I have been thinking a lot about this post.
It looks like (fingers crossed, knock on wood) we are not moving and we are going to stay here for the forseeable future. And with that, I know that both Mr. A and I are unwilling to move to another neighborhood in search of more diversity for the girls. I won’t bore you with all the reasons for wanting to stay where we are, but mostly it is because we just really, really love our neighborhood.
So I wonder, are we throwing the girls under the bus because we really like to walk to the pub and the icecream shop?
If I knew that the girls would feel REALLY angsty about there not being enough diversity (only 8-10% Asian diversity and another 10% of other kids of color) at their school, we might consider it. But if they are only going to be moderately angsty, we would prefer to stay.
I also wonder if the more Asian-y stuff we do (Chinese school, Mr. A’s Asian organizing work, close relationships with our extended family & friends) will somehow counter-balance the school thing? Or is it just a nice side thing, but not going to make a difference in the long run?
I don’t know.
It would be one thing to make this selfish decision if I didn’t know I should worry about it, but I do know. And I am concerned. But we still don’t want to move to a different neighborhood.
So, despite my better judgement, I am putting these thoughts out there. Even though I know I will feel defensive about the responses it may elicit. I am admitting that we are a little selfish and our kids may pay for it.
We are not perfect parents.
So there it is, the truth. That is what has been on my mind.
well, *we’re* sure glad you’re staying!!
it might turn out that they’re really not angsty at all, you know? i mean, having them in a nice neighborhood with friends closeby and a great school etc. is certainly not being selfish, IMHO.
heng-heng is going to WH next year – maybe they’ll be in the same class!
I’m not sure what to tell you because we are thinking about the same topic (again). Our hapa daughter is in first grade. We do all the Chinese cultural things – in fact I had to “barter” with her to get her to agree that she is less than 100% Chinese – we settled at 75%!? I wasn’t thinking about the neighborhood – several of her friends from her non-neighborhood school are hapa or asian… however we just got back from our annual trek to Hawaii to visit my (caucasian) family and this was the first trip that she told us “everyone here looks like me”. When we explored it further she said “back home everyone mostly looks like you – here people look more like me than you. ” I didn’t want to put any ideas in her head so I just agreed with her observation… Not sure what to do – if we win Powerball we’ll move back to Hawaii!
So I wonder, are we throwing the girls under the bus because we really like to walk to the pub and the icecream shop?
No, really not, in my opinion. Your kids need and deserve to see you living in a neighborhood that reflects your community and your interests, because they’re going to learn how to interact with other people primarily through you. And hopefully when they grow up they will be willing to live anywhere that their family, career, and interests take them, and not select their location based primarily on the racial makeup of their neighborhood.
I live in a city that is pretty self-selecting about race. We’re all pretty clear that when white people create their own enclaves, it sucks. But as you might have seen when you were city-shopping, living in a very insular non-white community has its own set of challenges. And a truly diverse neighborhood is tough to find.
I’m not well-qualified to talk about raising hapa or Asian kids, having never done it. But I really feel that while it’s important to talk about the effects of race in our culture and to create community in some of the ways that you’re describing (with Mr. A’s work, your extended family, and Chinese school), your family–and your neighborhood–is ultimately about more than the skin color of its members.
I don’t participate a lot in these discussions, so I’m not sure whether or not this comment is out of line. Please take that or leave it as you wish.
And on a lighter note–the ice cream shop I’m guessing you live near? Totally worth staying in the neighborhood for. When Mr. Trope and I discuss moving “home”, the local ice cream store is one of the high points.
It’s certainly a tricky situation. I’d look at it this way, there is a trade-off. Sure a more diverse neighborhood isn’t in their cards. However, you’ve managed (from what I tell) to be proactive is seeking out things like Chinese school and such where you are at, PLUS the girls are close to your family. Coming from someone who lost several of her grandparents at an early age, I can’t begin to express how lucky I think they are for that.
In my mind, 10% Asian isn’t bad. It’s not perfect, but I wouldn’t sneeze at it, either. Mathematically speaking, it’s 9900% better than my own experience of 0.1%.
The one thing I’ve learned for sure when it comes to living arrangements, neighborhoods, lifestyles, etc is that it is ALWAYS a trade-off. For one thing or another. Perhaps the perfect environment exists somewhere, but I kind of doubt it. You weigh your trade-offs with everyone’s well-being in mind, and I don’t think anyone can do much better than that. My husband is military, and our lifestyle means moving a lot. I grew up in a small town with my extended family close by. Now, my kids don’t get to be close to their grandparents and cousins very often. But we get to show them so much…different places, so much more diversity. My mother bemoans that my children won’t know what I had. Me? I never wanted what I had. I couldn’t wait to get out of there, I would have loved to go other places. My kids will probably wish they had what I had at some point, simply Don’t feel selfish. You’re a great mama.
Why did my above comment geek out? I don’t know. Oops. The missing space should say that they’ll probably wish they had what I had, simply because it’s different than what they have. They won’t have the extended family close by, or the physical stability of place, but we’ve traded off for adventure, diversity, experiences. I can work to make the bad n our trade-offs easier. And I can see that you do the same for your family. So don’t feel selfish.
I think 20% is okay. What I think would be wrong, would be to put your kids in a situation where they are always the only person of their race. Or the only non-white person. But it doesn’t sound like you are doing that.
For what it is worth, I do not think that you’re throwing your kids under the bus. Diversity would be great, but so is a wonderful neighborhood. I am Asian but grew up without diversity (as in being the only Asian kid) until high school. I never felt that I was sacrificed or thrown under the bus by my parents. So, now as a parent, I seek diversity for my daughter but it is only as a single factor among many others.
What was A’s experience in school? Did he go to a mostly white school or one where many Asians went? How did he feel about his experience? I would base my decision on the Asian I know and how he felt. He would most know how your girls will feel about their schooling. (How come none of the decisions you have to make as a parent are easy?)
Well, you know I think community is really important, regardless of racial demographics. And I grew up as an “only” with regard to difference. 20% is a good balance with living in a place you love.
I attended a traditional Hindu ceremony for a new baby over the weekend. I was initially disappointed that the only Indian Ams were one parent and extended family. The parents explained that they wanted all of us (white, latin, asian, german) to be part of the ceremony because we are all important to them, and they want us to be part of the tight social network they share with their kids growing up. In a later conversation, the father shared with me that they deliberately chose the strong community in our neighborhood to raise their children, because they thought that was the most important thing they could give them. FWIW ~lmc
I grew up in a very non-diverse place as well and the one thing that really helped me bond with my Chinese culture was being exposed to Chinese entertainment and media.
I grew up watching Chinese soap-operas, listening to Chinese music, falling in love with Chinese celebrities, and reading Chinese comic books. These fun activities made me eager to learn more about my culture and my people’s history.
This exposure really helped balance out the brief periods of teen angst where I wished I was white.
Please do not think that I’m being trite or trivializing your concern. I’m not. In fact, I agree and have the same concerns myself. That being said, you can’t win.
No parent can. No matter what choice we make, our children will go through a phase, hopefully just a phase, of thinking everything we chose for them is wrong.
I think that we can only do our best. Try to add as much diversity to their lives while also making choices that work for us. Our children need to see role models who care for themselves as well as others. The problems come with role models who focus too much on their own needs or too much on others. We need to show them balance.
IMO, you have to look at the big picture. Your children will always have an Asian father and many other family members who look like them. (My daughter will not have this so I feel compelled to take the school situation into serious account.) Also, your children are enrolled in Chinese language classes, etc,. AND they have their grandfather to practice their language with – how cool is that?? I’m glad you’re both feeling at peace with your decision. I have no idea where you live, but it sounds like a really nice place to raise a family.
I’ve been giving this kind of thing a lot of thought lately, and I kind of think (although this could be incredibly naive) that our children will have yet another different experience of race than people of our generation have had. Maybe it’s just the community we live in, where it sometimes seems like every third family is biracial (with a surprisingly high ratio of Caucasian women/Asian men), but it seems like, as you suggest might be the case, our kids will live their racial identities in ways that we might not even be able to anticipate at this point.
Which is my long-winded way of saying that I think the ‘extracurricular’ Chinese stuff you do does go a long way, insofar as it demonstrates to the girls that they, too, can lay claim to this part of their identities. Community is more than just the school they attend, and you’re both clearly creating the kind of diverse community that will benefit them no matter where you live or where they go to school.
Hmmm. Thinking . . . Nothing really to say other than we too have traded off some diversity most importantly for quality of schools. With full and very active pushing by C-A hubby. Who thinks education most important thing you give children. Period. No arguments. And who thinks learning to be C-A in a predominately white environment important for Asians in this culture. But hmmmmm. Bothers me too. I always threaten to move the family to closest more diverse town. Instead we shop there, have friends there,go to classes, and celebrations there. And I absolutelyagree that for my kids, and yours,living in the same house with a real live C-A makes their experience FAR different from Chinese daughters with no Chinese relatives.
DS-L
DS-L
Hi, I’m a lurker who feels compelled to respond. Like M, I am hapa with a Chinese American father and a Caucasian American mother. I grew up in Chicago in a pretty diverse area, but now that I’m a parent (married to another hapa) I’m living in a less diverse place and will soon be moving to an even less diverse location than where we are now. 10% is good. Sure, if you lived in Hawai’i, parts of California, or New York, you might have a lot more Asian American in your girls’ schools, but this is only one factor out of many that matters. It’s hard to know how they will feel about their racial identities as they grow. The fact that your family is very open to such discussions and is aware of these issues will make a huge difference. If you find that there aren’t that many other Asian American students in their respective classes, maybe you can involve them in outside activities where they’ll have additional opportunities to meet more Asian Americans. Of course Chinese school and related “Asian-y” activities are a start, and maybe you’ll discover more as your daughters grow. Oh, and I second one of the other commenters’ suggestions about exposing your kids to as much Asian media as possible (both Asian American and Asian). I believe that one of the reasons I never bought into the emasculated Asian man myth is because I grew up watching so many Hong Kong movies and TV dramas with really hot Chinese men as leading actors. Just a lurker’s two cents’.
Moving is not a one-time-only event. If later you reconsider your decision because you can better foresee the angst level you can try then.
The fact that your girls have a same-race father and same-race family they see regularly makes a world of difference and gives you wiggle room that strictly transracially adoptive families don’t have. My personal opinion is you shouldn’t fret one bit.
When we move it may or may not be to a terrifically diverse neighborhood (anywhere is better than here) but it will be a place in general where we can find people to make into chosen family of the same-race as the girls. I think close, personal relationships are much more important than the mere number of faces in a room. Not that those numbers don’t matter at all, but if you have to choose, go with close, personal.
Again though, a same-race parent trumps anything else by far.
You know, it sounds like you have a nice if imperfect situation. Imperfect and not-nice is more often the norm. There are always trade-offs, regardless of where they are, regardless of the racial demographics.
Exposure to “Chineseness” is a complicated one, because there is no set baromter of “Chineseness”: north v south v east v west? Domestic via diaspora?
I’m glad for your sake the Shanghai move never materialized – life as an expat taitai would be at best miserable, at worst could have destroyed your family. Not to mention that Shanghai culture has is 100% foreign to your family, unless you accepted a reductionist pan-Chinese all the sameness. If your kids went to Chinese school here, they’d be subject to all sorts of abuse as the “other”, as overseas Chinese, as an adoptee, as mixed race, as white. Chinese culture is rather brutally un-pc. At foreigner schools, they would become the most racist/classist, entitled little neocolonialists.
I worry about this issues a lot, and my half-immigrant children remain still imaginary. The preschool woes of even my fully Shanghainese friends keep me up at night. I hope, that as long as kids have happy parents and a great community, these issues won’t matter. But, I know they will. Just not as much as the things I’ve yet to imagine.
I agree with the commenters above–in some ways, whatever decisions we make for our children, we just can’t win. We can’t win because our children are going to be their own persons, growing up in a culture that is different from ours, and none of us can ever predict the future.
What we can do (and what you are doing, really really well) is think as carefully and thoughtfully about our decisions as we can. When our children are old enough to discuss these decisions, at least we will be able to detail the thought processes we went through to reach our decision.
Me? I’m a caucasian mother with a caucasian husband and a biological caucasian daughter, but I lived in Japan for two years and consider it my “adopted” culture, and I really want my daughter to learn Japanese. But now I’m angsting because I think probably another language would be more useful for her–either Mandarin or Spanish (we live in the Intermountain West). And I worry that whichever one I choose, she will eventually say she wished I had picked another one. Like I said–the best we can probably hope for here is a draw!
P.S. I understand that this is not an earth-shattering decision, to say the least, but providing the opportunity for my child to be fluent in another language is something I have always been adamant about.
I’m going through something similar, as I’m trying to decide on a preschool for my adopted Chinese daughter. (PLEASE, please do not think I go around introducing her as, “Sally Jane, my adopted Chinese daughter.” Just giving you the background info.) The “old” school (where she’s been doing a few mornings a week of “mothers’ morning out”) is whiter than white and rather small. Not small in the number of students, but more happy to be a safe cocoon where everyone knows everyone and not too concerned about the big, bad world out there. The new school is a Montessori school with more Asians than the old school (though not many more) as well as ESL European students, as the school has an enrollment agreement with two international businesses in town that are based in Germany and France. So while the new school wouldn’t be providing my daughter with much in the way of non-white diversity, it’s sure as hell more diverse than her current school. And then there are the benefits of the Montessori method, which, on paper, I dig.
However, for now (and this could change in another year), we’ve chosen to stay at the old school. I AGONIZED over this because we are in a position with my husband’s business that we won’t be moving to a more-diverse city in the next 10-20 years, and moving to a more-diverse neighborhood isn’t in the cards, either, so I’ll be expecting a lot from my daughter’s school environment (and the Chinese language activities we join) to make up for the choices we’ve made for the adults in the family.
In the end, I chose the old school because my daughter has made friends there, so have I, and I feel like the teachers and administrators there really love and care about my daughter. I think the “academics” (such as they are for 3-year-olds) are better at the Montessori, and as I’ve said, the diversity is far better there, but I chose warmth over my high-minded liberal ideals.
Did I make the decision for selfish reasons? Was I more worried about where *I* would fit in? Am I shortchanging her opportunities to meet children from other cultures? I suppose so, but diversity isn’t everything. It simply can’t be; there are too many other factors to consider.
Now, my situation is just preschool. You’re talking about where to live. Much bigger. But I don’t think you should beat yourself up over whether the decisions you make are solely for your children’s interests or for the family as a whole.
I agree with what Trope said. I think you need to live in a community of *your* choosing and that your children will learn from that. It seems very contrived and artificial to choose a community “for them.” Besides, they’ll have the opportunity to live they way they want when they’re adults.
We live in a pretty white neighbourhood is a pretty diverse city. We could live elsewhere in the city, but the area we’re in is by far the most convenient to our lives. Our family is Chinese, French and Jewish – we wouldn’t all fit in no matter what neighbourhood we picked. The kids (one adopted, one bio) both take Mandarin lessons and both go to Sunday school at synagogue. The school they attend is probably around 25% Jewish and 25% Asian, that’s a good mix for us. We have the advantage of living in a large urban area. While our immdiate neighbourhood may not be overly colourful, as soon as we head out anywhere, there’s an explosion of culture. At this point, that works for us. We’ll tweek as needed as we go along. It’s an interesting path we’re all making for ourselves.
Julie
Delurking again. I’ve been thinking a lot of this post. I have friends who live in Vermont, in a teeny town where they are the only Asians (they’re both Chinese American). They have a 3-year-old daughter. Because of the husband’s work, they’re in no position to move at this time, though they hope that by the time their daughter starts primary school they can go somewhere more diverse. Meanwhile, once a week they drive to New Hampshire to bring their daugther to a Big Sister program held at Dartmouth; the program mainly matches Chinese adoptees with Chinese American “Big Sisters” who are college students, though they also let me friend’s daughter join. In spite of the fact that their daughter is growing up with two Asian faces in her house, that’s not enough for them, and they want her to be exposed to a range of Asian Americans. Their daughter adores her Big Sister and they do all sorts of projects together. I don’t know whether your community has a similar program, and maybe it’s not right for you since it seems that you do have extended Asian American family nearby, but just throwing this out on the table.