9 Glowing Benefits Of Being In An Interracial Marriage (That No One Mentions)
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$7.99 (as of January 6, 2025 19:27 GMT -08:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)Back in 1967, the United States decided to abolish the “Anti-Miscegenation” laws, which are the laws prohibiting interracial marriage. At that time, the Supreme Court deemed the law unconstitutional. 52 years after, a lot of things have changed! The number of mixed marriages has been increasing steadily for the last five decades. From 5%, the approval of interracial marriages rose up to 80% in the 2000s.
Over time, a lot of interracial marriage benefits have been observed all around the world along with a lot more support than hate experienced just decades ago!
Table of Contents
1. Diverse Genetics (Less Recessive Diseases)
It is not rocket science (or it might be), one of the biggest interracial marriage benefits is creating children with more diverse genetics. The possible recessive diseases from both parents gene are not being passed on to their children, which creates a healthier genetic composition in the child. In the UK, with first-cousin marriages common among UK’s Pakistanis population, these marriages often come with a high risk of deadly genetic problems and rare diseases in their children.
According to a 2015 study, biracial children who are born with a more diverse genetic background tend to have sharper thinking skills and better height. The result was from the extensive effort of surveying more than 350,000 people in both urban and rural communities. Overall, biracial children tend to have a better height, lung capacity, educational attainment, and general cognitive ability, which correlates from their genetic diversity.
2. Exploring New Cultures
Life is all about learning new things and enriching your view so you can grow as a person. Being exposed to another culture is one of the best interracial marriage benefits because it makes you grow. You get to listen to a new kind of food, experience new customs and meet new people along the way. You’ll also experience new cultural holidays or celebrate existing holidays in a different way with your partner. My first ever “American Christmas” was with my husband – a treasured memory because it was so different from…well doing nothing on Xmas…because my family was not Christian!
On top of that, trying different cuisine is one of the best things in learning a different culture. Sharing different kinds of food with your partner a way to keep your relationship healthy and strong. One way to a man’s heart is through his heart, right?
Additionally, you can also learn cooking techniques that are different from your own culture. My husband loves cooking with woks, something he didn’t use before he met me. With this, you (and your children) can go crazy with fusion food – to create something new and fantastic.
3. Sharing Your Culture
Sharing knowledge and experiences is a big part of living a fulfilled life. It’s one of the interracial marriage benefits that are sometimes overlooked. Chances are, you’re also going to share a part of your culture to your partner and the people around you. By sharing your culture with other people, you also help yourself in learning theirs in exchange. The more you interact with people, either by sharing or listening to experiences, you will improve and grow your own world. Gaining a worldly view in life makes you a more peaceful person (I know it does for me personally.) As your world gets bigger, it becomes more natural for you to learn new things (language, dance, stories) and thus stimulating personal growth.
4. Traveling To Different Places
Being in an interracial marriage means embracing your partner’s heritage and your own. But that’s not the only benefit that you get from being in a mixed marriage. In addition to learning new experiences, you will also likely travel to different places since most likely, the spouse has family in another country or state. A family vacation is now not only limited to places where you grew up. You can have the first view, a personal perspective when exploring a new country.
Our neighbors (and best friends) are interracial married like my husband and me. She is Mexican American and he is Indian American. Every holiday, she gets the personal tour around Mumbai in their family’s mansion – an amazing experience she was able to experience in a foreign land first hand. And in return, she has a huge family that carries a rich Mexican tradition for him so they’re never alone without love. Additionally, you get to experience these new places with your children all over again, giving them 2 new worlds instead of 1.
Our attitude and way of thinking depend on our perspective. The broader our perspective is, the more we see the truth in life, and the more we enrich our experiences in this world. Learning life from a different perspective also helps us understand things that are not easy to understand from our current closed point of view. It helps us become more understanding and more tolerant of other human beings in a big, big world. Relationship-wise, learning life from a different perspective helps us understand our partners better as we learn the reasons as to why they say or do the things they say or do.
5. Open-Mindedness
In an interracial marriage, there is always a certain level of open-mindedness that each of the spouse experiences due to the cultural, ethnic and racial diversity. Their minds are always open to new ideas and new approaches to life. Open-mindedness makes it easier to accept and create new ideas, which is important for improvement and innovation.
When applied to marriage and family, being an open-minded person helps in becoming a more flexible person. It makes compromisation easier between you, your partner, and your own children. It improves the ability to think outside the box which comes with better results in all aspects of life.
6. Appreciate Each Other’s Differences
The world is a home for billions of people with a lot of differences and beliefs that’s mind-blowingly varied. You can see the diversity even inside a family, which is the smallest acceptable societal unit. Each family member has their own preferences in different aspects of their daily lives. In the real world, diversity is even broader than what encompasses a family.
Being in an interracial marriage helps in appreciating the diversity which surrounds other culture. The exposure in other cultures makes it easier to accept a different kind of people without making negative stereotypes based on their ethnicity or group. This is a helpful trait in the real working world, especially in a corporate environment where different kind of people fills different roles in an environment and open-mindedness is required to get along with others.
7. Rounded Parenting Style
There are different kind of parenting styles, the most common ones are Western and Eastern parenting styles. Children who usually grow up in a Western parenting style family experienced a more laid-back lifestyle which is focused on learning things on their own (my husband grew up with a Western laid back life).
Meanwhile, Eastern parenting style (something I grew up on in China), which is also called Tiger Parenting, focuses on structures and disciplines set by parents.
Both styles have strengths and weaknesses. A better parenting strategy is to consider the learning pace of the child and apply the best of both Western and Eastern parenting styles. To make this a successful collaboration, the couple must meet their child’s need on the same page.
8. Fight Against Racism
The rise of interracial marriage is proof that love triumphs everything. As long as you love someone, you will always accept and support the person you love even if you both have different ethnicities. Your relationship with your partner serves as an example that sharing love is easy. When I walk down the street with my husband, I want to show everyone how strong we are as a couple. It makes both of us very invested in making this relationship work, like good underdogs. Being a proud example of a thriving interracial relationship is one of the things that you and your partner can contribute to the world.
Although the condition has been better after huge efforts in the past, racism is still an issue in a lot of countries. You can find hate speeches in different online threads and social media platforms, it’s not at all uncommon. There are still minorities and other ethnicities who receive verbal and even physical attack in the public. I can cite the most recent: the mass shootings in El Paso and Gilroy, California due to hate on Hispanic populations in the U.S.
9. Accepting Acceptance
Last but not least, in an interracial relationship, you will learn how to accept acceptance early on. It’s hard to settle differences, especially if the differences are due to clashing cultures and beliefs. You become more patient in a relationship that has larger gaps in culture. According to research from the University of California Irvine, those who are on the interracial relationship are more likely to feel the positive important qualities that their partners posses. The research also concluded that interracial relationships are very unlikely to be “…motivated by a lack of dating opportunities within one’s own ethnic group” so the stereotype of “leftover and has to look outside of their race” is untrue.
