Enmeshment

There are important cultural differences in how enmeshment would be experienced or conceptualized, however. One study found that enmeshed adults in the United Kingdom experienced more depression than those in Italy, because of cultural expectations in more individualistic versus more collectivist cultures. Further, feminist family therapy critics have argued that the concept of enmeshment may "reflect prototypically male standards of self and relationships, which contribute to the common practice of labeling women's preferred interactional styles as pathological or dysfunctional". Empirical research in this critical feminist tradition has found that young women with the strongest sense of family cohesion have the highest social self-esteem, despite exhibiting what could be pathologized as "enmeshment". ==See also==