Hidden among the hidden: Transracially adopted Korean American adults raising multiracial children.

Abstract

The parenting practices of both transracially adopted Korean American adults and multiracial families are often overlooked in developmental science, yet are important to address given that the majority of Korean adoptees are now adults with families of their own and given rapid increases in the multiracial population. This qualitative study examined the cultural socialization beliefs and practices among transracially adopted Korean Americans who are parents of multiracial Asian-White children. Drawing upon interviews with 31 Korean adoptee parents (29 female; Mage = 41.26), we identified four themes that capture parents' understanding of their children's multiracial identities, how that understanding subsequently shapes their cultural socialization practices, and how parents' socialization beliefs and practices vary by developmental stage. These themes described the ways that parents' cultural socialization practices were shaped by their children's phenotypes, parents' understanding of their children's multiracial identities, geographic location, and the multiracial family context. This study also demonstrated how multiracial couples in our sample engaged in cultural socialization together. Results suggest that Korean adoptee parents largely acknowledged their children's multiracial identities through labels, but primarily socialized children as monoracial minorities.

A qualitative examination of familial racial-ethnic socialization experiences among multiracial American emerging adults.

“…Previous qualitative studies examining racial-ethnic socialization in Multiracial families have found that monoracial parents typically do not talk explicitly about race and ethnicity with children, utilizing colorblind messages that deemphasize the significance of structural racism instead (see Atkin & Yoo, 2019). One recent study with transracially adopted Korean American adults raising Multiracial children found that the parents did engage in socialization promoting monoracial identities (i.e., Asian American or White), but did not specifically promote Multiracial identity (Wu et al, 2020). However, MultiCrit (Harris, 2016) and previous studies highlight that on top of racism and colorism, Multiracial youth experience monoracism , or discrimination based on one’s Multiracial status (Johnston & Nadal, 2010; Johnston-Gurerrero et al, 2020).…”

Hidden populations: Uncovering the developmental experiences of minoritized populations across contexts.

“…Sociocultural developmental frameworks underline the embeddedness of developmental and family processes within sociopolitical, contextual, and cultural systems. The study by Wu and colleagues (2020), for example, investigated the cultural socialization practices of transracially adopted Korean American parents of multiracial children by utilizing a combination of monoracial paradigms of cultural socialization (e.g., Hughes et al, 2006; Lesane-Brown, 2006; Yasui, 2015) alongside models of multiracial identity development. Guided by recent ecological models of father involvement that underscore the role of social, cultural, and physical environments on fathers’ parenting, Brown et al (2020) examined father involvement among young Black fathers in rural areas.…”

“…In defining a given “hidden population,” authors across the set of articles referred to the marginalization of their focal sample at multiple levels. At the most basic level, authors clarified that their focal study population was a numerical minority either in the national (Neha et al, 2020; Wu et al, 2020) or local context (Balkaya-Ince et al, 2020; Cross et al, 2020; Stein et al, 2020) of the research. At the societal level, authors pointed to myriad ways in which their focal population was marginalized due to ethnic or racial discrimination (Cross et al, 2020; Hope et al, 2020; Stein et al, 2020), anti-Indigeneity (Neha et al, 2020), anti-immigrant attitudes and xenophobia (Cross et al, 2020; Stein et al, 2020), and religious (Sabato & Kogut, 2020) and ethnoreligious biases (e.g., Islamophobia; Balkaya-Ince et al, 2020).…”

“…Yet, the set of articles that comprise the special section makes clear that there are myriad ways to conceptualize and operationalize minoritization itself; as a set, they force us to contend with the issue not only of who but also what has been “hidden.” Hope and colleagues’ (2020) aforementioned example is one where the population itself (i.e., Black men) is, in fact, hypervisible in many ways; they argue that what is hidden is knowledge about normative and positive processes among Black men (e.g., civic development). Similarly, across the special section articles, authors were clear that even as their focal population might be quite visible in some arenas (e.g., Muslim Arab youth in the United States, Christian Arab families in Israel, Māori youth in New Zealand), the focal group was not well represented in literature on normative processes (e.g., prosocial development, parenting, literacy, and numeracy development; Brown et al, 2020; Neha et al, 2020; Sabato & Kogut, 2020) or in what are thought to be positive processes (e.g., ethnic-racial socialization within families, familism, civic development; Balkaya-Ince et al, 2020; Cross et al, 2020; Hope et al, 2020; Stein et al, 2020; Wu et al, 2020). Thus, each article presents a case of not only who but what has been obscured from the literature in their respective fields.…”

“…Thus, each article presents a case of not only who but what has been obscured from the literature in their respective fields. A common theme across the set is the need for more knowledge about the settings and activities in the family (Cross et al, 2020; Neha et al, 2020; Stein et al, 2020; Wu et al, 2020) and community (Hope et al, 2020; Neha et al, 2020) that could counterbalance the minoritization faced by individuals, families, and communities represented in this section. Further, what is candidly clear among this set of articles is the resilience of these hidden, minoritized populations within a context that refuses to truly see them.…”