Exploring Culture Keeping and Cultural Tourism in Families with Children from China

This study explored cultural socialization in 17 transracial adoptive families with children from China. To do so, the study adopted Quiroz's (2012) conceptualization of culture keeping and cultural tourism, and operationalized her differentiation using the ethnic-racial socialization model developed by Pinderhughes (2010). The study thus identified 4 indicators for culture keeping/cultural tourism, and coded each indicator from parent interviews on a 5-point Likert scale. The findings were that cultural socialization activities reflected cultural tourism; the majority of parents took proactive approaches to cultural socialization, which reflected culture keeping; parents' motivation for cultural socialization was equally distributed between culture keeping and cultural tourism; and parents' attitudes toward cultural differences indicated culture keeping. However no family was culture keeping across all indicators. This study presented complexities of cultural socialization in transracial adoptive families, and demonstrated the value in taking a culturally sensitive approach to cultural socialization. Limitations with concepts and measures were discussed.