Parenting Mixed-Race Children (original) (raw)
Related papers
Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 2021
This study explored the experiences of parents in an interracial or interethnic marriage who were raising children under 10 years old. Nineteen parents married to someone of a different race or ethnicity and with at least one child under 10 years old were surveyed and interviewed between September 2020 and April 2021 as part of a larger study of interracial and interethnic families. A majority of the parents identified four themes that emerged from their parenting practices. These were: (1) racism/discrimination, which they saw or were concerned about in reference to their child(ren); (2) the child(ren)'s ethnic-racial identity development; (3) the child(ren)'s skin color; and (4) the benefits to the child(ren) of being multiracial, biracial, or bi-ethnic. In addition, some of the parents expressed heightened concern for their child(ren) due to the political climate as reflected by recent racial protests and anti-Asian and anti-Latinx hate crimes. Social workers should practice with cultural humility when helping families deal with racism, microaggressions, and the identity development of children. In addition, they should explore the strengths of interracial and interethnic families.
Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2022
This introduction to the Journal of Child and Family Studies special section on multiracial families provides an overview of the unique experiences of multiracial families in the United States. We identify a need for greater representation of diverse family experience in family focused theories. In addition, we explain our motivation in bringing together a collection of papers and commentaries on multiracial families. We end with a summary of the work in this special section, which we organize into four themes: (1) The demography of multiraciality is changing along with that of America. (2) The challenges parents in multiracial families face and the role they play in buffering adversity and promoting resilience; (3) The Health and Well-being of Multiracial Families; and (4) The Strengths of Multiracial Families Across Family Life Stages. Keywords Multiracial families • Interracial couples • Single-parent households • Transition to parenthood • Racial-ethnic socialization • Resilience Highlights * Roudi Nazarinia Roy
Ethnic-Racial Socialization and Its Correlates in Families of Black–White Biracial Children
Child, family, and contextual correlates of ethnic-racial socialization among U.S. families of 293 kindergarten-age Black–White biracial children were investigated in this study. Children with one White-identified and one Black identified biological parent who were enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort participated in this study. Parents’ racial identification of children, parent age, family socioeconomic status, urbanicity, and region of country predicted the likelihood of frequent ethnic-racial socialization. Relative to their biracially and Black-identified peers, White-identified biracial children were less likely to have frequent discussions about ethnic racial heritage. Findings suggest that ethnic racial socialization is a prevalent parenting practice in families of young biracial children and that its frequency varies depending on child, family, and situational factors. Implications for practice are discussed.
The number of interracial couples in the United States has increased rapidly since anti-miscegenation laws were repealed in 1967. Early stereotypes conceptualized interracial couples as pathological, highlighting the importance of research addressing the psychosocial functioning of these couples and multiracial families. This article provides a summary of research on the psychosocial functioning of interracial couples, multiracial children, and parent-child relationships in multiracial families. Results across these domains suggest that multiracial families are not pathological but rather that they are normal families faced with unique challenges. Counseling options to support multiracial families navigate such challenges are discussed. Themes emerging from research on the psychosocial functioning of multiracial families are identifiedandavenuesforfutureresearcharesuggested.
Design Your Own Life!" Thoughts on Ethnicity, Race, and Parenting Biracial Children
Journal of Family Life, 2010
In an increasingly multicultural society interracial families and their biracial or multiracial children are defying stagnant socially constructed concepts of race and racial categorization. In this paper, I present a narrative based on three ninety-minute in-depth phenomenological interviews (Seidman, 2006) focused on one participant's life history and how he understands and makes meaning of his role as the parent of biracial children. Informed by a hermeneutic framework, the narrative presents a story of how the participant has come to understand himself and his children racially, ethnically, and culturally thorough his own intraand interpersonal development. Parenting his children emerges as a strong influence on his process of de-constructing the concept of race and co-constructing new meanings for it. The narrative illustrates how, while honoring themselves and their communities, this person and his family dismantle some of the most ubiquitous ideas of our society concerning the construct of race.
2009
As our society becomes increasingly multiracial, it is imperative that parents, teachers, counselors, and researchers consider the complex processes associated with crossing racial boundaries and occupying a biracial social location. Few investigations have explored racial socialization within biracial families, and none have empirically examined the relationship between racial socialization and the multidimensional components of racial identity. Using a cultural ecological framework, this study explored the racial socialization messages used by mothers of biracial adolescents and evaluated the relative impact of these messages on the racial identity of biracial adolescents. Data for this study were taken from a public-use subsample of the longitudinal Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study (MADICS; Eccles, 1997). For this investigation, participants were 104 biracial adolescents and their mothers. Mothers of biracial adolescents engaged in a full range of racial socializa...