JRF Parenting 'Mixed' Children.Indd

Parenting ‘mixed’ children: negotiating difference and belonging in mixed race, ethnicity and faith families Chamion Caballero, Rosalind Edwards and Shuby Puthussery Insights into parenting ‘mixed’ children More and more is known about the ‘mixed’ population of Britain – those brought up in families with different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds. But less is known about their parents. Who are they and what are their experiences of bringing up their children? This report aims to provide insights about parenting mixed children to inform debates about family life and professional strategies for support. Focusing on mothers and fathers living together, it: • Investigates how parents from different racial, ethnic and/or faith backgrounds give their children a sense of belonging and identity. • Examines parents’ approaches to cultural difference and how they pass on aspects of belonging and heritage across generations. • Explores the opportunities, constraints, challenges and tensions in negotiating a sense of identity and heritage between parents. This publication can be provided in other formats, such as large print, Braille and audio. Please contact: Communications, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The Homestead, 40 Water End, York YO30 6WP. Tel: 01904 615905. Email: [email protected] Parenting ‘mixed’ children Negotiating difference and belonging in mixed race, ethnicity and faith families Chamion Caballero, Rosalind Edwards and Shuby Puthussery The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has supported this project as part of its programme of research and innovative development projects, which it hopes will be of value to policy- makers, practitioners and service users. The facts presented and views expressed in this report are, however, those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation. Joseph Rowntree Foundation The Homestead 40 Water End York YO30 6WP Website: www.jrf.org.uk About the authors Chamion Caballero is a senior research fellow, and Rosalind Edwards is Professor in Social Policy, in the Families and Social Capital Research Group at London South Bank University. Shuby Puthussery is a senior research fellow at the Family and Parenting Institute. © London South Bank University 2008 First published 2008 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation All rights reserved. Reproduction of this report by photocopying or electronic means for non-commercial purposes is permitted. Otherwise, no part of this report may be reproduced, adapted, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. ISBN: 978 1 85935 661 6 A CIP catalogue record for this report is available from the British Library. Prepared and printed by: York Publishing Services Ltd 64 Hallfi eld Road Layerthorpe York YO31 7ZQ Tel: 01904 430033; Fax: 01904 430868; Website: www.yps-publishing.co.uk Further copies of this report, or any other JRF publication, can be obtained from the JRF website (www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/). Contents Preface vi Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction 1 Stereotypes about mixed children and their parents 2 Literature on the topic 3 Our research study 6 Report structure 9 2 Patterns of mixing – geographical and social context 11 Analysing the census data 12 Where mixed families live 12 Socio-economic circumstances 13 Survey of parents’ views of ‘passing on’ heritage 14 Conclusion 20 3 Diverse approaches to dealing with difference and belonging 22 ‘Typifi cations’ of difference and belonging 22 Mixed parenting is not just about mixedness 28 Conclusion 30 4 Negotiating difference and belonging for parent couples 31 One parent – several approaches 31 Maintaining shared approaches 33 Negotiating divergent approaches 35 Reframing cultural difference 38 Who does the childrearing? Gender 38 Conclusion 40 5 Help and hindrance 42 Neighbourhoods and schools 42 Resources and organisations 45 Grandparents 47 Children’s physical appearance and preferences 49 Conclusion 51 6 Conclusion 52 Mixing and mixedness – main issues 53 Implications for policy and practice 55 Notes 59 References 61 Preface Terminology In this preface, we explain the rationale behind our choice of the terms we have used in this report to refer to race, ethnicity and faith, and the crossing of boundaries between them, as well as to describe the characteristics of the people who have taken part in our research. We make this explanation in the light of the fact that the language used to talk about people from mixed backgrounds and record them in surveys is subject to much heated ideological and political debate (Ali, 2003; Aspinall, 2003; Barn and Harman, 2006; Caballero, 2005; Ifekwunigwe, 1998; Tikly et al., 2004; Wright et al., 2003). A host of terminology abounds, from the more acceptable – albeit contested – ‘biethnic’, ‘biracial’, ‘dual heritage’, ‘interfaith’, ‘interracial’, ‘mixed ethnicity’, ‘mixed faith’, ‘mixed heritage’, ‘mixed origin’, ‘mixed parentage’, ‘mixed race’, ‘multi-ethnic’, ‘multiracial’, ‘multiple heritage’, ‘transcultural’, to now deplored terms such as ‘half- breed’, ‘half-caste’ and ‘mulatto’. The terms above are descriptors attached predominantly to individuals rather than to couple relationships and families. In this report, however, our main focus is on ‘mixing’ between parent couples in bringing up their ‘mixed’ children. Our decision to use predominantly the terms ‘mixed’ without qualifi ers and ‘mixing’ has been made for a number of reasons. They encompass the range of racial, ethnic and faith differences among the parents in the study (see Chapter 1 for a description of our interviewees). The terms thus have the advantage that the specifi cities of the ‘mixedness’ referred to have to be made clear when discussing the parents and their families in this report, rather than capturing them under one encompassing categorical qualifi er. ‘Mixed’, while refl ecting offi cial census terminology, is also in common usage among the mixed couples and individuals in this study, as well as in others (e.g. Barrett et al., 2006; Song et al., in progress; Tizard and Phoenix, 2002). ‘Mixing’ allows us to signal the dynamic and relational processes in which the mothers and fathers interviewed for this study were actively involved. Although we recognise the limitations of these terms – ‘mixed’, ‘mixing’ and ‘mixedness’ – for now, we feel that they best denote our intentions. Other words we use also have histories of debate and contestation: race, ethnicity, religion and faith (see Plante and Sherman, 2001, especially pp. 5–8; Song, 2003). For simplicity’s sake, in the context of this study, we use ‘race’ to refer to visible colour and physical attribute distinctions, ‘ethnicity’ to refer to cultural and national identities and values, ‘religion’ to refer to institutional faith systems, and ‘faith’ to refer to spiritual belief practices and norms. vi Preface We have also had to make decisions about how to refer to the characteristics of mixedness among the parent couples in our sample. As we detail in Chapter 1, the parents embody a diverse range of multiple mixing of race, ethnic and religious backgrounds within a couple and sometimes also for an individual. For the most part, when discussing the couples, we note the aspects of difference that are important to them. This means that, in some cases, we refer merely to a parent’s or couple’s racial and ethnic characteristics and, in others, we refer to their racial, ethnic and religious characteristics. The order in which we do this (race, ethnicity, faith) has no signifi cance beyond a convention that we have adopted for regularity of style. vii Acknowledgements The ‘Parenting mixed children’ project benefi ted from the efforts of several other researchers in addition to the authors of this report. Darren Smith (University of Brighton) undertook analysis of the 2001 census data for us; Nilufar Miah (London South Bank University) provided support with the schools postal survey; and Kanwal Mand (University of Sussex) and Helen Barrett (Family and Parenting Institute) helped with some of the interviews. Thanks are also due to the schools that kindly agreed to distribute the survey to parents. We are also grateful to several organisations for their interest and assistance: People in Harmony, Intermix, Mosaic, the Multiple Heritage Project, the Multiple Heritage Unit, Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, Planet Rainbow, Starlight, the Commission for Racial Equality, the Runnymede Trust and the Department for Communities and Local Government. We would like to thank the Zeena Ralph Memorial Fund for additional support for research assistance. Thanks are also due to Romesh Vaitilingum for advice about media dissemination. We are grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for funding the research, and ongoing encouragement was received from its consultant, David Utting. Members of our advisory group provided much-needed advice: Angela Basoah, Ravinder Barn, Mary Crowley, Fatima Husain, Rukhsana Hussain, Penny Mansfi eld, Toyin Okitikpi, Ann Phoenix, Honor Rhodes and Miri Song. Fatima Husain gets especial thanks. She played a major role in developing the original proposal for the research, unfortunately having to leave the project just as it was starting, and provided invaluable help in accessing interviewees for us. Finally, we are indebted to the mothers and fathers who generously made time and offered hospitality despite busy lives, and shared their experiences and insights with us. We have changed their names and

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