Family Communication Challenges in Diverse Relationships

Introduction: Communication as the Foundation of Healthy Relationships

The high divorce rate in the United States — and elsewhere in Western nations — is one indication that good communication, or any meaningful communication at all, is absent from many relationships. Certainly there are always challenges in any relationship, but couples should enter marriage and long-term commitments with the understanding that difficulties will arise. Without training or background in how to communicate effectively, their chances for success are reduced. This paper reports on and examines those issues based on the available literature.

As difficult as some relationships can be — given different personality types and social or family distractions that come into play — in nearly every instance there are answers as to why relationship challenges are either met or not met. Because there are identifiable solutions to many challenges that partners and spouses face, couples should seek advice and counsel on how to achieve those solutions prior to breaking up or launching divorce proceedings.

Importance to Family Communication

The problems that married couples have — as well as those who are cohabitating — are often related to a failure to communicate effectively. Communication is not simply a matter of talking to one another, although that is a pivotal part of it. Rather, genuine communication means actually sharing honest feelings and interacting with candor. Too often, according to the literature, people enter marriage and relationships with unrealistic expectations. Yet the literature is rich with appropriate, positive relationship-sustaining information, and there are counselors skilled in helping to mediate differences between couples. It is therefore a serious failing of society that so many couples part before truly exploring the communication strategies that could resolve their problems.

Challenges for Immigrant Families

In the peer-reviewed journal Social Policy & Administration, the authors provide great detail on the many challenges that immigrant families — in particular first-generation immigrant families — face when settling into Western European countries. The reasons offered for these difficulties are important to the issue of family communication. For example, because the care of young children is a primary need for these families, husband and wife must rely on each other for childcare given the "absence of close kin networks to support childcare" (Wall, et al., 2004, p. 591).

When a family migrates to a new country, bringing an entirely different set of cultural values and lifestyles, and there are no other families from that same ethnic background — no cousins, uncles, or grandparents to help rear the children — strong communication within the family becomes essential for its survival. There are enormous challenges for a family that has decided to leave its home country and migrate to another, one filled with unknowns.

Wall reports that there are "strong pressures" arising from the economic issues facing first-generation immigrants. Those families need to put in "long working hours" with "atypical timetables" — the only job an immigrant might qualify for may be minimum wage and may fall on the night shift (Wall, p. 592).

The authors conducted interviews with 19 families in France, all of whom had come from Africa. Two of these families managed work and care through "negotiation within the family," meaning that the mother and father had to communicate — and cooperate — very effectively in determining who would work during certain hours and who would remain at home with the children. The "work/care balance is achieved through the negotiated, mutual adjustment of couples' working hours and care responsibilities" (Wall, p. 595). Among the families interviewed were those who had felt great pressure to emigrate from Africa to France; their challenges included "long periods of waiting for legalization, followed by entry into low-paid, unqualified jobs" (Wall, p. 597).

The pressure on a married couple that has waited perhaps years but finally been officially accepted as legal immigrants — and who must now struggle to train and work simultaneously so that sufficient income can be found to support children — is almost too much to bear (Wall, p. 597). In such a situation, good communication between parents must be maintained in order to get past the roadblocks that immigration presents, including the possibility of racial antagonism directed at them because of their African heritage.

In summary, it would be hard to imagine a more difficult situation than an immigrant family from Africa facing a Caucasian-majority country with few skills, several children to feed and raise, and an urgent need to earn enough money to survive. On the other hand, the conditions that motivated emigration — civil wars, disease, abject poverty, scarce natural resources — may have made the prospect of a new life in France genuinely appealing. Still, good communication for the immigrant couple settling into France is an absolute imperative for survival and ultimate social success. This links well to the thesis of this paper: there are solutions, and they can be found and adopted by immigrants.