The Voices of Interracial and Interethnic Couples Raising Biracial, Multiracial, and Bi-ethnic Children Under 10 Years Old (original) (raw)
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Biracial Families
As interracial couples become biracial families, parents experience unique concerns and challenges. This chapter explores how parents with biracial children navigate parenting as they blend cultural beliefs and practices and seek to protect and prepare their children for success. We discuss the ethnic identity of mixed-race children, racial and cultural socialization in mixed-race families, navigating extended family relationships, external pressures and perceptions of mixed families, and mixed-race parenting beyond the black-white binary. We conclude this chapter by identifying gaps in the literature and making suggestions for future research, as well as providing guiding principles that reflect the practice implications of the research we have presented and discussed.
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
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...
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.
This study on the racial socialization practices and dilemmas of caregivers of 0-8 year-old BIPOC children utilized an openended online survey, with a mixed-methods approach to data analysis. The study included 173 caregivers (i.e., 59% white; 41% BIPOC; 94.2% female) in the U.S. who held a variety of roles (e.g., 33.5% parents/relatives; 28.3% early childhood educators; 12.1% mental health/health professionals). Caregivers were prompted with a message about joy and resilience in BIPOC children. Analysis of open-ended data revealed practices such as the use of books, adult education, talking, preparation for bias or acknowledgment of racism, stereotyping, privilege, anti-bias/anti-racist education, art, music, dance, home language, and miscellaneous topics. Caregivers highlighted the following: (a) Nurturing a positive racial identity and pride in children's own heritage; (b) Nurturing love and knowledge about racial diversity; (c) Preparation for bias; and, (d) Racial socialization network: Adult-to-adult practices. Regarding racial socialization dilemmas, caregivers highlighted challenges with nurturing a positive racial identity/pride in children's heritage; nurturing love and knowledge about racial diversity; preparation for bias; and, adult education. Dilemmas were reported about nurturing self-love in a racist world, whiteness, others' biases, relationships, representation, multiracial families, own biases, age appropriateness, and colorism. Chi-square analyses confirmed that there were no statistically significant differences between white and BIPOC, and familial and non-familial, caregivers' racial socialization practices and dilemmas. Descriptive results revealed some differences in racial socialization dilemmas by race and role of caregivers.