Black Parenting Couples’ Discussions of the Racial Socialization Process: Occurrence and Effectiveness

Abstract

Racial socialization (RS) is one of the most important practices Black parents undertake to promote the well-being of Black children. However, research has not examined how Black coparents navigate RS together. Integrating principles from the RS and coparenting literatures, this study investigated whether individual (e.g., racial identity), couple (e.g., relationship satisfaction), and contextual (e.g., neighborhood composition) correlates influenced the occurrence and effectiveness of inter-parental dialogue about RS. Forty-four couples completed surveys and responded to two RS vignettes, which were videotaped and coded. Actor-partner interdependence models (APIM) revealed significant actor and partner effects at all levels. Implications of the current study are discussed in terms of future research on how parents traverse the RS process are presented.