How Multiethnic-Racial Emerging Adults Describe and Understand Their Parents’ Ethnic-Racial Socialization Practices

Despite multiethnic-racial individuals comprising the fastest growing demographic in the United States, relatively little social science research has considered the nuances of ethnic-racial socialization and identity-related processes for this group, though previous work suggests these processes are more complex relative to those occurring in monoethnic-racial families. In this paper, we expand literature in the field of ethnic-racial socialization by analyzing in-depth interviews with multiethnic-racial emerging adults ( N = 35) to explore how these individuals describe and understand their parents’ ethnic-racial socialization practices in terms of their parents’ negotiation of their socialization goals, types of socialization messages received, and the influence of this socialization on ethnic-racial identity outcomes. Four major parental socialization strategies emerged from our analyses of participants’ descriptions. We outline patterns, links, and interpretation of these themes as well as implications for parents heading multiethnic-racial families and clinicians working with this growing population.