Married with children: do intermarriage and children impact political orientations?

ABSTRACT

We test the possibility that social contact through interracial marriage impacts racial attitudes. We assume that interracial couples experience intergroup contact that is meaningfully different from same-race couples. Little research examines the impact of mate selection and reproduction on political and racial attitudes. In this paper, we advance the research on the potential impact of mate selection and reproduction on couples’ racial attitudes. Using racialized socialization theory, we test whether interracial couples hold similar views to other multiracial couples compared to same-race couples. A secondary hypothesis concerns whether interracial couples with children hold distinct racial and political attitudes. We use the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS). We find that non-Hispanic whites, Blacks, and Asians in interracial relationships are more likely to indicate that these groups experience discrimination compared to their co-ethnic counterparts who are in relationships with co-ethnics. We also find some support for our expectation that having children in an interracial marriage has an impact on the racial attitudes of non-Hispanic whites. Our results contribute to the growing research on the political attitudes of interracial couples as well as the impact of their having children upon their political preferences.

KEYWORDS:

• Interracial marriage
• discrimination
• mate selection
• children
• political socialization
• race and ethnicity
• intergroup contact
• racial attitudes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).