Abstract
Family types continue to expand in the U.S., yet normative patterns of endogamy and the privileging of nuclear families persist. To understand how professional women of color navigate endogamy and family ideals, I draw on 40 in-depth interviews of professional Black women and Latinas to ask how they construct partner preferences. I find that professional Latinas and Black women prefer same-race, similarly educated partners but report significant barriers to satisfying these desires. Respondents’ experiences with racism, the rejection of ethno-racial and cultural assimilation, gendered racism from men of color, and the college gender gap emerge as mechanisms for endogamous preferences. These preferences resist and support hegemonic family formation, an ideological and behavioral process that privileges, white, middle class, endogamous, heteronormative ideals for families comprising courtship, marriage, and biological childbearing. By challenging the racial devaluation of people of color while preferring the normativity that endogamy offers, the women in this study underscore the fluidity embedded in endogamy.
Highlights
Despite the increase in U.S “alternative” families from divorce, cohabitation, interracial relationships, and adoption, the nuclear family remains the form of family institution that accrues various economic, legal, and emotional benefits [1]
This article draws on 40 in-depth interviews with 20 Latina and 20 Black women professionals residing in Los Angeles County, CA
The findings indicate three themes that highlight how professional Black women and Latinas simultaneously resist and embrace hegemonic family formation through their preferences for same-race, educated men
Summary
Despite the increase in U.S “alternative” families from divorce, cohabitation, interracial relationships, and adoption, the nuclear family remains the form of family institution that accrues various economic, legal, and emotional benefits [1]. Married couples earn a refundable tax credit for having children, gay rights activism has allocated extensive resources to same-sex marriage over challenging the normativity of marriage or other issues affecting LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual) groups, and married undocumented immigrant couples are more likely to be granted family reunification than unmarried couples. As a result, those who do not form legally recognized nuclear families are marginalized as “alternative” or deviant.
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