The fog of classism: Where middle-class white parents of young white children may get lost in their antiracist parenting aspirations.

Abstract

Aspiring antiracist White parents report feeling stuck and uncertain about how to socialize their young White children into antiracism. Most of the scholarship focused on this population, their ideas, and practices overlooks the intersection of their class positionalities with their attitudes and behaviors regarding antiracist parenting. The present study offers insights into the dynamics of class-related beliefs and antiracist socialization among middle- to upper-middle-class White parents. Using methods informed by critical thematic analysis, we interrogated the in-depth interviews of 19 White parents of young White children who self-identified as antiracist. All parents in the sample identified as middle class, and all but one parent identified as women. We find that, despite the sincere intentions of this group, these parents, through rhetorical and behavioral processes, ultimately evade acknowledging for themselves and with their children the material ways in which their families benefit from and maintain an unjust status quo. We describe three interrelated themes that characterize the prevailing patterns of ideas and behaviors among our parent participants on this subject: class confusion, class attribution error, and complexity avoidance. We argue that these patterns reflect the embeddedness of these parents within the dominant racial and class regimes of contemporary U.S. society: White supremacy and neoliberalism. Our discussion highlights the inconsistencies and contradictions in our participants' beliefs and practices and highlights ideological blinders that antiracist interventions can address to help parents counteract the influence of these systems and more fully realize their antiracist parenting goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).