Chinese Family Culture : Change, Continuity, and Counseling Implications

Chinese Family Culture: Change, Continuity, and Counseling Implications enhances social sciences and counseling students' cultural understanding, sensitivity, and communication skills so they can provide competent and appropriate care for Chinese families around the world. The text focuses on cultural and historical characteristics of Chinese families and features illustrative stories and examples to facilitate greater cultural understanding. Readers examine Chinese families from indigenous perspectives of lived experiences of Chinese individuals and their families. Chinese meanings of family life, such as marriage, sexuality, love, gender, reproduction, intergenerational relations, disability, and death, are covered. Dedicated chapters explore cultural links between family collectivism, ancestor worship, and families' intimate relationship with the land; marriage's social role in expanding social networks and ensuring family continuity; the impact of China's one-child policy on reproductive behavior; the rule of rituals in handling family and clan disputes and conflict; illness and death in Chinese families; and more. Each chapter includes counseling implications to connect student learning with practice. Chinese Family Culture is a timely and essential textbook for programs and courses in the social sciences and counseling.