Although interracial partnerships are increasingly common, social distance between racial groups may impact participants' ties with extended kin. One persistent yet untested premise is that mothers with a biracial baby are “cut off” from extended family members. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,147), we explore perceptions of kin support availability for mothers of infants and whether perceptions differ if the father is a different race or ethnicity than the mother. We uncover stark differences in the likelihood of perceiving support as unavailable between mothers in same‐race and interracial parenting unions. Multivariate logistic regressions reveal that interracial partnering is positively associated with mothers perceiving support as unavailable, but this pattern is moderated by race and ethnicity of the mother, with the greatest difference emerging for White mothers. Ultimately, interracial partnering and childbearing may produce social isolation from kin, reflecting the enduring White‐non‐White divide.

Exposure to concentrated poverty is largely understood as reflecting the role of individual influences and racial disparities, with less information on the role of extended family. Coresiding with family members represents one classic mechanism reducing exposure to economic hardship, but we often combine those residing as “guests” with those who are “hosting” their extended family. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,054), I explore the impact of living with family on the likelihood of residing in concentrated poverty. I find that mothers who coreside as “guests” with family, but not those who are hosting their relatives, have significantly lower odds of living in impoverished neighborhoods compared with those who do not reside with relatives, once controlling for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. This research reveals that family networks do play a role in structuring neighborhood attainment, with strong implications for better understanding vulnerability to neighborhood poverty.

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Research shows that extrahousehold kin economic resources contribute to the racial gap in transitions into homeownership, but the extent to which these resources matter for racial disparities in exits from homeownership is less understood. Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1984–2017, we examine the role of extrahousehold kin wealth and poverty in shaping racial inequalities in the risk of exiting homeownership. Our nonlinear decomposition results indicate that racial differences in family network resources explain a nontrivial portion of the racial gap in homeownership exit, but there is little evidence that the effects of kin resources on exit are moderated by race. Among both Black and White owners, having wealthier noncoresident kin does not lessen the negative impacts of adverse economic or health shocks on the probability of losing homeownership. Our findings have implications for policies and programs designed to buttress the ability of minority households, especially those in financial distress, to sustain the wealth-building state of homeownership.

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