Host: How would in-laws, grandchildren and grandparents all relate to one another in an interracial or intercultural relationship?

Gloria MacDonald: It's really important to consider in-laws, how you are going to relate to your potential husband's parents and how he is going to relate to your parents and how they are going to relate to one another and their impact on any children.

So for example, if you love your husband or your future husband, but you can't stand his parents and you don't your children to have anything to do with his parents; that's probably not realistic or assuming your husband has a good relationship with his parents. So you really need to think ahead of time about if you think you want to raise your children in your particular culture and you don't want them to be impacted by the culture of your husband or your husband's family, think again. All these things are just embroiled with complications, but it's important for you to think about all the variations on this in terms of your in-laws accepting you, you relating to your in-laws, your parents accepting your partner and your partner accepting your parents and what's going to happen when you bring children into the world in terms of this whole complex intercommunication and interrelation. It's challenging enough when two people are from the same race, the same culture, speak the same language, look the same so they look the same, they sound the same, they act the same, they think more or less the same and then you start adding levels and levels of complexity on there when you get involved in different races, different cultures, different languages and then you add children into the mix. It can be a real hotbed. So think about this as much as you possibly can in advance of making any serious decisions about a commitment in an interracial or intercultural relationship.