Socialization and Parenting in Underrepresented Families: A Commentary on this Special Issue Section

As we continue to advance equity and work to dismantle structural discrimination, we must carefully examine and interrogate our approaches and methods. The articles offered in the special issue section “Parenting and Socialization in Underrepresented Families” highlight racialized families’ experiences, revealing how racism and discrimination can influence individual well-being, parenting, and family systems. While highlighting similarities across racialized families, these collective works also speak to areas of divergence and variation in how parents negotiate their own race-related stressors and awareness of the need to arm their children with strategies for navigating racialized experiences and promoting positive development. The articles provide insights that inform theory, research, and practice in family science and across the disciplines. In this brief commentary, I highlight the thematic contributions of this collective work: (a) attention to diverse family and social contexts, (b) developmental context (still) matters, (c) dynamicity and transaction, and (d) inclusion of fathers’ perspectives and attention to their parenting contributions.