Everyday Sexuality between Mixed Parents

• In Event: 220 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. Sexuality

Abstract

Everyday sexuality among mixed parents is at the core of their parenting experiences. At the same, they conceive the idea of sex as always intimately connected with multiple, overlapping, and powerful emotions. Their everyday heterosexuality and parenting are merged and explored in this chapter of my dissertation with themes highlighted to deal with the overlap between race, culture, ethnicity, nationality, and biography. The premise of the dissertation is on everyday parenting between native-white Finns and Sub-Saharan Africans in Finland. The main objectives are to develop a fuller understanding of their everyday parenting experiences, to explore the cultural place for culturally and racially different parenting, and lastly, their expectations and aspirations. The composition is qualitative, everyday life is opened theoretically, leaning towards social constructionist perspectives with the analysis guided by phenomenology - though engaged entirely within the framework of realism.

In Finland, scholarships on parenthood and parenting have largely overlooked the role of sexuality and as such, everyday sexuality has been explored separately from family life. Until now, much of the research on parenting and parenthood have been carried out only by native Finnish researchers with the use of survey data covering the beliefs, attitudes, behavior, mental state etc. of white middle-class Finnish parents. Yet, analyses of census and other official data indicate the populations who identify as mixed race are fast growing in the country (Finnish Immigration Service 2008). Underpinning this are increasing rates of mixed marriages (Lehtomäki 2005), cohabitations and childrearing across racial, ethnic, (Oinonen 2004) and religious boundaries.

Author

• Mathias Ebot Ebot, University of Eastern Finland