Low-income Latinas/os are exposed to widespread mental health disparities in the United States. Most recently, a resurgence of anti-immigration narratives has led vulnerable Latina/o immigrants to experience considerable contextual stressors with multiple deleterious consequences for their overall well-being, including significant disruptions to their parenting practices.

Therapists are expected to practice cultural awareness. However, there is limited guidance on what this means when working with second or third generation families. This grounded theory study used a social constructionist life course perspective to understand how second generation Korean American parents locate themselves in the sociopolitical context and draw on these intergenerational experiences to construct a parenting ideology.

Objective: The present study examined the intergenerational risk of instrumental filial responsibility in the first generation on children’s externalizing behaviors in the next generation and examined difficult child temperament as a potential moderator of this association.

Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988) and contextual therapy (Boszormenyi-Nagy and Krasner, 1986) have conceptual commonalities relative to dialogue, trust, and creating new relational realities (Diamond, Siqueland and Diamond, 2003; Greenberg and Johnson, 2010; Hughes, 2007). Linking Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) (Greenberg and Johnson, 2010) and contextual therapy has also been conceptually proposed for couples therapy (Lyness, 2003).

Though depression is one of the most common presenting problems treated by systemic therapists, there have been relatively few attempts to describe how specific systemic therapy models can be applied to treat couples dealing with depression. In this paper, we discuss how contextual therapy can be used to treat depression in couples therapy. We identify multidirected partiality as an intervention and as a characteristic. We introduce letter writing and internalized other interviewing as contextual interventions that help to facilitate partiality and understanding between clients.