When Kindness Is Not Enough: Pākehā Parenting Socialisation Practices for Cultural Connectedness and Pride

Pākehā children’s cultural identities are influenced by their parent’s cultural socialisation practices. This article focuses on the ways family members (N = 4019) socialised their Pākehā children for cultural connectedness and pride, or not, in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We mapped our analytical codes alongside Hughes et al.’s (2006) Ethnic-Racial Socialisation framework (cultural socialisation, egalitarianism and silence about race, promotion of mistrust, and preparation for bias) to better understand the underlying motivations for family cultural socialisation. While approximately 47.6% of Pākehā family respondents articulated positive cultural socialisation practices, 33% of Pākehā family respondents refused to answer the questions and 18.6% struggled to articulate the ways they encouraged their children developing positive cultural identities. This particular article highlights the four ways 18.6% of Pākehā family members avoided talking about their child’s cultural identity and cultural backgrounds: by wrestling with, resisting, revolting against or re-storying their cultural identities.