Family Therapy: Stereotyped Gender Roles

Family therapy has been slow to consider sexuality and power distribution as key influences on family life. The attributes that signified a functional family involved establishing distinctive roles for men and women, with the nuclear family as the norm (Canino & Inclan, 2001). Family therapy has been seen as limited by its insularity from the critique of its reinforcement of stereotyped gender roles (Goldner, 1985). Although family therapy recognizes the social context as a determinant of behavior, therapists have not examined the consequences of traditional socialization practices that disadvantage women or discriminate against homosexuality.
Family therapy’s weakness was its failure to substantially recognize the interaction of the family