Introduction
Culture and cultural background may significantly affect certain aspects of family functioning, including parenting, home-school connections, marital stability, sibling relationships, and many others. Most world cultures are considered “mainstream” nowadays and are similar in many senses, but some are unique due to various circumstances, such as historical background. For example, African American culture developed through the dramatic period of slavery and discrimination, significantly impacting the establishment of African American values and beliefs and family functioning. This paper examines how African American culture influences a particular aspect of family functioning, namely parenting, analyzing several studies on the subject. The paper describes African Americans’ values and beliefs, explains the influence of the culture on families, and explores the difficulties that might occur in human services when working with African American families. The historical background of African American people is the primary reason their culture prefers richness of lifestyle over economic wealth, creating a specific relationship between children and parents.
African Americans’ Cultural Strengths and Values
African American cultural background is rich and diverse, with various unique strengths and values inherent to that culture’s representatives. It significantly differs from most mainstream cultures that are popular worldwide. The primary reason for that difference is the way African American people see and measure success. According to Diller (2018), most modern world cultures determine success in economic terms, meaning that a successful person has sufficient monetary resources and regular employment and lives according to a particular lifestyle. In other words, materialistic values define people’s wealth, and people can only call themselves wealthy if they have enough economic resources to bear that title. African Americans’ understanding of wealth is different: they value life itself instead of the resources required for it, finding happiness in the richness of their culture, ceremonies, and traditions (Diller, 2018). Wealth determines lifestyle in mainstream cultures, while lifestyle determines wealth in African American culture.
African Americans’ historical background can explain their culture’s essence and uniqueness. For example, Morgan claimed that “in order to understand African American culture, one must procure more than a superficial understanding of American enslavement of Africans” (as cited in Davis, 2020, p. 132-133). The period of slavery, in many respects, was the birthplace of the culture under discussion, determining its establishment and further development. African Americans value the richness of their lifestyle over economic success as they were never introduced to material wealth, which is why they do not desire to be monetarily rich. However, this minority’s representatives have managed to utilize their African heritage to create a distinctive culture with their own institutions, relationship patterns, and communal bonds (Davis, 2020). Although slavery is considered a dramatic part of African American history nowadays, that period significantly impacted people’s cultural development.
How African American Culture Influences Families
Cultural background may impact various aspects of family functioning, such as parenting. For example, Labella (2018) suggests that African American culture and its history affect parental emotional socialization in families. Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad defined emotional socialization as “the process by which children learn cultural norms for expressing and regulating emotion” (as cited in Labella, 2018, p. 3). It appears that parents play a critical role in that process, as almost all aspects of children’s development are associated with their mothers’ and fathers’ examples. Emotional socialization is an essential factor of social-emotional development, and parents commonly attempt to teach their children implicit and explicit emotional competencies. Studies provide evidence that celebration and restriction of emotions can freely coexist in African American families, reflecting the impact of traditional values and the historical background of slavery and discrimination (Labella, 2018). Thereby, children in those families receive teaching on emotions inherent to African American culture, which further influences their development.
In addition, parenting is a much more significant concept in African American families compared to other cultures. According to Smith et al. (2019), African Americans, including parents and children, have “significantly stronger preferences for cultural and communal activities at home and at school than for individualistic and competitive activities” (p. 1240). Most likely, it means that African American children primarily socialize at home with their family members rather than their school peers. The reason for that is the individualistic nature of mainstream cultures. African American culture is based on familial bonds, kinship, and mutual interdependence of the family members (Smith et al., 2019). Therefore, the culture under discussion influences families on multiple levels, making parenting a much more significant aspect of children’s development compared to other cultures.
Working with the African American Population
Human services can apply the information presented in the previous sections when working with the African American population. People who require the aid of human services usually come from diverse cultures, having different values and beliefs, and social workers should keep that in mind to provide assistance effectively. Suppose a family comes to human services claiming their son struggles to make interpersonal connections with his peers and find friends at school. In that case, human services representatives might need to remember that African American culture implies the prevalence of cultural and communal activities over competitiveness and individualism (Smith et al., 2019). It could be wise and practical to ask the parents about their son’s activities and ask the child about his peers and their activity preferences. If those differ from what the son likes to do, he should be advised to try a different direction while seeking friends. The child’s struggle may be caused by cultural differences between him and his schoolmates, meaning he should seek friends who share his interests.
In addition, the research findings imply that human services should be discreet and considerate when working with African American families. The culture under discussion has been developing under the influence of the historical background associated with slavery and discrimination, which means that this fact may still trouble African Americans (Labella, 2018). Therefore, people working with them should choose words and ways to explain particular concepts carefully and behave politically correctly.
Different Cultural Backgrounds
African American and my own cultural backgrounds have their differences and similarities. First of all, the cultural background of my people is not associated with the historical context of discrimination, which often occurs even in modern times (Labella, 2018). Since that context is one of the primary sources of contemporary African American culture, it may be difficult for me to understand that culture’s foundation. However, there is a similar side: kinship and family bonds are fundamental in African American and my own cultures (Smith et al., 2019). The representatives of the two cultures may understand each other better, utilizing similarities and reducing differences where possible and appropriate.
Potential Impact of a Different Background
My cultural background may impact my work with African American families in the human services setting. African American people suffered much during the period of slavery, though their culture has grown diverse and rich. It may be challenging for me to perceive and embrace their cultural background as my own to reach a complete mutual understanding. However, I believe that I will manage to utilize the research findings in my professional activities to avoid the mentioned difficulties when working with African American families.
Conclusion
Overall, historical slavery and discrimination significantly affected African Americans, making the richness of their culture more valuable to them than economic success, which is reflected in African American families and child-parent relationships. That culture significantly differs from the mainstream ones as it lets lifestyle determine wealth, not the other way around. African Americans suffered much during the slavery period, and now it is reflected in their culture: they are modest in their desires, loving and valuing life itself instead of its material side. The cultural background influences the parenting aspect of family functioning: children’s socialization primarily occurs within the parent-child relationships, and African American families prefer cultural and communal activities over individualism and competitiveness. In addition, the uniqueness and complexity of African American culture may become a challenge for people working in human services. The findings of this research can be implemented in that field to increase the effectiveness of human services when working with African American families. The key to understanding them is to understand their complex cultural and historical background.
References
Davis, P. E. (2020). The painful legacy of historical African American culture. Journal of Black Studies, 51(2), 128-146.
Diller, J. V. (2018). Cultural diversity: A primer for the human services (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Labella, M. H. (2018). The socio-cultural context of emotion socialization in African American families. Clinical Psychology Review, 59, 1-15.
Smith, E. P., Witherspoon, D. P., Bhargava, S., & Bermudez, J. M. (2019). Cultural values and behavior among African American and European American children. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28(5), 1236-1249.