We disagree because we are all different and co-parenting is difficult. We are who we are today because of everything we have experienced before today. Influences can go back generations. This applies to professionals too, who bring with them their own experiences, values, ideas and emotional sensitivities. Objectivity and preconceptions can be avoided by remaining inquisitive and asking open questions.
Some influences
- How we were raised. The community we have lived in
- Our ethnicity and our culture: Culture just means the way we do things. It can be personal, e.g the way I communicate, or apply to a family or community, e.g traditions and customs
- Our genetic make-up, our personality
- Our past relationships, romantic and family: the culture of relationships as we see it
- Our experiences: how we have dealt with stressful situations before. How we feel ‘the world’ has treated us
From these ’roots’, we form our core values, develop our emotional strengths and vulnerabilities. We decide as adults how we will live and develop our own communication and conflict ‘styles’. We deal with stressful situations in different ways: for co-parents who may or may not be together, parenting will bring these different perspectives into sharp focus. There are many argument triggering events and environmental factors which exacerbate ‘stresses’ (poverty for example), but it is how we deal with or adapt to situations that matters.
Strengths and vulnerabilities; why culture matters. How co-parents cope with stress.
The vulnerability stress adaptation model
The following model encourages self reflection to work out our values, strengths and vulnerabilities, how we have coped with stress in the past and how we might cope in the future. Practitioners should consider the nature of the stresses impacting Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic families:
An example
A co-parent who experienced the breakdown of her own parents’ relationship may be triggered by comments that make her feel ‘criticised and belittled’ because this is what she recalls her father experienced. She may also have experienced rejection and feelings of being negatively stereotyped around her sexuality as a woman in a same sex relationship, which has made her more defensive and likely to withdraw in situations which remind her of these feelings.
Thoughts, feelings, behaviour cycle
The following model helps identify how our real feelings feed into what we say and do.
An example
A co-parent may see her partner looking at his mobile phone, may think (assume) that he is looking at work emails, may then feel ‘I thought we were having a family meal. He really doesn’t care about us’. She may then snap at him when he tries to make conversation. He sees/hears her snapping but doesn’t know what she is thinking. He sees her being ‘moody’. He thinks, ‘Oh she is in a mood again’, he feels, ‘I am tired. I can’t do this’, he gets up and says ‘I am off to watch the game…’