How do gender attitudes affect second-generation Asian Americans’ decisions to enter into interethnic heterosexual partnerings? A grounded theory approach was applied to 88 in-depth interviews, which represent a subsample of the respondents from Wave III of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study. I find that second-generation Asian women seek relationships across ethnic and racial lines as a way to resist patriarchal and gendered attitudes that they perceive are held by men from their own co-ethnic group and often stereotype Asian American men in the process. Cohabitation was also an important aspect of interethnic partnering: Whereas men cohabitated across ethnic and racial lines but typically married co-ethnics (in a process I term imagining the future), women were more likely to resist co-ethnic relationships and crossed ethnic and racial boundaries regardless of the type of relationship. © The Author(s) 2013.

Asians Gender interethnic relationships Patriarchy Cohabitation Intermarriage

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