White mom and POC dad

[Anonymous]

I've noticed that when the mom in a mixed family is white, the family tends to basically function like a white family with minimal contact with the POC side. Very little observance of cultural festivities and definitely very little cooking of the POC side's foods. Families tend to not vacation in the home country or with the POC parent's family. My DCs went to one of the language immersion charter schools and very few of families that were native Spanish speakers had a white mom. Mine is a mixed race family (Latino and white) and I'm the mom and the Latino. Our social circle in DC has become mainly other Latinos and all the moms in our circle are Latino.

Do others notice this gender/race pattern too? If so, what do you think is the reason for it?

[Anonymous]

If you're the mom, aren't you Latina? This smells like a troll post.

[Anonymous]

because moms do most of the work in a house, like cooking, child rearing, and vacation planning.

[Anonymous]

So your family functions mostly as a Latino family with very little contact with the white side?

[Anonymous]

The mother is still usually the anchor of the family, even in our modern, so called equal times.

My father is POC, and it's only because my white mother developed a chronic disability that he did the cooking, cleaning, household chores, entertaining, etc. That's how I know to cook foods from my father's country, and have absorbed some of his culture.

That being said, I don't like the immersion schools, because I detest this concept that language and history/culture should be separated. In MCPS, the curriculum is the standard US one, except it's in another language. I prefer to send my kids to the weekend school in our native language, where they get history, culture and language as a package deal. All the international families I know do the same thing for their native language.

[Anonymous]

No, I have not noticed this.

[Anonymous]

No I have not seen this pattern. Maybe a little with the cooking/food because dad’s are sometimes (but not always) not as experienced in cooking their cultural food

[Anonymous]

That’s because unfortunately moms and women are still mostly responsible for imparting culture to the kids.

[Anonymous]

OP wants women to be doing even more emotional labor for their men than they already do.

[Anonymous]

Yeah no, nice try, OP. Maybe that’s what goes down in your family. But in my family and my social circle of white moms and Asian dads, the white moms are the ones making lunar new year happen, driving to Saturday language school, cooking the lunchbox tofu and placating the aunties. Not the dads.

Alas, sexism and established gender roles and assumptions know no race. POC moms and their kids do get really gatekeeper-y towards us as a mixed race family, but they pull the same crap on 2nd generation kids, too.

[Anonymous]

This was the opposite in my mixed family, because my mom's white side of the family were bigots. So we totally took after our dad's side/traditions/culture/etc.

[Anonymous]

Generally the mom’s culture is what passes down most. I have many friends who are in mixed ethnicity marriages, and this is almost always the case. When Dad speaks another language, the children rarely speak it. But if it’s the mother’s native tongue then the children do. Yes, there are exceptions but I find it to be overwhelmingly true.

[Anonymous]

If this is the case, and I have seen it to an extent although not always, it’s because the dad didn’t want to step up and pass down his culture. Was he committed to speaking to the child in his native language? Or signing them up for language/hertitage school on the week? Does he cook for the family often enough for his culture’s food to love family favourites? Arrange holidays and interactions between his parents and kids? No? Well, then that seems to be a him problem. I do know white mom/POC dad families where the kids grow up immersed in the POC culture and it’s because the dad put in the parenting effort to make it happen.

[Anonymous]

DH here: it’s because, in general, moms are the ones who really care about that stuff, so they are the ones who drive it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH here: it’s because, in general, moms are the ones who really care about that stuff, so they are the ones who drive it.

What if anything do men actually care about?