Exploring Parental Approval and Disapproval for Black and White Interracial Couples (original) (raw)
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An Exploration of the Experiences of Inter-racial Couples
Canadian Journal of Family and Youth Le Journal Canadien De Famille Et De La Jeunesse, 2009
This study utilizes in-depth interviews of five interracial heterosexual couples to explore how couples live, and re/de/construct their everyday lives within a multiethnic society. I examine how couples experience public spaces, negotiate their identities, raise biracial children and confront cultural differences. The study also investigates the process of acceptance of partners by couples' respective families and the media representation of interracial relationships. This paper demonstrates that minority families are more likely to raise strong objections or resistance to their children marrying Whites. Another major finding of this study is that subjects experience gradual shifts in their identities and changes in their worldviews as a result of their relationships with their spouses regardless of whether they adopt a 'colourblind' or 'colour-conscious' approach. Subjects' narratives are also laced with intermingling discourse of race and culture.
Journal of Family Communication, 2019
Interracial romantic partners (IRPs) are known to experience additional hardships in their relational functioning compared to same-race partners. This study explores the support processes that IRPs engage in with those who are often the source of external pressures on the romantic unitfamily members. The study examines IRPs' support expectations from family and how this shapes the support and resilience of the IRP over time. In-depth interviews were conducted with 32 IRPs and 30 parents of IRPs, resulting in a grounded theory of participants' support expectations and their violations and ensuing experiences of support and/or strain. Based on their support expectations, participants came across three support paths after initiating support-seeking disclosure strategies. Encounters with these support paths resulted in support and strain for IRPs and their parents. Taken together, the results contribute to theorizing about processes of support and their functionality in underrepresented relationships.
Building New Cultures, Reframing Old Images: Success Strategies of Interracial Couples
This work examines the relationship strategies employed by Black-White interracial couples and considers their unique challenge in managing a relationship that commands so much public scrutiny. The field of communication has highlighted many differences in racial styles. This work attempts to explore how intimate communication across racial lines can and does work effectivel y. The authors consider four stages of relationship development (racial awareness, coping, identity emergence, and maintenance) to explore the communication requirements at various stages of the couple's life together.
Parents\u27 Perceptions of and Reactions to Their Child\u27s Intergroup Marriage
2021
Researchers have found that parental support and acceptance are integral to the success of interracial romantic relationships (IRRs) and well-being of interracial romantic relationship participants (IRRPs). Research on couples involved in IRRs is prevalent, but researchers neglected to include the perspectives of the parents of the IRRPs. The lived experiences of parents of adult children involved in Black-White IRRs and their perceptions of societal reactions to the IRR were explored to better understand the mechanisms behind parental support or disapproval of IRRs. Bronfenbrenner\u27s PPCT model of bioecological theory allowed for a focus on a parent\u27s development within the parent-child relationship and in response to prejudice and discrimination from people outside the immediate family. The use of interpretative phenomenological analysis elicited detailed narratives from 7 mothers of adult children involved in Black-White IRRs for longer than 3 years. Validated through member...
Larry: A guy at work told me “Mixed marriage offends me, it just offends me.” And I can accept that, it's not for everybody. But it's his heart that's hurting, not mine. Not everyone can do this. Not everyone is that strong. Debra: Yes, everybody has to decide what they can live with and can't live with. (From an interview with a black male-white female couple) Robert: We’re just like any other couple….perfectly normal. Linda: As far as things happening to us, we’re real boring. (A black male spouse and a white female spouse in separate interviews) As persons in intimate relationships can quickly confirm, individuals looking at the same picture, or living through the same event, often report completely different experiences. Attending to different aspects of situations, we tend to make sense of what we are sensing, feeling, and thinking in different ways. The two couples quoted above report very different experiences, just as individual partners in interracial relationships may have differing takes or constructions of what is “real” or “true” for them. While this can be a source of confusion or frustration, it is also a phenomenon that all couples must learn to effectively handle if their relationship is to be successful. As partners in interracial relationships diverge from one another on multiple axes of power, such as gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, and social class, their basic beliefs and assumptions often differ markedly, and such differences shape the lenses through which they view their interpersonal worlds. Therefore, partners in interracial relationships, coming from different social locations, may exhibit very different understandings of everyday situations that they encounter.
Interracial Families in Post-Civil Rights America
In the four decades since the U.S. Supreme Court declared laws prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional, the number of interracial families in America has rapidly increased. But interracial families continue to face unique external pressures and internal relational dynamics due to the persistence of racism in America. While formal structural barriers have been reduced, interracial dating on campuses has increased, and attitudes toward acceptance of interracial marriage have improved, interracial couplings continue to be the rare exception (and not the rule) when it comes to new marriages. This chapter explores why interracial families continue to be so uncommon in the United States, and it describes the challenges interracial families face in dealing with individual and institutional racism, responding to the disapproval of family members, and raising mixed-race children in what is still not a “color-blind” world.
Journal of Family Theory & Review
As the number of multiracial families in the United States steadily increases, so does the need for more relevant conceptual frameworks that capture the structures and processes in these families. Much of the theoretical and empirical literature on the multiracial experience has focused on identity development, which has resulted in a body of scholarship heavily steeped in the individual level of analysis that neglects dyadic process-oriented perspectives. More specifically, multiracial families experience complex life transitions just as their monoracial counterparts do, yet there is little recognition and/or understanding of their strengths and challenges, both as a family unit and as individuals within these family structures. This article proposes a conceptual model to describe and explain the relationship satisfaction of interracial couples across the transition to parenthood. We pay particular attention to the factors that are particular to interracial couples across this life transition.
The development of a typology for interracial relationships
The purpose of this study was to determine whether Foeman and Nance's (1999) model of interracial relationship development could be adapted into a generalizable interracial relationship typology and whether there would be distinct differences in the affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of each stage. Long-table analysis of four focus group interviews confirmed differences among the four stages of Foeman and Nance's model. Further examination of focus group transcripts revealed differences between the affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimension of each stage, but few differences between the affective and cognitive dimensions across stages. Implications for the study of relationship development, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. To Ted: Thank you for your guidance, ability to deal with my wordiness and overwriting, your incessant patience, and the pitchers you provided. Hope the piano holds up. This has been an experience I will never forget and one that I owe you for. To Keith and Scott: Your insights, comments, concerns, and guidance were invaluable. I appreciate everything you both provided. To My Wife: For putting up with long nights, reading and rereading my rough drafts (thanks for being an English teacher), and generally loving me throughout my many moods during work.
Latino Studies, 2012
Many immigrant groups have racially distanced themselves from Blacks due to anti-Black prejudice and stigma. Racial distancing can be transmitted to children through regulating intimate contact with Blacks. Few studies have examined how Latino young adults receive racialized messages from their immigrant parents about dating Blacks. In-depth interviews reveal that Latino young adults encounter messages regarding mixed race children, perceived cultural differences and the US racial hierarchy. This regulatory process is gendered with Latinas experiencing more explicit sanctioning than Latino men. This study illuminates how Latino parents create racialized and gendered boundaries between their children and Blacks.