Interracial Couples Invest More in Kids

Parents who are of different races, such as a white father and an Asian-American mother, spend more time and money on their kids than parents who are both of the same race, new research shows.

So-called biracial (aka interracial or multiracial) parents are more likely than their "monoracial" counterparts to provide their children with a home computer, private schooling and educational books and CDs and to make sure they participate in reading activities, dance, music or art lessons outside of school and get trips to the zoo, library and other cultural venues.

The "biracial advantage" only holds for comparisons with same-race couples from the two racial groups represented by the parents—for instance, if a Latino and white couple is compared with a Latino-Latino couple or a white-white couple. The finding disappears if all biracial couples, regardless of racial pairing, are compared with the entire pool of same-race couples (combining all couples that are white-white, black-black, Latino-Latino and so forth).

The advantage, or higher investment, can be explained as a counterweight or response to the social challenges faced by interracial couples, who only gained legal acceptance in the United States in 1970 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a state law in Virginia that prohibited whites from marrying non-whites, said study author Brian Powell at Indiana University Bloomington.

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070423_biracial_parents.html

The fact that the difference disappears when all the comparison groups are merged isn't trivial, and makes me wonder how much more likely "more likely" is. It would be of interest to compare the SES/education level of the biracial couples with like monoracial couples.

I think I'll track down the article when I can get access to it.

After all, it's in schools that we are most likely to be exposed to different people of all types (races, religions, nationalities, etc.). So it would make sense you'd also be more likely to meet and fall in love with someone of a different race, etc.

I wish these kinds of "studies" would be banned. Last one I retched about was called The Bell Curve...

If biracial parent do indeed invest more than monoracial parents, then what is the harm in knowing that fact?

X and Z can go up at the same time

but X may not be the reason Z is going up

there could be a random factor Y that is the real reason these two go up.

i am sure there is a confounding factor in there