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This study explores White middle-class adoptive parents' experiences with parenting Black children (M age = 12.3), attending to how intersections of children's race, gender, and developmental stage informed and nuanced parents' approach to racial socialization. Background: Scholarly debate regarding the adoption of Black children by White parents centers on parents' ability to facilitate positive racial identity development. Limited work has explored how White parents' approach to racial socialization is shaped by Black children's gender and developmental stage, particularly as children grow older and encounter intensified racialized stereotypes.Method: Twenty-five White parents (11 lesbian mothers, seven gay fathers, seven heterosexual mothers) were selected from a larger sample of 128 adoptive families because they adopted Black (including biracial/multiracial) children, and were interviewed as their children entered adolescence. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. Results: A typology emerged that captured parents' racial awareness and racial socialization approach: Minimizing and Reluctant, Worried and Fumbling, Aware but Cautious, and Reflexive and Purposeful. Additional cross-cutting themes centered on the role of the sociopolitical climate, gender, and developmental stage in racial socialization. Conclusion: Contemporary adoptive parents of Black children are often constrained by their own White racial frame, but some parents, especially those who are younger or have monoracial children, are able to translate awareness of the complexities involved in raising adopted Black children into meaningful action and understanding.
The present study investigates the experiences of Ugandan men in their roles as fathers, with a particular focus on perceptions related to fathering roles. Our investigation was motivated by research findings indicating a link between fathering norms and masculine gender roles and ideologies, coupled with literature that has found associations between masculinity threat and substance use, as well as suicidal ideation. The data are from semistructured qualitative interviews conducted with Ugandan fathers. A total of 24 men participated in the study, 12 residing in Uganda and 12 residing in the United States of America. All participants were fathers of at least one child. We identified themes of financial provision, negotiating change in fathering ideals, influence of child gender, influence of sociocultural context, and stress, worry, and anxiety across the data. Our findings indicate that Ugandan men have complex experiences related to fathering, including tensions that are tied to traditional fathering ideals at times and, in other instances, are connected to changing ideals of fatherhood. These findings build on extant literature about men's fathering experiences and contribute to including African, and specifically, Ugandan men and their experiences in the scholarly discourse on fathering. Implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed. Public Significance StatementThis study discovered that there are specific factors that are of high relevance for men in their role as fathers, namely, financial provision, negotiation of change in fathering ideals, sociocultural context, child gender, and stress, worry, and anxiety. It centers on the experiences and perspectives of Ugandan fathers living in Uganda and in the United States, thus expanding our understanding of fathering in diverse settings.
In the second half of the book, Joel provides an analysis of the social implications of the fact that brains are mosaics. She speculates about why most people incorrectly perceive humans as belonging to two types and describes the harmful effects of the gender binary on both men and women. Joel also recommends practices that would mitigate such harm. The result is a radical and revolutionary vision of gender/sex, albeit not one that is completely unprecedented. The book is characterized by a host of wonderful qualities. The science and lived experience of gender/sex are interwoven across the book in ways that prevent any section from being dense or dry. Joel reveals a good deal about herself. In her youth, for example, she learned to fix automobiles and worked as a fashion model, typical of the gender mosaic of personality. Criticisms of Joel's vision for a world without gender might include the necessity of defining, recording, and addressing gender/sex for dismantling related forms of inequality. In addition, the book fails to acknowledge some obstacles to a genderless world, such as the need to remove gender markings in the world's languages (e.g., English pronouns such as "he" and "she"). Nonetheless, there is a great deal of information here that revolutionizes the field of gender/sex differences.
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