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Chapter 4 - The Foundations for Strong and Healthy Relationships between Black Men and Women: Purposes, Practices, and Processes

from Part II - Foundations for Healthy Coupling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2023

By
Daryl M. Rowe  and
Sandra Lyons Rowe
Edited by
Yamonte Cooper  and
Erica Holmes
Yamonte Cooper
Affiliation:
El Camino College, Torrance, California
Erica Holmes
Affiliation:
Antioch University, Los Angeles
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Summary

This chapter provides an overview of some of the unique characteristics, strengths, and challenges for creating and sustaining healthy marital relationships between heterosexual men and women of African ancestry. The approach to this work is grounded within the emerging field of African-centered psychology that privileges the lived experiences of African Americans and summarizes a marriage empowerment program, Conversations in Marriage© (CIM), which uses African proverbs to promote situational learning. A definition of culture is developed to conceptualize healthy marriages, and challenges affecting Black marriage are discussed. Key foundations, practices, and processes of a cycle of healthy marriages are presented and implications for building stronger marriages are discussed. Each of these elements are discussed from a perspective that centers sustainable marriage within a framework of community growth, empowerment, and sustainability.

Keywords

healthy relationshipsBlack menBlack womenAfrican-centered psychologyConversations in Marriage
Type
Chapter
Information
Black Couples Therapy
Clinical Theory and Practice
 , pp. 85 - 101
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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