Key Words: child welfare, family dysfunction, parental substance-misuse, kinship care
Abstract:
The presence of Real/Fictive Kinships in the lives of children from dysfunctional backgrounds is seen through research as a positive component in fostering resiliency in the child. Based on information collected through interviews with participants identifying themselves as having grown up in a dysfunctional life and a meta-analysis of research dealing with factors that contribute to “dysfunction” such as ‘parental substance misuse’, ‘low economic status’ and a faulty ‘parent-child attachment’, a non-fictive story was developed to address these issues. In the story, “The Helping Hand”, the audience is taken through the life of a boy who’s faced with problems such as abuse and neglect caused by his ‘substance misusing’ mother. Through the bond between the main character and his brothers, along with help from individuals outside the family, the boy tries to understand the life he is living in and attempts to break the ‘dysfunctional’ cycle that has plagues his family.
Research Question:
As many developmental theorists will attest, children from a very young age begin to form attachments/bonds to their primary caregivers. This attachment is required for adequate development in the child, and without the fulfillment of these needs in the child’s development, many problems can arise. I pose a question that is still rarely researched: How are kinships able to provide a buffer system on a child that is experiencing negative pressures resulting from “dysfunction” in the home?
Bringing the Research to a Creative Story:
Many themes from the research was incorporated into the story. A New Life is based on information compiled from autobiographical, interviews, as well as stories from present research. The story is a bout a boy’s life experiences growing up in a “dysfunctional family”. With mother being abused and addicted to drugs, the boy and his brothers go on a journey that will lead In the separation of the family at the end of the story. Through their struggles the brothers bond together, believing it is only they who they can depend on for survival.
A Look at Some of the Research
Hall, J. Camille. “The Impact of Kin and Fictive Kin Relationships on the Mental Health of Black Adult Children of Alcoholics.” Health & Social Work 33 (2008): 259-266. Print.
This research’s purpose is to evaluate the impact that kin and fictive kinship have in alleviating or minimizing the effects on adolescents from parental alcoholism and the breakdown in parenting. Participants in the study included both men and women self acknowledges as Adult Children of Alcoholics. The results were based on the testimonies from interviews conducted on the participants and the information was backed by current research regarding alcoholism and its effects on African American communities and individuals included in that realm.
Kroll, B. (2007). A family affair? Kinship care and parental substance misuse: some dilemmas explored. Child and Family Social Work, 12, 84-93.
The dilemmas of parental drug misuse and the fostering of children with kin is explored in this study. Kinship is able to be “emotionally permanence” to the child, but it comes with a cost at sometimes undermining parents; feelings of guilt, and fear of replacement could possibly arise when child is placed with kin (Kroll, 2007, p. 89, 2nd para.). This article looks at how parental drug use could be detrimental to the child by causing lack of emotional/psychological and if there is no support system there then can foster resilience, insecure patterns of attachment and mental health and behavioral problems (Kroll, 2007, p. 88). There is a great question which states parents drug misuse causes inflections in attachment for the child so, ‘If some grandparents have shaped the parent’s drug problem, is there a degree to which placing children in their care can compound the problem?’ (Kroll, 2007, p. 88, 3rd para.).
Taylor, Ronald D., Eleanor Seaton, and Antonio Doninguez. “Kinship Support, Family Relations, and Psychological Adjustment Among Low-Income African American Mothers and Adolescents.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 18.1 (2008): 1-22. Print.
This article focuses on the kinship support in families and the effects on mother’s and adolescent psychologically adjustment. The Family Stress Model for Economic Hardship is used in this study as a base for analyzing and collecting data. Participants are taken from an inter-city environment with variables including male and female adolescents and their biological mother. The methods’ section gives a very detailed outline of the measurements in the procedure.
