UMN Sociology Workshop Series

Workshop Title: "Creating Family Together: How Children's Perspectives and Parents' Strategies Shape Early Black Stepfamily Relationship Formation"

Bio:

Mason Jones is a PhD candidate whose research focuses on youth, families, parenting, race, and sports. His presentation will focus on how youth and parents experienced early stepfather introduction and shaped the process.

Abstract:

Black children are more likely than children from other racial groups to experience the introduction of a stepfather. Yet research on Black families has largely overlooked Black stepfamilies, instead focusing on Black nuclear and single-parent households. Additionally, existing scholarship often focuses on parents while overlooking how youth culture, perspectives, agency, and contributions shape early stepfamily relationships. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with parents and children in 19 Black stepfamilies (75 participants), alongside ethnographic fieldwork with four additional families (23 families total), all of whom had children involved in youth sports, this paper examines how youth and parents experienced early stepfather introduction and shaped the process. Findings show that parents and children often had different experiences of family transitions, resulting in divergent interpretations. Uncovering these divergences demonstrates that children are important actors in the relationship-building process, shaping stepfamily formation through their emotion management and behavioral contributions. It also shows that early stepfather-stepchild relationships are influenced by both parents’ family-planning strategies and youths’ agency, perspectives, and contributions. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that early stepfamily relationships are co-constructed through both youth and parental perspectives and efforts. The paper concludes by encouraging scholars and parents to consider youth agency and perspectives, as well as the positive impacts stepfathers can have on children.