Navigating diversity: Maternal ideologies and associations with child interethnic prejudice in the Netherlands

Abstract

Parental diversity ideologies are linked to their own interethnic prejudice, but how do they relate to children's prejudice? This study examined self‐reported endorsement of colorblind ideology and multiculturalism among mothers (138 White Dutch, 65 Turkish‐Dutch, and 45 Afro‐Dutch) of 6‐to 10‐year old children (55% girls), and its association with child interethnic prejudice. Endorsement of multiculturalism was lowest among White Dutch mothers, and endorsement of colorblind ideology was lowest among Afro‐Dutch mothers. Maternal endorsement of multiculturalism was negatively related to child outgroup prejudice among White Dutch families and among Turkish‐Dutch families in the context of underrepresented outgroups, and results suggest no or opposite associations for colorblind ideology. Future research should explore what parenting based on these ideologies looks like, but the present study points parents in the direction of a multicultural, rather than colorblind, approach.

Color-evasiveness and white normativity: Examples set by parents in parent–child interactions in the Netherlands.

“…The identified ethnic-group differences are in line with research on parental ethnic-racial socialization (Priest et al, 2014), and on differences in color-evasive beliefs between White adults and Black adults (de Bruijn et al, 2022;Ryan et al, 2007). The results furthermore suggest that although color-evasive beliefs of White Dutch and Turkish-Dutch mothers have previously been found to be similar (de Bruijn et al, 2022), behaviors of White Dutch mothers are more in line with color-evasive social norms. An additional relevant observation was that mothers very rarely used terms referring to ethnicity or nationality in their questions (i.e., less than 1% of the questions in both games).…”

“…Although color-evasiveness thus seems more prevalent in White families, it is not to say that parents of color do not adhere to this social norm at all. Research has for example, illustrated how in some samples of color (i.e., Latin American adults and Turkish-Dutch mothers) endorsement of color-evasive ideologies were similar to their White counterparts (de Bruijn et al, 2022; This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

“…Although color-evasiveness thus seems more prevalent in White families, it is not to say that parents of color do not adhere to this social norm at all. Research has for example, illustrated how in some samples of color (i.e., Latin American adults and Turkish-Dutch mothers) endorsement of color-evasive ideologies were similar to their White counterparts (de Bruijn et al, 2022; Ryan et al, 2010). Whereas color-evasiveness among White parents might reflect a form of privilege (i.e., the privilege of not having to deal with racism), it might reflect a form of adherence to a social norm among parents of color.…”

Ingroup and outgroup preference and rejection among young children of different ethnic groups in the Netherlands

“…Data of the first time point was collected in the period of May 2018–January 2020. For other studies on this data set (see De Bruijn et al., 2021, 2022; Mesman et al., 2022). The participating families were visited at home by two trained researchers, assistants or students (bachelor and master's).…”

“…A priori power analyses using G*power 3.1 (Faul et al, 2007) et al, 2021Mesman et al, 2022). The participating families were visited at home by two trained researchers, assistants or students (bachelor and master's).…”