Latent Profiles of Cultural and Racial Socialization Among Transracial Adoptive Mothers of Chinese Girls

Background and Purpose: Over the past several decades, researchers have increasingly investigated patterns of cultural and racial socialization among transracial adoptive parents. However, little empirical research has explored socialization patterns considering two types of socialization – cultural and racial socialization. Thus, the current study examined latent profiles of cultural and racial socialization and their association with post-adoption support and socialization self-efficacy among White mothers of Chinese girls.

Methods: Two hundred fifteen White mothers participated in a cross-sectional online survey in 2012. Approximately 61% of the mothers were less than 50 years of age. Most of the mothers (80%) were married. Their Chinese girls were between 3 and 18 years of age. Almost half (45%) of the girls were adopted when they were at least one year old.

Measures included the Transracial Adoption Parenting Scale–Revised (TAPS-R), a 47-item scale using 5-point Likert-type response options from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) on items such as “I have considered my family to be multiracial.” The TAPS-R included four subscales: Multicultural Planning, Integration, Racial Awareness, and Coping Skills. Additional items included demographics, post-adoption support, and socialization self-efficacy.

Latent profile analysis (LPA) using Mplus (v. 8) was conducted to examine the subgroups of mothers’ cultural and racial socialization. A series of chi-square tests and analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were calculated to examine the association of socialization patterns with demographics, post-adoption support, and socialization self-efficacy. Chi-square tests and ANOVAs were performed using SPSS (v. 23).

Results: LPA with a 4-class solution resulted in the best model fit (lowest AIC, BIC, adjusted BIC, and significant likelihood ratio tests): color-blind (10%, n = 22), a group of mothers remaining in the White culture to socialize an adoptee and not identifying her as being from another race or culture; no contact cultural socialization practices/racial awareness active (28%, n = 60), a group of mothers socializing their child with little contact with people of color and identifying their child’s race; cultural socialization practices dominant (30%, n = 65), a group of mothers regularly employing cultural activities requiring contact with people of their child’s birth culture; and integrative (32%, n = 68); a group of mothers integrating diverse perspectives and cultures in one’s work. All four groups reported either moderate or frequent utilization of online resources and had either moderate or strong motivation and beliefs to help equip their adoptees with healthy racial awareness and racial identity development.

Conclusions and Implications: The present study reveals the importance of using different approaches to support transracial adoptive families. Furthermore, the profiles of cultural and racial socialization hold implications for post-adoption support with respect to the groups to be prioritized and the strategies to be employed. Post-adoption support efforts may be targeted towards groups of transracial adoptive parents, in particular the subgroup color-blind. Offering support to increase parents’ racial awareness and skills to assist adoptees’ healthy identity development is an important consideration for agency-based or informal post-adoption support.