Interracial Romantic Relationships Among Adolescents: Correlates and Impacts on Partnership Quality

• In Event: 30855 - What’s race got to do with it? Race and Intimate Relationships

Abstract

Most research on interracial romantic coupling has been based on adult relationships, yet patterns in adolescent interracial partnering help foreshadow racial boundary shifts. This study investigates interracial romance among adolescents using multi-generation data collected from an adolescent cohort coming of age during a time of unprecedented population diversification, sizable increases in interracial coupling among adults, and the proliferation of online social interaction. It also attends to the intersecting influences of race and gender in shaping adolescent interracial relationship formation and quality. Specifically, using bi-weekly intensive longitudinal data from the mDiary Study of Adolescent Relationships linked to six waves of Future of Families birth cohort data, this paper examines: 1) the demographic, contextual, and intergenerational factors that influence the likelihood of interracial involvement; and 2) associations between cross-race partnering and relationship quality. Results suggest reduced barriers to interracial partnering among recent adolescent cohorts, with positive implications on average for the quality of interracial couplings. Nonetheless, the blurring of racial boundaries on average masks continuing challenges for certain interracial pairings. Black adolescent girls and White adolescent boys are least likely to enter into cross-race partnerships, and those that do form such relationships report them to be of lower quality, underscoring a continuation of particular racial cleavages in society.

Authors

• Sara I. Villalta, Loyola Marymount University

• Rachel E. Goldberg, University of California-Irvine

• Marta Tienda, Princeton University