Evidence-based counseling for African-American parents: A contextual humanistic perspective

Parent training programs have been deemed the gold standard for addressing child misbehavior in families. Recent investigations on parent education have placed an emphasis on developing culturally responsive programming in which evidence-based parenting interventions are adopted to focus on racial, ethnic, and cultural issues. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of group counseling sessions, as measured from pre- to postintervention, on how African-American parents respond to adolescent misbehavior. The results provide evidence that group counseling does have an overall effect on the intensity of disciplinary practices among African-American parents. Irrespective of the child's age, the effect appears to be more prevalent in cases of mild misbehavior than those of severe misbehavior. Implications for culturally responsive counseling practice are also discussed.