tebkrg
08-16-2003, 07:19 AM
Fathers Returning Home From Prison
- A Solution-focused Approach For Restoring Marital Relationships
by G. Stan Meloy, Ph.D.
Introduction
In 1997 I was in private practice as a family therapist in Michigan, and some of my clients were men who had just been released from prison and then court-ordered into individual counseling as a condition of their probation. Most were fathers who had either been divorced while they were doing time, or complained loudly about their wives being too demanding and unsympathetic after they came home. Reintegration is often an evolving and tentative process, and so I started inviting wives into therapy in an effort to work through marital problems and to negotiate or restore family roles and rules.
The problem with individual counseling for probationers is that it doesn't allow family participation and assessment, and without that men can?t fully appreciate the hardships they've imposed on their families, and their wives and children can't "get over it" until he's accepted responsibility, sought forgiveness, and made amends.
Men returning from prison are uniquely challenged to recover from their prison experiences on one hand, while quickly adapting to their former roles as husbands and fathers on the other. Their need to be anchored into something more meaningful and reliable than themselves is great. In fact, family relationships that become burdened and disorganized by reintegration can exacerbate existing problems and discourage re-engagement. Worse still, fathers may start feeling apathetic about the decisions they make regarding their families, substance abuse recovery, keeping a job, probation requirements and so on.
I wondered about the effects of family counseling vs. individual counseling for this population, and so I set up my dissertation research to determine if differences existed between the two. I wanted to identify and examine the most persistent obstacles impeding the reintegration efforts of fathers returning home from prison, and to help men resume their roles as good husbands and reliable fathers. This was an attempt to investigate the benefits of family counseling as a more responsible and productive strategy than individual counseling.
This is only a very SMALL piece of this study which is very interesting - a bit clinical at times but interesting none the less. You can find the whole study here:
http://www.fcnetwork.org/fatherhood/meloy.html
- A Solution-focused Approach For Restoring Marital Relationships
by G. Stan Meloy, Ph.D.
Introduction
In 1997 I was in private practice as a family therapist in Michigan, and some of my clients were men who had just been released from prison and then court-ordered into individual counseling as a condition of their probation. Most were fathers who had either been divorced while they were doing time, or complained loudly about their wives being too demanding and unsympathetic after they came home. Reintegration is often an evolving and tentative process, and so I started inviting wives into therapy in an effort to work through marital problems and to negotiate or restore family roles and rules.
The problem with individual counseling for probationers is that it doesn't allow family participation and assessment, and without that men can?t fully appreciate the hardships they've imposed on their families, and their wives and children can't "get over it" until he's accepted responsibility, sought forgiveness, and made amends.
Men returning from prison are uniquely challenged to recover from their prison experiences on one hand, while quickly adapting to their former roles as husbands and fathers on the other. Their need to be anchored into something more meaningful and reliable than themselves is great. In fact, family relationships that become burdened and disorganized by reintegration can exacerbate existing problems and discourage re-engagement. Worse still, fathers may start feeling apathetic about the decisions they make regarding their families, substance abuse recovery, keeping a job, probation requirements and so on.
I wondered about the effects of family counseling vs. individual counseling for this population, and so I set up my dissertation research to determine if differences existed between the two. I wanted to identify and examine the most persistent obstacles impeding the reintegration efforts of fathers returning home from prison, and to help men resume their roles as good husbands and reliable fathers. This was an attempt to investigate the benefits of family counseling as a more responsible and productive strategy than individual counseling.
This is only a very SMALL piece of this study which is very interesting - a bit clinical at times but interesting none the less. You can find the whole study here:
http://www.fcnetwork.org/fatherhood/meloy.html