Equal Couples

Couples, Gender, and Power: Creating Change in Intimate Relationships edited by Carmen Knudson-Martin and Anne Rankin Mahoney, 2009, Springer Publishing Company.

Most couples say they want equality, yet many have difficulty because hidden male power gets in the way. Couples can move toward greater equality through a process, either with a counselor or on their own, that includes education about underlying gender issues, active negotiation of equal status and well being, development of new competencies, and mutual attention to relationships and wellbeing. This book should be useful to couples, therapists, and students.

“Couples, Gender, and Power is just the book I have been waiting for–a comprehensive, critical, empirical, and practical compilation of investigations from how diverse couples are trying to implement change and pursue equality in their relationships.”  Katherine R. Allen, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Human Development, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.

Challenging the popular notion that a couple’s dilemmas are located within the boundaries of their individual psyches and immediate relationship [this book] recognizes the effect of history and social values as they shape often invisible gendered interactions.  Simultaneously, we are offered a wisely optimistic and personally responsible perspective that change happens person by person, couple by couple … Evan Imber-Black, Director, Center for Families and Health, Ackerman Institute for the Family.

…The authors provide evidence that gender ‘norms’ mess with our relationships–and we often don’t notice them for  what they are: limiting stereotypes we can learn to see and discard.  Amy Vachon www.equallysharedparenting.com and author with Marc Vachon of forthcoming book, Equally Shared Parenting.

“Gender, Couples, and Power is an extraordinary weaving of clinically informed qualitative research and empirically grounded clinical practice. For therapists, it is a mind-expanding excursion into the landscape of subtle but ever-present ways in which gendered power needs to be identified and dealt with in couple therapy of any theoretical persuasion.” Alan S. Gurman, Ph.D. Emeritus  Professor of Psychiatry & Director of Family Therapy Training, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.