Older African American, Black Caribbean, and Non-Latino White Fictive Kin Relationships

Fictive kin are individuals who are not related biologically or legally family members but are conferred all of the expectations, obligations, norms, and behaviors that are typically associated with family members. Early ethnographic and qualitative studies on impoverished African Americans depicted fictive kinship as a strategy of necessity used by urban poor Blacks to share scarce resources. More recent surveys of fictive kin relationships based on nationally representative samples of African Americans establish that fictive kinship occur across a range of social and economic circumstances. However, fictive kin relationships among African Americans older adults remains an understudied area. The current study explores fictive kinship relationships (having fictive kin and receiving support from fictive kin) among African American, Black Caribbean, and non-Hispanic white older adults using data from the National Survey of American Life. We examined race/ethnicity and gender differences, as well as demographic and social network correlates. Findings showed that having and receiving support from fictive kin varied across race, ethnicity and gender. African Americans were more likely to have fictive kin than were non-Hispanic whites, but there were no overall race/ethnic differences in receiving support from fictive kin. Gender specific findings showed that Black Caribbean women received fictive kin support more frequently than African American and non-Hispanic white women. Finally, demographic and social network correlates of fictive kin varied by race and ethnicity and connections with social networks (family, friend, church members) were positively associated with having and receiving support from fictive kin.