The Importance of the Family in Understanding Multiracial Adolescent Outcomes

Sarah Schlabach, University of California, Los Angeles

Although multiracial adolescents tend to display lower levels of wellbeing than their monoracial counterparts, the mechanisms underlying these differences are not well understood. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth), this paper will examine the importance of family structure and parent-child relationships for understanding wellbeing among multiracial adolescents. Following previous studies, this paper will separate multiracial adolescents by racial affiliation, using both self-identification and parents’ reported race. Methodologically, this paper will employ logistic regression models for binary outcomes and ordered or multinomial logistic regression techniques to study how family conditions affect psychological, social, and educational wellbeing.