Marriage counselling services 'must be sensitive to needs of Asian minorities'

A study of Hindu-Gujarati couples in Leicester found that although eight out of ten would be willing to make use of counselling or mediation services if serious marital problems arose, the vast majority would want to talk to a counsellor or mediator from their own ethnic group. Many also said that they would not tell other family members if they were receiving outside help - or else anticipated that doing so would meet with disapproval.

The report, by Dr Robin Goodwin of the University of Bristol and Dr Duncan Cramer of Loughborough University, concludes that more effort should be made to inform ethnic minority communities about the aims and methods of marriage counselling and divorce mediation. Fewer than a third of the 70 couples interviewed were aware of recent changes to the divorce laws which emphasise the need for separating couples to reach their own arrangements for children and for property through mediation.

Acknowledging the difficulty of recruiting enough ethnically-matched counsellors and mediators, they also propose that existing professionals should be given cultural training to ensure they understand attitudes to marriage within different ethnic communities and the wider social consequences of divorce.

The research, which was supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, found that three out of four couples interviewed had first been introduced to each other by a third party who was usually a family member. Even so, the great majority had been given a free choice over whether to accept or reject their potential partner.

Although more than a third thought that marriage was primarily about finding a partner to share their lives with, a strong view was expressed - especially by older couples - that marriage marked the union of two families as well.

Caste, class, education and employment were considered important in pairing individuals. It was evident that non-introduced marriages between people of different castes had often run into difficulties through lack of acceptance by families and by the wider community.

Dr Goodwin said: "Marriage for many of the volunteer couples who took part in this study was a social as well as personal phenomenon. This two-pronged attitude to marriage may help to explain a rate of marital breakdown in Hindu-Gujarati communities that is well below the national average. Problems do not develop into crises because the partners have been raised in a culture that looks beyond the desires of the couple to embrace deep-felt values about family and cultural unity in general." He added: "For very serious marital difficulties Hindu-Gujarati couples are open to the idea of seeking external professional help. But it is vital that those providing help are sensitive to the context in which marriages are set and to the fact that the consequences of divorce in the Hindu-Gujarati family extend beyond the couple involved."