RAISING KEVION

Raising Kevion

Raising Kevion

About the author

Jason DeParle is a senior writer at The New York Times and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. A graduate of Duke University, DeParle won a George Polk Award in 1999 for his reporting on the welfare system and was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Nancy-Ann, and their two sons. To the extent that Jason DeParle sees several major public policy agenda opportunities, he says he would rank at the top 1.) a series of efforts to raise the incomes of low-income, low-skilled men and 2.) efforts to reconnect those men to their families. Addressing systemic challenges men in many poor communities face would be a significant point of entry for addressing the ills associated with America's rapidly growing underclass.

Bio-psychosocial perspective about story

The application of Psychological Factors is the main attention of this story. In the past the term, family was usually considered as members of legally married man and woman with children. However, nowadays, we have homosexual families, unmarried, re-married couple, and single parent family. And there is no doubt that children who were grown up from that extended families are different from other children who are members of traditional family. Given the wide variation among cultures and subcultures as well as the rapidity of social change at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it has become increasingly difficult to define what is meant by the term family.The story of raising Kevion shows that the importance of family and situations that every individual has to face in our society (http://www.nd.edu/~jwarlick/documents/Raising_Kevion_NYT.pdf).

A client Jewell Reed was born in a single parent family. Her mother gave birth when she was a teenager. Jewell had never seen her father since she was one year old and had lived with her mother and the mother's boyfriend. Jewell did not like her family and really wanted someone to love with. That is why she became pregnant in high school like her mother. Jewell is a mother of three children; Tremmell, Terrell, and Kevion. Their fathers are different.

All of them live with her boy friend, Ken, who is a father of the youngest son Kevion. Ken has his idealistic wedding in his mind and wants to marry her. He does not want a typical wedding at a city hall but on a tropical beach like sitcom “Martin”. They are also more likely to commit crimes. As for why kids usually benefit from having a stable father at home, there are multiple theories, and Ken seems to have mulled over them all. There's a second income that fathers generally bring and a second set of hands. There's the added stake that live-in fathers tend to feel they have in their children. There's emotional bonding.

Racial and class perspective is highly pointed out in this story. The utility of behavior therapy for the treatment of African American women is discussed, with particular attention to integrating cultural knowledge with assessment, conceptualization, ...