Roots reimagined: socialization practices and racial-ethnic identity among Chinese adoptees in White U.S. families

This study explores the association between Chinese adoptees’ self-reports of their White adoptive parents’ cultural and racial-ethnic socialization practices during childhood and the adoptees’ racial-ethnic identity in adulthood. Recruited from Facebook groups, participants (n = 353) completed an online survey assessing perceived parental cultural and racial-ethnic socialization practices, satisfaction with these practices, adoptees’ racial-ethnic identification, and racial-ethnic identity centrality. Multinomial logistic and linear regression analyses were conducted to investigate relationships among these variables. Results indicated that higher levels of parental cultural and racial-ethnic socialization practices were associated with greater retrospective satisfaction among Chinese adoptees. In addition, greater adoptee involvement in cultural and racial-ethnic socialization during adulthood and higher levels of parental racial-ethnic socialization were associated with stronger racial-ethnic identity centrality. These findings emphasize the importance of parental racial-ethnic socialization in the racial-ethnic identity development among transracial adoptees, while suggesting that factors beyond childhood socialization also play a role in the formation of racial-ethnic identity.