Blackwell Reference Online

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Historically, family scholarship has been guided by a Eurocentric perspective including the notion that families are ethnically homogeneous. Over the last few decades, a shift in social acceptance of interethnic relationships coupled with changes in national laws (e.g., a 1967 US Supreme Court ruling abolished the last legal barrier to interracial marriages) has resulted in an increase in interethnic families. Ethnic identity is a sense of affiliation with a specific ethnic group manifested in communication patterns, cultural and religious traditions, political ideologies, peer networks, or family roles ( Phinney 1990 ). Thus, interethnic families are family systems where partners and/or children identify with different ethnic groups. Specific demographic information or historical comparisons on interethnic families can vary due to the national practices of documenting race and ethnicity. Yet, many countries still do not document interethnic marriages or multiethnic identity. However, data from national census reports indicate the prevalence of these relationships. For example, according to the 2000 US Census, 7.4 percent of marriages are interethnic relationships with African-American/Euro-American and Hispanic/Non-Hispanic as the most common type of relationship. However, other sources have estimated this to be from 5 percent to 10 percent of the married population. Likewise, ... log in or subscribe to read full text