Boundary Blurring? Racial Identification among the Children of Interracial Couples

Abstract

For America’s children, racial and ethnic identity is complicated by the fact that interracial couples define their children’s racial and ethnic identity rather than the children themselves. The commonplace idea of racial self-identification in government surveys is a misnomer for America’s children. In this paper, we use data, pooled annually, from the 2008 to 2014 American Community Survey to document (1) recent fertility patterns among interracially married couples, and (2) the racial or ethnic identification of the children from interracial marriages. A sizeable minority share of America’s children from mixed-race marriages are identified by their parents as monoracial, which suggests that mixed-race children are seriously underreported. Moreover, the assignment of race is highly uneven across interracial marriages comprised of husbands and wives with different racial backgrounds. Our result suggest that children’s racial identity reflects a kind of racial “tug-of-war” between parents who bring their own racial and cultural identities to marriages. The status or power of parents is often unequal, and this is played out in how children are identified as their biological offspring. For example, the parents from minority populations often have fewer claims on the race of their children. The racial and ethnic identities of children of interracial marriages, at a minimum, are highly subjective and complex.

The share of all U.S. marriages involving partners with different racial and ethnic backgrounds has risen sharply over the past few decades (Qian and Lichter 2011; Lee and Bean 2010). According to a newly-released Pew Research Center report, roughly 16 percent of all newly-married couples were interracial or interethnic (Livingstone and Brown 2017). The clear implication is that racial and ethnic boundaries are breaking down. In the case of interracial marriage, partners presumably define one another as equals, even if they occupy different places in America’s racial or ethnic hierarchy. Rising interracial dating, cohabitation, and marriage are thus seen as evidence both of improving racial and ethnic relations and declining social distance between the white majority and different minority populations (Qian and Lichter 2007; Lichter, Qian, and Tumin 2015). The past several decades have been marked by a new openness in attitudes and receptivity to interracial marriages (Herman and Campbell 2012).

Rising rates of interracial marriage clearly reflect and reinforce growing racial and ethnic diversity in America. Increasing diversity itself creates more abundant demographic opportunities for interracial contact and intermarriage, while childbearing among interracial couples—both past and present—is expressed in new forms of racial diversity. Indeed, the children of interracial marriages have fueled the growth of America’s multiracial population and the so-called bi-racial baby boom. In 2010, 9 million persons or nearly 3.0 percent of the U.S. population identified as multiracial (i.e., listing 2 or more racial or ethnic categories) (Jones and Bullock 2012). The recent growth among mixed-race children has been particularly striking. The share of multiracial babies (under age 1 and living with two parents) increased from 1 percent in 1970 to 10 percent in 2013 (Pew Foundation 2015). Whereas marriages involving partners with the same racial identity (e.g., Asian-Asian or Black-Black) contribute in obvious ways to growing diversity through differential fertility, racial diversity also takes demographic expression in the growth of multiracial children from interracial marriages. Yet, many persons with intermarried parents do not identity as mixed-race, which is responsible for the so-called multiracial identity gap (Pew Foundation 2015). Mixed-race individuals are seriously undercounted, especially Native American Indians who have a long history of substantial out-group marriage with whites (Liebler 2010; Perez and Hirschman 2009).

For these reasons, race today is often reflexively regarded as a “social construction” that reflects demographic and cultural processes that are rooted in color, nativity status, ancestry, and national origin, among other factors (Gullickson 2015; Liebler 2016). For mixed-race children, racial identity may not only reflect the phenotypes of both biological parents, but be also shaped by exposure to the competing or contested cultural influences of parents, extended kin, and the racially integrated or segregated communities in which they live. These children may serve as associational bridges connecting each side of the racial divide yet remain culturally isolated or only weakly embraced by the broader ethnoracial populations of their parents. By moving back and forth across racial boundaries, multiracial children quite literally blur the color line. In doing so, they also make ambiguous their own racial identity, which is often externally imposed and internalized.

In the case of America’s children, the fluidity of racial and ethnic identity is further complicated by the fact that parents define their children’s racial and ethnic identity rather than the children themselves (Brunsma 2005; Qian 2004; Gullickson and Morning 2011). Children’s racial identity, at least how it is measured in government reports, may depend heavily on situational or contextual circumstances that have little or nothing to do with how children are actually defined by others (on the basis of phenotype) or even how children define themselves (when they are at an age to do so). For example, the classification of children’s racial identity may depend of the idiosyncratic race and sex combinations of parents (e.g., black male and white female parents as opposed to white male and black female parents). Commonplace references today to racial self-identification in government surveys (including the decennial census) are a misnomer for America’s children; parents or guardians make this designation based on their responses to survey questions about their children’s race or ethnicity. Who answers the race and Hispanic questions clearly matters not only in defining whether the children of interracial couples are classified as monoracial or multiracial, but which racial group or groups they impose on their children. This racial designation may or may not correspond to how these children define themselves later as adolescents or young adults (Liebler et al. 2017).

Specific Objectives and Empirical Approach

In this paper, we use data, pooled annually, from the 2008 to 2014 American Community Survey (ACS) to document (1) recent fertility patterns among interracially married couples, and (2) the racial or ethnic identification of the children from interracial marriages. Childbearing among interracial couples is the engine of growth in the mixed-race population of children (Fu 2008), who are defined as such (or not) by parents or other family members who fill out the race and Hispanic questions in the ACS on behalf of all household members. Perhaps surprisingly, nationally-representative studies of fertility among intermarried couples are rare. To the extent that interracial couples bear children—or bear more children than in the past—the rise in interracial marriages will reinforce ethnoracial diversity by fueling the growth of America’s mixed-race populations of all kinds.

The ACS includes census-like information on marital status, year of marriage, and number of children born (along with their ages). Most importantly, the ACS includes information on recent births (i.e., whether a woman aged 15–50 had a birth in the past 12 months). This information can be used to determine whether interracial couples have fewer children than endogamous couples and whether the particular racial combination of interracial parents matters. Because the likelihood of having a birth in the past 12 months is conditional on marital duration, we also limit the sample to those who married in the past five years. As recently married couples, they are in their prime childbearing years, when intended fertility peaks and annual fertility rates are highest. In addition, the ACS includes a count of own children in the household, which allows us to compare the number of residential children by marriage type. To maximize the likelihood that the children are the biological offspring of currently married couples and reduce the likelihood that couples have children living elsewhere, we limit the sample to couples in which both spouses are in first marriages and wives are aged 20–39 years. Our analyses are limited to heterosexual marriages.

We also restrict the sample to interracial couples in which one partner is white and the other spouse is black, American Indian, Asian, Hispanic, or who self-identifies as part white or biracial. This definition includes the overwhelming share of all interracial couples. All residential children are identified on the household roster and can be linked to information on each co-residential parent. Our sample includes children who were born after their parents married (i.e., age of children is less than or equal to marital duration in years). This ensures that the children are the biological children of both spouses. The ACS provides a unique opportunity to evaluate how intermarried parents identify the race and ethnicity of their biological children.

For our purposes, we first distinguish Hispanics (of all races) from other racial groups as defined broadly by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). These are parents who self-identify as Hispanic; the remaining populations are defined as white, black, Asian, and American Indian. By cross-classifying the race of each parent in a 5×5 table, we compare the percentage having a child in the past year and number of children born by marriage type (defined by each cell of the table). The cells on the diagonal of the table include the children of racially homogamous unions, while the off-diagonal cells identify children of interracial marriages. We further distinguish Hispanics who classify themselves as white from those who classify themselves in other racial categories. This allows us to examine the ethnoracial classification of children born to interracially married couples.

Fertility among Interracial Married Couples

Our first objective is to provide baseline fertility estimates for couples comprised of spouses with different racial backgrounds. We consider two competing baseline hypotheses. One is that fertility will be comparatively low among interracial couples, a pattern perhaps reflecting fear of stigma (for their children) among interracial couples (Fu 2008). An alternative hypothesis is one that assumes little or no racial stigma, implying instead that fertility rates among intermarried couples will assume the average fertility levels of the racial groups representing each partner. For example, intermarriages between non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics may be intermediate between the low fertility rates of all non-Hispanic whites (hereafter whites) and the much higher rates observed among Hispanics. Of course, we recognize that fertility intentions also reflect selection into racially or ethnically heterogeneous marriages (e.g. Chinese who marry whites versus Catholic Mexicans who marry Catholic whites).

We begin by comparing past-year fertility of all racially homogamous and racially heterogamous married couples with wives aged 20–39 (See columns 1–5, Table 1). These results do not provide simple or straightforward conclusions. For whites, for example, differentials in fertility were small across racially homogamous marriages (i.e., white-white) and heterogamous marriages. There is little evidence that mixed-race couples—whether the husband is white (compare across columns in each row) or the wife is white (compare down rows in each column)—represent statistical outliers with unusually low levels of fertility. In fact, for white women and men who marry Hispanics, past-year fertility is slightly higher than white-homogamous or Hispanic-homogamous marriages. The highest past-year fertility is observed among marriages involving American Indian women and Asian men (23.4 percent), but this race-sex combination represents a very small percentage of all racially heterogamous marriages.

Table 1.

Percent Who Had a Birth Last Year among Married Couples which the Wife Was Aged 20–39 by Couples’ Racial Combination

	All Wives					Wives Married Less than 5 Years
			American					American
Husband	White	Black	Indian	Asian	Hispanic	White	Black	Indian	Asian	Hispanic
White (%)	13.74	13.49	11.56	13.37	14	18.72	15.55	17.63	15.18	17.65
N	698,319	4,360	5,655	17,372	29,857	287,329	2,366	2,399	9,120	14,603
Black (%)	13.73	13.09	18.64	14.02	13.72	17.91	17.4	22.67	18.91	16.98
N	9,976	49,557	279	1,091	3,725	5,473	22,816	150	550	2,026
American Indian (%)	11.96	16.28	13.17	12.39	12.75	18.03	22	18.47	13.83	18.21
N	5,675	86	4,109	218	659	2,440	50	1,695	94	313
Asian American (%)	15.6	17.3	23.4	14.7	15.05	17.61	15.86	30.77	19.4	20.41
N	7,704	260	141	65,037	1,747	3,947	145	65	24,071	828
Hispanic (%)	14.58	15.52	13.06	15.7	13.58	19.41	19.53	19.62	18.33	19.25
N	28,886	1,527	865	2,382	141,244	14,117	860	418	1,222	50,292

We also compare past-year fertility among couples who have been married in the past 5 years (columns 6–10, Table 1). This restriction identifies a smaller subset of recently-married couples who may be starting families and therefore likely have higher rates of fertility. We have essentially eliminated older married couples who have completed their fertility (and this may be different for different race-sex combinations of marriage couples). In other words, this restriction reduces the bias associated with potential differences in marital duration and stability by intermarriage type (Zhang and Van Hook 2009). As expected, these analyses reveal somewhat higher percentages of past year fertility than the estimates reported in Table 1 for all married couples. In some cases, especially for whites, interracial marriages appear to have lower fertility rates than white-homogamous marriages. For example, 18.7 percent of white-white couples had a baby in the past 12 months. This fertility rate is higher than any other white-heterogamous marriage considered here, except for marriages involving a white woman and a Hispanic man (19.4 percent).

Overall, these data suggest that fertility is suppressed in white-minority marriages, except when white women marry men from high-fertility groups.¹ This pattern is also apparent among black women. They have lower fertility than black-black marriages, except in the case of marriages to Hispanic and American Indian men. This contrasts with the situation of Asians, where Asian homogamous marriages are generally associated with the highest rates of past-year fertility (19.4 percent). The exception to this rule is when Asian men are married to Hispanic women (20.4 percent) and American Indian women (30.8 percent).²

Racial Identification of Children Born to Interracial Couples

Our second objective is to highlight variation in how parents (i.e., the householder or another adult in the household who responds to the ACS) in interracial marriages identify the race or ethnicity of their co-residential children. We assume large but predictable patterns (e.g., patterns of hypo-descent among black-white couples and their children) of identification, which we will describe in this paper. We also assume that racial identification is both fluid and situational, which we assess by examining whether children’s racial identification reflects: (1) the comparative socioeconomic status (or earnings/education) of each parent; (2) the racial mix of the minority spouse (i.e., multiracial or monoracial); (3) the racial or ethnic composition of the state or metropolitan area in which interracial couples and their children live; and (4) the nativity status of parents (i.e., native- versus foreign-born). We hypothesize that the children of interracial couples are most likely to be identified with the ethnoracial background of the most educated parent. We also expect that mixed-race parents will be more likely to “defer” to their white spouse in identifying the race of their children. Children of interracial marriages may also be more likely to be identified with the dominant ethnoracial share of the local area in which they live; and with the racial background of immigrant families’ national origin (e.g., first generation Hispanic-white couples will be more likely to indicate that their children are Hispanic or multiracial than will Hispanic-white couples who are native-born).

We begin by first considering the likely role played by the spouse who actually fills out the ACS questionnaire, which determines how household members, including children, are racially identified by the U.S. government. Information on who fills out the ACS questionnaire is unavailable in the public data release. For our purposes, we use a proxy—the householder. The householder is the first person listed on the survey instrument; all family relationships (i.e., spouse of householder, child of householder, etc.) are measured in relation to the householder. If we assume that most householders fill out the questionnaire or are considered to be the “head” of household (i.e., who owns or rents the place), the householder may be regarded most influential person of the family, in which case that the householder may dominate decisions in naming the race of their children. The householder has the prerogative of assigning their children’s racial and ethnic identities. Another common assumption is that children take their father’s surname, which may also be used by parents and others to assign the ethnoracial background or ancestry of children, regardless of the race of the householder (Waters 1989). Whether the minority spouse in the minority-white marriage is the householder or male arguably influence their children’s racial classification, at least how it is measured in most survey research.

In fact, the data in Table 2 show that when minority spouses are listed as the householder or are male, the children of interracial marriages are more likely to be identified as minority than white. For example, among black-white couples, 17.8 percent of the children are identified as black when the minority spouse is male versus only 10.8 percent when the minority spouse is female. When the black spouse is listed as the householder, 19.1 percent of children are identified as black compared with only 12.8 percent when the householder is white. For children, marital power—as measured by householder status and gender—seemingly influences how children are identified and classified by their parents. This is a potentially important issue given that interracial pairings are asymmetrical in the shares of minority men (e.g., black men married to white women, versus the opposite pattern).³

Table 2.

Racial Classification of Children Aged 0–17 Born to Interracial Married Couples

	Minority Spouse is:
				Not
Children’s Race in:	Male	Female	Householder	Householder	Biracial	Monoracial	Total
Black-White Couples
Black	17.8	10.8	19.1	12.8	0.2	18.8	15.7
White	8.6	19.1	9.1	14.0	29.0	8.3 '	11.8
Mixed	73.7	70.0	71.8	73.2	70.8	72.9	72.5
Total	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
Indian-White Couples
Indian	23.2	23.6	22.9	24.0	0.6	54.2	23.3
White	28.2	28.3	29.3	27.0	32.6	22.5	28.3
Mixed	48.6	48.1	47.8	49.0	66.9	23.3	48.4
Total	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
Asian-White Couples
Asian	9.4	7.3	8.7	7.6	0.6	10.1	8.0
White	16.7	18.4	17.8	17.9	30.9	14.2	17.9
Mixed	73.9	74.3	73.5	74.6	68.5	75.8	74.2
Total	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
Hispanic-White Couples
Hispanic	17.2	13.5	14.2	16.0	0.5	62.7	15.2
White	19.7	30.1	23.2	26.6	27.7	16.8	25.1
Mixed	63.1	56.5	62.6	57.4	71.8	20.5	59.7
Total	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0

Mixed-race minority spouses may have less personal stake in identifying their children’s race, especially if they have a white spouse (the sample we focus on here). Indeed, biracial spouses in interracial marriages are far more likely to identify their children as monoracial white than as a racial minority. In the case of black-white marriages, for example, 29.0 percent of the children were identified as white if their minority parent was biracial. This compares with only 8.3 percent if the black minority parent was monoracial. A similar pattern of racial identification was clearly evident regardless of white-minority pairings. In each racial pairing, roughly 30 percent of the children were identified as monoracial white. Still, biracial Indian and Hispanic parent are far more likely to report their children as mixed-race in comparison to their monoracial counterparts. This reporting pattern may have roots in the long history of conquest and oppression that has brought added racial and cultural awareness and sensitivity to miscegenation among America’s Indian and Hispanic populations.

A more general lesson drawn from these data (last column, Table 2) is that surprisingly large shares of American children are identified by their interracially-married parents as monoracial. By definition, these children should be reported as multiracial, with the races of both parents listed. However, 72.5 percent of children born to black-white interracial couples are identified as multiracial. The other 27.5 percent are classified as monoracial black (15.7) or monoracial white (11.8 percent). Similarly, 25.9 percent of children born to Asian-white couples are classified as either monoracial Asian (8.0) or monoracial white (17.9). The contrast from black-white couples is that Asian-white couples are more likely to identify their children as white than as minority. In contrast, the children of Indian-white couples have the lowest percentage classified as biracial. More than one-half are either classified as American Indian or white only. Hispanic is not a racial group. Still, 40 percent of children born to Hispanic-white couples are classified as only Hispanic (listing a racial category other than white) or only white (with no Hispanic classification).

Interracial Pairings and Variation in the Racial Identity of Children

In this section, we examine the ambiguous or fluid nature of racial identity of the children of interracially married couples. Our results suggest that children’s racial and ethnic identity is “negotiated” by parents, who bring very different interpersonal resources from which to influence decision making in assigning race or ethnicity to their children. For example, children’s racial classifications may depend on the educational attainment of the minority parent. The results in Table 3 show that higher percentages of black-white couples identify their children as monoracial black rather than white, regardless of education level (a result consistent with the “one-drop” rule). For the other minority-white racial pairings, however, children are more likely to identify as white at each education level (of the minority spouse).

Table 3.

Racial Classification of Children Aged 0–17 Born to Interracial Married Couples, by Education, Metro Status, and Nativity

	Education of Minority Spouse is:					Lives in		Couple Nativity Pairing
Children’s Race in:	Less than High School	High School	Some College	Colllege Graduate	Post Graduate	Metro	Nonmetro	Minority Native White Native	Minority Native White Foreign-born	Minority Foreign-born White Native	Minority Boreign-born White Foreign-born
Black-White Couples
Black	21.9	17.0	16.1	14.1	14.1	15.4	17.5	14.8	18.1	18.8	21.4
White	14.0	13.5	11.2	12.2	10.1	' 11.4	15.8	11.1	12.0	13.3	25.6
Mixed	64.1	69.5	72.7	73.7	75.8	73.2	66.7	74.2	69.9	67.9	53.1
Total	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
Indian-White Couples
Indian	25.4	25.4	23.6	22.1	19.9	22.2	26.9	23.6	19.2	19.6	17.7
White	26.5	27.2	28.0	30.2	28.8	29.4	24.9	28.1	32.3	30.4	39.2
Mixed	48.1	47.4	48.5	47.7	51.3	48.4	48.2	48.3	48.6	50.0	43.1
Total	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
Asian-White Couples
Asian	9.9	9.5	8.5	8.0	6.8	9.3	7.9	6.7	7.7	9.3	7.2
White	25.9	25.4	19.3	16.5	15.0	23.2	17.5	18.3	14.3	17.3	27.0
Mixed	64.2	65.1	72.2	75.5	78.3	67.5	74.7	75.0	77.9	73.4	65.7
Total	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
Hispanic-White Couples
Hispanic	21.0	17.9	16.9	12.3	11.2	18.3	14.9	14.2	19.3	17.0	11.1
White	23.3	24.1	23.9	27.0	26.5	23.2	25.3	22.5	24.3	32.0	41.3
Mixed	55.7	57.9	59.2	60.7	62.3	58.5	59.8	63.3	56.4	51.0	47.6
Total	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0

It is nevertheless also the case that higher educational attainment of minority spouses (black and Asian spouses in particular) is associated with larger percentages of children classified as biracial rather than monoracial white or minority. At the same time, there is little if any evidence that increases in education among the black minority spouses are associated with larger percentages of children identified as monoracial black. Rather, more education of the minority spouse seems to “whiten” their children. This pattern is also true for Asians in interracial marriages with whites. For the children of Asian-white marriages, roughly one-quarter are identified as monoracial white if the Asian spouse is poorly educated compared with only 15 percent if the Asian parent has a post-graduate degree. For Hispanics, a college education is strongly linked to identifying children as “white.” This clear educational gradient white racial reporting is not observed among American Indians who are married to whites.

Racial identity may also be situational, i.e., parental reports on race may depend on the racial composition of the cities and communities in which they live. Racial and ethnic diversity is much greater in metropolitan than nonmetropolitan areas, despite large increases in diversity throughout America (Hall, Tach, and Lee 2016). One implication is that interracial couples may report their children as mixed race or even monoracial minorities if they live in metropolitan areas. Evidence for this hypothesis is limited for the children of Hispanic-white and Indian-white marriages, and is equivocal in other cases. For example, as expected, the children of black-white marriages are more likely to be defined as mixed-race if they live in metropolitan areas. And among the children of these couples who are identified as monoracial, a slightly larger share in metropolitan than nonmetropolitan areas (i.e., 57 to 53) identified their children as black. Among Asian-white marriages, however, the opposite pattern was in evidence: Smaller shares of their children were identified as monoracial in metropolitan areas than nonmetropolitan areas. Yet, very similar percentages of all monoracial children in metropolitan area (23.2/32.5 or .71) and nonmetropolitan areas (17.5/25.4 or .69) are identified as Asian only.

Finally, immigrant minority spouses may be least well positioned to report their children as a monoracial minority, especially if they are married to a white native spouse. The data in Table 3 (last four columns) show that interracial couples with two immigrant spouses are less like than their native counterparts to classify their children as biracial. On the other hand, Asian-White foreign born couples are most likely to identify their children as white (27.0 percent) in comparison to other native-immigrant comparisons. For example, only 17.3 percent of couples with an Asian immigrant and a white native identified their children as white. Similar reporting patterns also occur for Indian-white and Hispanic-white couples. Why white foreigners dominate minority immigrants in reporting their children as monoracial rather than biracial is unclear. The divergent patterns of race reporting may simply reflect the lack of knowledge or familiarity with filling out the ACS question on race, i.e., that their children can be listed as having multiple races.⁴ Of course, these descriptive results, although informative, also are potentially confounded by many other unobserved factors.

Discussion and Implications

The growth of interracial marriages is fueling population diversity in new ways. Indeed, Jimenez and colleagues (2015:110) claim that “no factor has been more important to ethnoracial identity in the last three decades than romantic partnerships across ethnoracial lines, and the children these unions produce.” Diversity has proceeded most rapidly among America’s children—”from the bottom up” (Frey 2014; Johnson and Lichter 2010)—and rising interracial marriage and childbearing has played a large role in this regard. Recent government reports claim that the majority of all babies today are born to minority or mixed-race women. Of course, defining “minority” babies—or the U.S. population more generally—is a fraught issue (Alba 2016; Prewitt 2013). The race and ethnicity of America’s children is determined subjectively by parents (often a single parent), not on the basis of some “objective” standard that all parents understand, accept, and act upon. Newly-born babies do not have a racial or ethnic or cultural identity; this is something that unfolds as children make their way into adulthood as social beings.

Our analyses, based on the analyses of newborn children from the ACS, suggest several specific conclusions. Interracial marriages—and subsequent fertility—are clearly making the measurement of mixed-race populations an increasingly difficult task. The mixed-race population of children is underestimated by conventional approaches based on parents’ own reports. Indeed, as we have shown here, large shares of America’s children from mixed-race marriages are identified by their parents as monoracial, which, on its face, suggests that mixed-race children are seriously underreported, as it has always been in the past as a result of the “one drop” rule. Moreover, how parents classify their children’s race is highly uneven across intermarriages distinguished by husbands and wives with different racial backgrounds. Our results seemingly suggest that children’s racial identity reflects a kind of racial “tug-of-war” between parents who bring their own racial and cultural identities to marriages. The status or power of parents is often unequal, and this is played out in how children are identified or not as their biological offspring. Parents from some minority populations seemingly have fewer claims on the race of their children. The racial and ethnic identities of children of interracial marriages, at a minimum, are highly subjective and complex.

Our study tells us little or anything about the meanings that parents attach to the assigned racial classifications of their children. How parents identify their own biological children—as monoracial and biracial—nevertheless signals how parents (at least one of the parents) view or hope to shape their children’s racial identity. These racial assessments or aspirations for their children are often consistent with historical patterns of hyper- and hypo-descent (Gullickson 2014; Gullickson and Morning 2011). Racial and ethnic identification can be fluid (for some racial and ethnic groups), perhaps even providing evidence of a kind of intergenerational racial mobility (Bratter 2007; Saperstein and Penner 2012). Parents’ racial assignments at their child’s birth or during early childhood are subject to change with the shifting social and economic circumstances of the family. Significant but currently unknown shares of American children also are likely to discard the racial identities assigned by their parents as they make their way to adulthood or when they have the opportunity to officially define themselves on government-sponsored surveys.

Census estimates indicate that the multiracial population of U.S. children was 4.2 million in 2010, up by nearly 50 percent since 2000. Under the circumstances, empirical claims about the changing prevalence and racial mix of monoracial and multiracial children are marked by uncertainty. And this is not likely to change anytime soon. America’s future is rooted in today’s unprecedented diversity in the national origins of new immigrant groups, the rapid growth and aging of America’s new second generation, increases in intermarriage (especially as cultural and economic integration continues apace), and absolute declines in the majority white population (Frey 2014; Lichter 2013).

Biography

Daniel T. Lichter is the Ferris Family Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, professor of sociology, and director of the Institute for the Social Sciences, all at Cornell University. His work focuses on changing racial boundaries, as measured by shifts in racial segregation in America’s settlement system and by new patterns of interracial marriage and cohabitation during a period of massive immigration.

Zhenchao Qian is professor of sociology and faculty associate of the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. His research focuses on changing patterns and consequences of marriage, cohabitation, and assortative mating. He is also interested in racial identification among children born to interracial couples, immigrant integration in the United States, and social and family change in China.