Maternal color-consciousness is related to more positive and less negative attitudes toward ethnic-racial outgroups in children in White Dutch families.

A prerequisite to anti-racist socialization in families is acknowledging ethnic-racial (power) differences, also known as color-consciousness. In a sample of 138 White Dutch families from the urban Western region of the Netherlands with children aged 6-10 years (53% girls), observations and questionnaires on maternal color-consciousness and measures of children's attitudes toward Black and Middle-Eastern ethnic-racial outgroups were collected in 2018-2019. Variable-centered analyses showed that maternal color-conscious socialization practices were related to less negative child outgroup attitudes only. Person-centered analysis revealed a cluster of families with higher maternal color-consciousness and less prejudiced child attitudes, and a cluster with the opposite pattern. The mixed results emphasize the importance of multiple methods and approaches in advancing scholarship on anti-racism in the family context.
(© 2022 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.)