Interracial Couples Invest More in Their Children

Older parents are considered selfish and conservative, adoptive parents as people with no "biological" connection to the children, and interracial couples ignore the challenges that a mixed-bred child faces.

A new research proves that at least in the last case, this is wrong.

Parents of different races, like white father and Asian-American mother, were found to invest more time and money on their kids than parents of the same race, being more likely to offer their children a home computer, better education (like private schooling, educational books and CDs, dance, music or art lessons outside of school, zoo trips).

"The advantage, or higher investment, can be explained as a counterweight or response to the social challenges faced by interracial couples, who only gained legal acceptance in the United States in 1970 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a state law in Virginia that prohibited whites from marrying non-whites", said study author Brian Powell at Indiana University Bloomington.

Various similar bans were eliminated in 15 other states.

"The number of biracial couples has since more than tripled, yet many couples still face disapproval and prejudice. They face challenges in being a couple. They're aware of the challenges their children will be facing. In turn, they try to compensate for this," Powell said.

The research made by Powell and Simon Cheng from the University of Connecticut was made on a pool of 1,599 couples with data gathered in 1998-1999, being part of a large national survey of U.S. Families.

There was one exception to the "biracial advantage": black father/white mother couples invested less into kids than do black monoracial couples and white monoracial couples.

"This could be because families in which one of the parents is black likely experience greater prejudice and disapproval from their extended families than do non-black interracial couples. Also, there seem to be greater social challenges faced by couples in which a non-white man is involved with a white woman" wrote the researchers.

Black-White couple represented the smallest part of the interracial couples, just 143, while the most common interracial couples were White/Latino: 601. 174 were White/Asian couples and 191 White/"other" (like Native Americans).