Biracial Families: Crossing Boundaries, Blending Cultures, and Challenging Racial Ideologies

This interdisciplinary volume surveys the diverse experiences of biracial families, both across and outside the black/white binary. The book examines the deep-rooted social contexts that inform the lifespan of interracial families, from dating and marriage through the stages of parenthood, as well as families’ unique responses and realities. Through a variety of structures and settings including blended and adoptive families, contributors describe families’ strengths and resilience in meeting multiple personal and larger social challenges. The intricacies of parenting and family development are also revealed as an ongoing learning process as parents and children construct identity, culture, and meaning.

Among the topics covered:

• Social constitutionality of race in America: some meanings for biracial/multiracial families.
  
• Interracial marriages: historical and contemporary trends.
  
• Racial socialization: a developmental perspective.
  
• Biracial families formed through adoption.
  
• Diverse family structures within biracial families.
  
• Racial identity: choices, context, and consequences.
  

Addressing lingering gaps in the existing literature and highlighting areas for future study, Biracial Families gives readers a fuller understanding of a growing and diversifying population. Its depth and breadth of coverage makes the book an invaluable reference not only for practitioners and researchers, but also for educators and interracial families across the spectrum.

Roudi Nazarinia Roy, Ph.D. is an assistant professor and area coordinator of Child Development and Family Studies in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at California State University Long Beach. She is also the 2017-2018 Ethnic Minorities Section Chair for the National Council on Family Relations. She has a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Family Science from the University of British Columbia. She received her Ph.D. in Family Studies from Kansas State University in 2009. She teaches courses related to the transition to parenthood, family life education, families and diversity and parent education. Her research interest revolves around the transition to parenthood and cultural influences on parental roles. Dr. Roy is also a consultant for community agencies serving diverse populations of families.

Alethea Rollins, Ph.D. earned her M.S. and Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She completed her post-doctoral work at the Center for Youth, Family, and Community Partnerships at UNCG. Alethea is a professor, researcher, wife and mother. She teaches courses in human development across the lifespan, including child development and adolescence, adulthood, and death, grief and dying. She volunteers regularly in her children’s schools and with the school district at large. Her research focuses on bi/multiracial individuals and families, parental racial socialization, and racial socialization practices of early childhood educators.