Family & Relationships

The rate of interracial marriage in the United States has steadily increased: One in six new marriages now crosses racial or ethnic lines. Yet these partnerships are not always embraced or even accepted by families, friends, and society. Within families, issues ranging from food and holiday traditions to parenting approaches and beliefs about gender roles sometimes must be negotiated between cultures. In a time of national division, questions of race and identity have become deeply fraught. The way these couples navigate differences is a model for how Americans, despite their differences, can come together.

This book—based on interviews with and surveys of hundreds of people and informed by the authors’ many decades of experience as therapists and researchers—explores how intermarried couples build lives together. People of varied backgrounds describe how they navigate a world where others wonder about their relationship, question the parentage of their children, and treat them differently from their partner based on their appearance. Spouses relate their experiences forming fulfilling relationships in the face of potential disapproval, and they speak candidly about the joys and challenges of raising mixed-race children. Many of these couples have strengthened their relationships by learning to communicate across cultural barriers, and they share strategies for overcoming misunderstandings. At once large-scale and intimate, this book offers practical advice and timely insight into the triumphs and struggles of love across lines of difference.

The rate of interracial marriage in the United States has steadily increased: One in six new marriages now crosses racial or ethnic lines. Yet these partnerships are not always embraced or even accepted by families, friends, and society. Within families, issues ranging from food and holiday traditions to parenting approaches and beliefs about gender roles sometimes must be negotiated between cultures. In a time of national division, questions of race and identity have become deeply fraught. The way these couples navigate differences is a model for how Americans, despite their differences, can come together.

This book—based on interviews with and surveys of hundreds of people and informed by the authors’ many decades of experience as therapists and researchers—explores how intermarried couples build lives together. People of varied backgrounds describe how they navigate a world where others wonder about their relationship, question the parentage of their children, and treat them differently from their partner based on their appearance. Spouses relate their experiences forming fulfilling relationships in the face of potential disapproval, and they speak candidly about the joys and challenges of raising mixed-race children. Many of these couples have strengthened their relationships by learning to communicate across cultural barriers, and they share strategies for overcoming misunderstandings. At once large-scale and intimate, this book offers practical advice and timely insight into the triumphs and struggles of love across lines of difference.

Absent fathers, the breakdown of the nuclear family, and single-mother households are often blamed for the poor quality of life experienced by many African American children. Jennifer F. Hamer challenges both the imposition of an inappropriate value system and the resulting ineffectual social policies. Most of what we know about fathers who do not live with their children is based on interviews with the mothers; this book is based on interviews with the fathers themselves. How do these fathers perceive their roles and responsibilities?

This myth-shattering book challenges stereotypes of negotiating parenthood within the context of poverty, live-away status, and black American manhood. Hamer has collected the voices of eighty-eight men who participated in this study by first examining the macro or cultural elements that encompass men's daily lives. As part 1 explores these larger forces that define the social world of fathers, part 2 looks at what significant others expect of men as fathers and how they behave under these circumstances. Part 3 analyzes the particular parenting roles and functions of fathers, using narratives of individual men to tell their own stories. In this book, contemporary black live-away fathers talk about their goals, walk us through their workplaces, allow us to meet their families and children, and enable us to view the world of parenthood through their eyes.