Assessing parenting behaviors across racial groups: Implications for the child welfare system

Black families are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. This may in part result from racial bias in judgments made by those who report and investigate child maltreatment. However, little is known about how race influences judgments about parenting. This article relies on data from a population-based survey to examine whether the race of interviewers, relative to the race of families they interview, influences parenting assessments. It reports evidence of racial bias in some measures of interviewer-assessed parenting behaviors. Racial bias is more pronounced for measures that require subjective assessments on the part of interviewers.