Experiencia en los tipos de crianza de Madres Solteras Mexicanas

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Experiences of Parenting Classes for Mexican American Mothers Parenting Alone: Offering Culturally Responsive Approaches a

a

J. Maria Bermudez , Lisa M. Zak-Hunter & Luciana Silva

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University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

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The Pastoral Center for Healing, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Available online: 24 Jun 2011

To cite this article: J. Maria Bermudez, Lisa M. Zak-Hunter & Luciana Silva (2011): Experiences of Parenting Classes for Mexican American Mothers Parenting Alone: Offering Culturally Responsive Approaches, The American Journal of Family Therapy, 39:4, 360-374 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2010.539477

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The American Journal of Family Therapy, 39:360–374, 2011 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0192-6187 print / 1521-0383 online DOI: 10.1080/01926187.2010.539477

Experiences of Parenting Classes for Mexican American Mothers Parenting Alone: Offering Culturally Responsive Approaches J. MARIA BERMUDEZ and LISA M. ZAK-HUNTER Downloaded by [University of Georgia] at 06:50 24 January 2012

University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

LUCIANA SILVA The Pastoral Center for Healing, Nashville, Tennessee, USA

This study reflects the voices and experiences of 20 women who participated in a follow-up interview after completing parenting classes for Mexican American mothers parenting alone. Using Heuristic Inquiry, six themes emerged related to participants’ experiences in the classes. Findings are presented with exemplary portraits and a composite description. Overall, mothers benefitted from parenting classes and developed a heightened awareness of their strengths as mothers. Based on their experiences and recommendations, suggestions are offered for developing theoretically informed culturally responsive parenting classes for Mexican American mothers parenting alone.

Most parenting programs are developed with the goal of benefitting all parents. However, not all parenting programs benefit parents from various The first author would like to acknowledge the College of Human Science at Texas Tech University for the New Faculty Research Seed Grant which funded this study. Additionally, we would like to acknowledge the following persons who conducted the parenting classes and were invaluable to the project, Mary Ann Gutierrez, Carmen Aquirre, and Dr. Nenetzin Reyes, and to the students who contributed to the coding and analyses of these data: Andrea Guzman, Brigitte Dooley, Kara Branchetti, Laura Anne Cielinski, Heather Huff, Amelia Benton, Margaret Vasquez, Jessica White, Evie Breedon, Katie Sokolik, Sydney Battle, Chanda Dunn, Jill Collins, and Lindsey Sumner. We would also like to acknowledge Dr. Denise Lewis for reviewing this manuscript and Drs. Tom Stone Carlson, Martin Erickson, and Christi McGeorge for laying the foundation for us to build from their model of culturally responsive couple and family therapy.

Address correspondence to J. Maria Bermudez, PhD, Department of Child and Family Development, University of Georgia, 123 Dawson Hall, Athens, GA 30602. E-mail: mbermude@uga.edu 360

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ethnic groups in the same manner. Specifically, Latinos living in the United States are diverse and in constant flux and transition (Bermudez, Kirkpatrick, Hecker, & Torres-Robles, 2010; Landale & Oropesa, 2007) and unique demographic characteristics have to be considered. For example, Latino families in the US tend to be young and larger than their non-Latino counterparts (Ho, Rasheed, & Rasheed, 2004), and although marriage is highly valued, Latinos demonstrate high levels of single motherhood. Among Mexicans, Cubans, and non-Hispanic Whites, the percentage of births to unmarried mothers more than doubled between 1980–2000, with 41% of births to unmarried women of Mexican descent (Landale & Oropesa, 2007). Furthermore, Latinos are more likely to be uninsured and of lower socioeconomic status than White, non-Latinos (Domenech Rodr´ıguez, Davis, Rodr´ıguez, & Bates, 2006), which increases their risk of living in poverty. Economic needs often force families to live apart as parents and partners may only find work in different locations. Family separation is common even when families immigrate together. These challenges are compounded by the stress of navigating a new culture, strained roles, limited access to resources, and system filled with anti-immigrant sentiment and racism (Domenech Rodr´ıguez et al., 2006; Tummala-Narra, 2004).

To complicate matters, research related to parenting among Latinos does not offer a cohesive body of literature to inform the work of family scholars and family interventionists. Contradictions abound and this is especially important to note given the complexity found among Latinos living in the United States (Bermudez et al., 2010). Consistent with McDowell and Hernandez’s (2010) essay on decolonizing practices in academia and family therapy, and Mock’s (2008) essay on social justice and accountability in MFT training, it is our hope that the field of Marriage and Family Therapy will become acutely aware of how our best intentions to help families might inadvertently perpetuate a colonizing mentality of “best practices” and possibly do more harm than good. This study offers a glimpse of what a series of parenting classes was like for them and how we can use their suggestions and experiences to create culturally responsive parenting classes for Latina mothers parenting alone or without the support or participation of their child’s father.

LITERATURE REVIEW As stated, research on parenting among Latinos has constructed a contradictory and inconsistent picture. Some studies indicate that Latino parents exhibit an authoritarian style characterized by being strict, controlling, directive, and disciplinarian with their children (Schulze, Harwood, Schoelmerich & Leyendecker, 2002; Cardona, Nicholson, & Fox, 2000; Garcia-Preto, 1998).

Other studies have indicated that once constructs such as socioeconomic

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status (SES) and education are controlled for, Latino parents engage in similar disciplinary actions as their non-Latino, U.S. counterparts (Fox & Sol´ısC´amara, 1997; Sol´ıs-C´amara & Fox, 1995). These data suggest that other factors such as marital status, SES, and maternal age may contribute more to shaping parenting practices than ethnicity (Fox & Sol´ıs-C´amara, 1997; Sol´ısC´amara & Fox, 1995). Other research describes parenting styles among Latinos as close, warm, family-oriented, and nurturing (Guilamo-Ramos, Dittus, Jaccard, Johansson, Bouris, & Acosta, 2007; Ho et al., 2004; Raffaelli & Green, 2003; Calzada & Eyberg, 2002). For example, a focus group of Dominican and Puerto Rican mother/adolescent pairs conducted by Guilamo-Ramos et al. (2007) found that mothers strove to maintain a warm and supportive relationship with their children by sharing and interacting with them. These seemingly incongruous findings on parenting styles combined with the indication that single Latina mothers may especially struggle with parenting highlights the necessity of further research with this population.

Parenting Programs It is well documented that special considerations should be taken into account when working with parents who are both economically disadvantaged and from an ethnic minority group. Ethnic minority parents may have legitimate concerns about programs created by and geared toward White middle class parents (Spoth, Redmond, Hockaday, & Shin, 2001; Shepard, McKinney, & Trimberger, 1999). Researchers and service providers should exercise caution not to espouse a colonizing mentality, as they “teach” parents to become better parents. Some Latino parents may be reactive toward parent education programs, viewing them as an attempt to assimilate them into mainstream parenting ideologies and practices. Immigrant and low SES Latino parents may be wary of any parenting program, regardless of its benefits. In the spirit of benevolence, it becomes easy for service providers to see minority parents, especially single Latina mothers, as needing special assistance in parenting, health care, and education—whether they ask for assistance or not.

These helpful attitudes can pathologize single minority mothers (Garcia-Coll & Patcher, 2002), while overlooking their strengths as women and mothers.

These benevolent attitudes often unintentionally perpetuate a colonizing approach. McDowell and Hern´andez (2010) use the term colonialism to refer to the “promotion of dominant group (i.e., colonizer) ideologies, beliefs, and cultural practices for the purpose of maintaining centered positions of cultural, social, and economic capital” (p. 95). The goal of using a decolonizing framework is to create programs that are pluriversal, rather than the universal goals of Euro-centric models (McDowell & Hern´andez, 2010). Taking the above mentioned factors into consideration, several programs have had successful outcomes for parents from various cultures and specifically for

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´ Latino parents (Carlson, Erickson, McGeorge, & Bermudez, 2004; Forgatch & DeGarmo, 1999; Forgatch, 1994).

One such program, Parenting Through Change (PTC), was developed

by Marion Forgatch and her colleagues at the Oregon Social Learning Center (Forgatch & DeGarmo, 1999; Forgatch, 1994). The program has been implemented with parents to improve their parenting practices and manage self-care. It emphasizes teaching skills such as monitoring, setting limits, non-coercive discipline, positive involvement, problem-solving, and contingent encouragement (Forgatch & DeGarmo, 1999). The goal is for parents to learn effective parenting practices so as to increase healthy child adjustment. “PTC has now been adapted for many purposes. We have created this program to be suitable and relevant to differing populations in the US and other countries” (M. Forgatch, personal communication, January 31, 2010).

Culturally Responsive Intervention and Research Given the risk factors that converge when Latino/a children live in a socioeconomically disadvantaged single-parent family, it is of critical importance to develop and provide effective culturally-sensitive programs. Currently, there is a need for wide-spread availability of parenting classes and support groups for Latina/os, especially in rural areas, for monolingual parents that are responsive to the needs of Latino communities (Atiles & Bohon, 2002). There are also few programs available that are specifically targeted for meeting the needs of Latina mothers parenting alone. For the above mentioned factors and many others, culturally responsive parenting classes may be especially relevant and beneficial. Working toward becoming culturally competent is an important first step (Waites, Macgowan, Pennell, Carlton-Laney, & Weil, 2004; Bean, Perry, & Bedell, 2001; Weaver & Wodarksi, 1995). Although many interventionists are culturally sensitive in their approach, many scholars and interventionists use the terms culturally competent, culturally sensitive, and culturally responsive interchangeably. We are intentional with how we define culturally responsive therapy and intervention, using the theoretical use of term, as defined by Carlson et al. (2004).

Having a strength-based, non-pathologizing stance is important, and at the very least, culturally responsive interventions should consider families within their socio-political and socio-cultural contexts (even within the same families) while paying special attention to their neighborhoods, communities, and support systems (Waites et al., 2004). Attention to the traditions, values, worldviews, and life experiences of the cultural groups in question is also paramount (Castro, Barrera, & Mart´ınez, 2004; Waites et al., 2004; Bernal, Bonilla, & Bellido, 1995). Carlson et al. (2004) suggest a theoretically informed model for developing a culturally responsive approach to working with Latinos in therapy. Culturally responsive intervention is founded on four principals: (1) Interventions are informed by feminism, just therapy, and

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critical race theory and the understandings of power, privilege, oppression, racism, and sexism these frameworks provide; (2) Interventions urge interventionists and scholars to rely on insider/local knowledge and experience to inform all aspects of clinical work; (3) The clinical work is held accountable to minority community members and their experiences; and (4) It relies on accountability structures such as the use of cultural advocates and advisory boards to ensure work does not replicate dominant power structures.

Additionally, other researchers such as Powell, Zambrana, and Silva-Palacios (1990) offer an example of how to design culturally responsive parenting programs for low-income Mexican and Mexican-American mothers. They found that most Mexican women desired both group meetings and home visits, wanted extended family included, and sought friends from within the group. Mexican American women desired only group meetings. However, both groups thought a person with special training would be the most helpful and they desired to have family present at the parent-education meetings and wanted program content focused on child related topics.

Traditional research methods generally do not address factors that affect recruitment and retention such as poverty, language barriers, structural racism and segregation, social isolation, and distrust towards institutions (Domenech-Rodr´ıguez &Wieling, 2005). Therefore, many services remain ir´ relevant to the needs of ethnic minorities (Parra-Cardona, Holtrop, Cordova, Escobar-Chew, Horsford, Tams et al., 2009). Overall, culturally responsive interventions are reported to be more effective than traditional methods with regard to client satisfaction, retention rates, and perceived credibility of the interventionist (Lu, Organista, Manzo, Wong, & Phung, 2001). Currently, there is a dearth of data available that elucidates the experiences of Latina mothers participating in parenting classes for mothers parenting alone and/or without the support of their child’s father.

The purpose of the current study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the experiences of Mexican American mother’s participation in a parent education program, informed by Parenting Through Change (PTC) (Forgatch, 1994; Forgatch & DeGarmo, 1999). The results from this study will be used to inform future models for strength-based, culturally responsive, psychoeducational support groups and parenting programs for Latino/as parenting alone.

METHOD The goal of the study was to assess the participants lived experience of the phenomenon of participating in the parenting classes geared toward Latina mothers parenting without the support or participation of their child’s father.

Participants were asked the following questions: What was your experience of participating in the parenting classes? What was the most helpful or the

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best thing for you personally? What could be done differently to improve the classes for you personally? What suggestions do you have to make these classes more useful to Latina mothers parenting without the support of their child or children’s fathers?

Design and Rationale

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Heuristic inquiry (HI) (Moustakas, 1990) was used as a method of inquiry and analysis. HI brings to the forefront the researcher’s personal experience and relationship with the phenomenon, leads to the depiction of essential meanings and personal significance, and concludes with a creative synthesis of the essence of the personal experience and essential meanings.

Participants Participants were recruited from a larger sample (N = 40) of women who agreed to participate in a 14-week, 90-minute session, parenting program informed by the PTC program (Forgatch, 1994; Forgatch & DeGarmo, 1999).

Criteria for participation included: (1) having one child in K–4th grade; (2) parenting alone; (3) divorced/separated/never married and not cohabiting with biological father of the focal child for at least 26 months; and (4) self-identified as Latina of any nationality, Hispanic, Mexican-American, or Mexican. All of the women were of Mexican decent and identified as Mexican American. Of the 22 women who completed the classes, 21 volunteered for an in-depth follow-up individual interview. One of the English interviews was not analyzed due to the participant’s crisis state, which resulted in the interview being incomplete. Therefore, a total of 20 interviews were transcribed and analyzed. Participants were from one small city and four rural towns in a southwest state in the United States. They were predominantly low- to middle-class income status. Participants’ ages ranged from 20 to 47 years, with a mean age of 31.7 years. The targeted child’s age ranged from 5 to 10 years (M = 7.6).

Procedure Within one year of completing the parenting classes, participants were invited to do a 1–2 hour individual semi-structured interview to discuss their experiences. The interviews were conducted in the participant’s preferred language, either English or Spanish. Of the 20 interviews, 3 were conducted in Spanish and 17 in English. Interviews took place primarily at community centers coordinated with county extension specialists and they were

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given a $20.00 incentive. Each participant was interviewed by one of two interviewers. Interviews were audio taped and transcribed verbatim.

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Analysis Interview data were coded and analyzed using HI. The following reflects our use of Moustakas’ (1990) procedures for data analysis. Over the course of a year, interviews were conducted by the first author and a graduate research assistant. After each interview, interviewers recorded their reflections and experiences of the interviews. During the immersion process, each transcript was then read repeatedly while listening to the interviews. Line-by-line coding (Patton, 2002; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) was done in the margins of each transcribed page for each interview by two or three coders per interview. A large coding map was developed to identify descriptive codes vertically (for each participant) and then horizontally (across all participants for each research questions). The process was repeated to add our interpretive codes at the vertical and horizontal levels. At every stage of analysis, the interviews were read and heard in order to stay as close to the participant’s experiences as possible. Two major processes helped obtain individual depictions; vertical coding and horizontal coding, as described above. Once coding was finished, the final codes appearing in any one participants’ interview data were organized into a depiction of the participant’s experience.

In order to determine whether the individual depiction fit the data, we reviewed the coding map and transcripts by asking the following questions: (1) Is the depiction consistent with the individual’s described experience?; (2) Are all the essential qualities and themes included for each participant?; (3) Are the verbatim excerpts consistent with the text?; and (4) As a group, do we concur that each individual’s voice is heard and understood in a similar manner? If there was disagreement, we returned to the data to identify the origin of discrepancies in interpretation and reviewed the codes on the concept map until a consensus was reached. The composite description was based on the similarities across cases from the descriptive and interpretive coding. Negative cases, those which did not share similarities with others, further defined the experience of the phenomenon. After reviewing the individual portraits and composite description, participants were clustered into four groups (three discussed here) and one portrait was selected from each group. The goal of selecting an exemplary depiction from each group was to provide the most vivid description, convey the essence of the participants’ experiences, humanize the data, and evoke an empathic response (Moustakas, 1990). Synthesis represented a reflective integration of the participants’ and researchers’ experiences with the phenomenon. Recommendations for future parenting classes, working with this population, and future research

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were based on the participants’ experiences and suggestions and the guidelines suggested for offering culturally responsive psychoeducational parenting classes for Latina mothers.

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Trustworthiness Over the course of four semesters, fourteen undergraduate research assistants and two graduate research assistants coded 3–4 interviews each, with at least two people coding the same interviews. Inter rater agreement was consistent and constantly reviewed during the analysis. The interviewers’ post-interview memos were later reviewed and compared to the data, as well as the coder’s notes in their research journals. Multiple sources were used to triangulate the data. Additionally, measures were taken to ensure individuals’ voices remained present while analyzing the data as a whole.

FINDINGS Overall, six themes emerged as depicted the essences of the phenomenon for the participants: (1) participants gained valuable knowledge related to child rearing practices; (2) participants gained a heightened awareness about themselves as mothers; (3) class process was important; (4) experiences of taking the classes varied for sample; (5) interview process was meaningful and empowering; and (6) the researchers’ experiences were meaningful and empowering. Specifically related to their experiences in the classes, findings are presented with individual depictions, exemplary portraits, and a composite description.

Individual Depictions The individual depictions (not presented here) were summarized for each participant and represented by pseudonyms. Each essential experience was condensed to offer a glimpse of the participant’s individual experience. Four groups emerged from the individual depictions: (1) participants described the classes as beneficial and did not offer suggestions for improvement (N = 7); (2) participants in English interviews found the classes helpful and offered suggestions (N = 8); 3) participants in Spanish interviews found the classes to be beneficial, with suggestions for improvement (N = 3); and 4) participants did not experience the classes as beneficial (N = 2). Overall, 18 of the 20 participants stated that the classes improved their parenting practices. Only the English quotes are presented here, thus eliminating one of the exemplary portraits. The three portraits below represent the participant’s different experiences of the phenomenon.

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Exemplary Portraits Participants responded to the primary research question, “What was your experience of participating in the parenting classes?”

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GROUP 1: OLIVIA (CLASSES BENEFICIAL; NO SUGGESTIONS

FOR IMPROVEMENT)

What I really needed was write everything down that you want them to do.

Start a little incentive chart. That will help them. ‘Cause when I first came to the program . . . All I could think of was, I just yelled at my kids last night.

I scared them half to death . . . I pulled my little girl’s hair . . . So, there is nothing positive to say about me. Which now I can say [the positive]. I’m loving and I’m caring that that is why I have this feeling of being responsible for them and stuff.

And I like the family meetings; they like it too. We get to sit down and go like ‘Okay, let’s talk. Family meeting.’ And I guess maybe because they see it on T.V. And so they go. “We have family meetings too,” so, they like it too.

GROUP 2 ENGLISH: REINA (CLASSES BENEFICIAL; OFFERED SUGGESTIONS IMPROVEMENT)

FOR

I enjoyed going to them because they did help me [with the] parts that I really didn’t understand . . . mainly the yelling. My time outs were too strict.

‘You are going to get 15 minutes, not just 10 and say bueno ahora si vete (OK. Now you can go) . . . It made you think twice before you say 15 or 20 minutes, because it is a lot for them to stand. . . . and it depends too on what they did. It helped me on that. And then as far as chores, everybody knows now what they are supposed to do. It was a lot easier . . . we have family time, which is one thing we didn’t have. It’s like, now we eat all together.

I got to meet a lot more people . . . I’m not the type of person that would go up to somebody and introduce myself . . . some of the moms that I saw there I had seen them before but they would just look at me like . . . But I got to meet a lot of them there. And now they see me [and say,] ‘Hey girl!

How is it going?’ So it is pretty good we still see each other every now and then.

Okay, one thing that I did see. I found out something about a girl that I didn’t even know and it is something that I shouldn’t have known . . . And I felt so bad. I said, why are you telling me this? That is something too private.

And I didn’t like that. So my suggestion was when they do make the classes, and you see two people or three come in as a group, sit them separately and let them get to know the other people that are there too.

GROUP 3: ANA (CLASSES

WERE NOT

BENEFICIAL)

I was really looking forward, more techniques to help me, which all of these techniques, I was already doing, so it was making me feel somewhat

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uncomfortable but it always helps for people to reassure you . . . It motivates you to keep on going that you are doing something proper. It is good to know that you are not out there by yourself. I don’t want to brag on myself or anything, but we can be a guide to others.

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Composite Description The composite depiction is a representation of the core meanings and themes experienced by the group of research participants as a whole. In sum, there were six components or themes noted in these data. Overall, participants benefited from the classes. Classes reinforced what was working well and they gained new skills leading to preferred interactions with their children.

They stated that they were able to articulate their expectations clearly and with authority. Prior to the classes, many of the mothers felt powerless, hopeless, and out of control in their roles as mothers with little or no support.

Learning specific parenting skills, being more in control, delegating responsibilities, and learning how to communicate effectively greatly enriched their relationships with their children. They felt supported, connected, empowered and validated by the other women in the group. They felt a sense of camaraderie with the other mothers, which helped them feel less isolated in parenting alone. Participants also mentioned the importance of learning selfcare and to separate their personal needs from those of their children. They also wanted specific course content related to single parenting, blended families, and father involvement. Some suggested changes to the class process, as well as adding content relevant to Latino families. Although the parent educators were bi-lingual Latinas, Spanish speaking participants wanted materials and videos available in Spanish and for the content and illustrations to be more culturally relevant. English speaking participants stated they sometimes struggled with mothers who were not completely fluent in English but wanted to be in the English group. Language issues were constantly relevant in helpful and hindering ways.

Lastly, the interview process was mutually empowering for both the interviewer and the interviewees. This empowerment was reflected by the expression of emotion, mutual appreciation, and gratitude during the interview, focusing on the participant’s strengths and in the energy felt during and after the interview, For the participants, discussing the relationship with their child’s father generated intense emotion. They expressed frustration, sadness, worry, and relief.

DISCUSSION As noted, implementing culturally responsive programs is essential when working with low-income Latina mothers who parent without the support

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of the child’s father. We worked from a strength-based, non-pathologizing stance and considered the participant’s families within their socio-political and socio-cultural contexts while paying special attention to their neighborhoods, communities, and support systems (Waites et al., 2004). We asked about their values, worldviews, and life experiences as suggested by Latino and non-Latino scholars (i.e., Castro, Barrera, & Mart´ınez, 2004; Waites et al., 2004; Bernal, Bonilla, & Bellido, 1995). Efforts were made to implement the classes in a culturally sensitive manner. There were four parent educators, all of Mexican decent. Classes were available in Spanish, childcare and food were provided, time was allotted for socialization, there was flexibility with time, and the classes were held in the participants’ communities, most of which were in rural areas where community resources were scarce.

Suggestions for Offering Culturally Responsive Parenting Classes Based on the participant’s experiences and suggestions, we offer the following guidelines for designing and implementing parenting classes in a culturally responsive manner: (1) Interventions are informed by feminism, just therapy, and critical race theory and the understandings of issues related to power, privilege, oppression, racism, and sexism; (2) Rely on insider/local knowledge to inform all aspects of the intervention and the program is held accountable to minority community members and their experiences; (3) Use accountability structures (i.e., cultural advocates and advisory boards) to not replicate dominant power structures, (4) Include community cultural advocates and accountability board to have a heightened sensitivity regarding racist ideologies and practices, cultural barriers, and immigration and legal issues unique to specific communities (5) Offer a mid-point check during every class to give participants an opportunity to identify areas where more information or process changes are desired; and (6) Avoid a colonizing approach by amplify participant’s strengths so that their parenting practices are validated first, before challenging or offering alternatives. In order to do this, the interventionists/class facilitators should start the lessons by asking what the mothers know about a topic and only then “lecturing” or “teaching” at the end of the lesson; (7) Offer lessons and materials in Spanish, with culturally relevant illustrations with varying contextual differences in social positioning (educational level, age, race, class, sexuality, immigration status, etc.); (8) Upon completion of the parenting program, offer support groups and check-ins to help reinforce what was learned and offer mothers continued support, especially in rural areas where social services are more scarce; (9) Facilitators should be sensitive to participant’s time constraints and keep participants on task, especially for single mothers who are employed and are managing their time carefully; and lastly, (10) Assess which parenting strategies or interventions may or may not be culturally relevant and/or which

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ones are strongly influenced by White, middle-class norms related to parenting (i.e., time out, the notion of co-parenting with the child’s father, the notion of mother’s self-care, and the role and influences of extending family members as caregivers). Implementing these suggestions will help culturally sensitive interventionists design and implement culturally responsive parenting programs.

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Limitations As with all studies, there are limitations worth noting. First, participants were not considered co-researchers in the way Moustakas intended (1990).

Participants were not engaged in the entire research process; only in the semi-structured interviews. Second, while this may or may not be seen as a limitation, this study was not intended to be a program evaluation. The purpose of the study was to explore the participant’s lived experience of participating in a parenting program offered for Latina mothers parenting without the support of the child’s father. And lastly, the primary investigator (M.B.) and the co-authors did not have “a direct, personal encounter with the phenomenon being investigated” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 14). We did not participate in the parenting classes, however, the first author, who was an interviewer, was reared by a single Latina mother and the other interviewer was a divorced Mexican-American mother of four parenting alone. We were able to share “a comparable or equivalent experience” as Moustakas (1990, p. 14) suggests.

CONCLUSION The women in this study experienced their participation in the parenting classes as positive, enriching, and beneficial for their relationship with their children. An important benefit of being a part of this study was that the interview process was mutually empowering for both the participants and the interviewers. As stated by Lucero-Liu & Christensen (2009), “the ultimate purpose of incorporating Chicana feminism into family research includes finding strengths within the Mexican-origin community, with the goal of highlighting women’s experiences and noting the sources of empowerment” (p. 105).

This empowerment should be bi-directional for both the interviewer and interviewee as they learn from each other. As the Latina/o population continues to grow and diversify, la familia Latina in the United States will differ vastly for many contextual reasons. We hope this study will help scholars, interventionists, and MFTs develop culturally responsive and mutually empowering, decolonizing parenting classes and support groups for Latina/o families, especially for Latina mothers parenting alone or with little support from others.

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