This critique is based on Ha, J., Greenberg, J.S., & Seltzer, M.M’s article, Parenting a Child With a Disability: The Role of Social Support for African American Parents.

Introduction

This critique is based on Ha, J., Greenberg, J.S., & Seltzer, M.M's article, Parenting a Child With a Disability: The Role of Social Support for African American Parents. This article examines the impact upon the physical and mental health of African American parents, who have children with disabilities and live in an urban environment; it also examines the impact of social interaction, positive or negative, with family members other than the spouse, to see if this helps increase or decrease the parents ability in adapting to having to care for a disabled child.

Social Concern, Main Point and Argument

The main social concern in the above article would be parental physical and mental health, with the human behavior issues coming from nonspousal systems of support. The authors' primary argument is that African American parents with a disabled child are more likely to have more somatic symptoms than that of their counterparts who have no disabled children, arguing that additional challenges come with caring for a child with disabilities.

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They hypothesize that having a disabled child does in fact impact upon the physical and mental health of the African American parent living in an urbanized community, and that this impact is reduced as a result of receiving increased positive feedback and support from family members.

The articles primary purpose is to encourage practitioners to understand the implications that their study presents for practice, such as the importance of engaging family members to have increased positive interactions with these African American parents since the outcomes of their research has shown that this results in enhancing the family system's functioning ability and the interchange of support (Ha, J., et al., 2011). The outcomes also implied that tangible support was just as important as emotional support, and encouraged practitioners to seek out these...