I was reading this post about this book over at Harlow’s Monkey. It has been a while since I have felt moved to write much about race and culture and our family. I used to write about it a lot, so I was thinking a little about why it isn’t in the forefront of my writing anymore.
When I first started writing this blog, we were a young family. M was only one year old. We didn’t have any traditions, a parenting agenda, a plan. We were just making it through the day. Then when we (I) started researching adoption in earnest, I started reading a lot about the issues around transracial adoption. I realized that there were some parallels in the experience of transracial adoptees, second generation and mixed race kids.
Not everything is the same, but there are common threads. Loss of culture, difficulty finding a place in the American racial landscape, inability of parents to relate and identify the significance of these losses/issues with their parents. I was reading and thinking a lot about my kids and how their race(s) and half-transracial (mostly transcultural) adoption would affect them.
Mr. A and I had talked about wanting to keep his family’s Chinese/Taiwanese culture alive for our children. Certainly, our children will be mostly American, but we wanted them to know where they came from. In addition to keeping the bits and pieces of tradition from Mr. A’s family intact, we wanted more. (A lot was lost due to the chaos/craziness/dysfunction/mental illness in Mr. A’s family and the bits that remained seemed a little disjointed and incoherent.) I have read that this often happens with second generation kids, they become much more interested in their parents’ home culture once they have their own 3rd generation kids. After I started understanding more about racial identity and culture, I wanted my kids to be thoroughly grounded in US culture, but with a strong understanding of their ancestral/culture too.
I can’t remember where, maybe in “Does anybody else look like me?“, I read that mothers’ cultures were much more likely to be passed on than fathers’. Given the role women often play as primary caregivers, I guess that makes sense, but I also thought there was more too it than that. Mothers most often prepare the food, mothers manage the holidays, mothers buy most of the stuff in the house, mothers read most of the books and tell most of the stories. Mothers are the cultural heart and soul of a family.
So where did that leave us? The culture I was raised with was white midwestern culture. How was I supposed to have a role in passing on/teaching a culture that was foreign to me? (I am reminded me of this old post which is still so very true today.)
I started out doing what I do with anything new, which is researching the heck out of it. I read and read and read. I read history, biographies, books on culture and traditions. I already had a headstart because I had started my research when I visited China briefly with Mr. A so many years ago. I understand how the language works and recognize it, though I don’t speak it well. I had a lot of familiarity with Chinese culture, but it was all head-knowledge, not lived culture.
As M grew bigger, we started incorporating more Asian/Chinese/Chinese American stuff into our daily lives. We added holidays and created new family traditions (the Moon Festival and Chinese New Year). We added Chinese language tutoring. We sent M to the “Asian” preschool. All my researching and our adding new traditions made me the butt of more than a few jokes from my Asian brother-in-law, but we had a plan and we kept moving forward.
I think the tide really started to turn when we added Chinese school and Chinese dance class. With Chinese school, we faltered a little at first, trying to find our place in the local Chinese community. We made friends, not “chinese friends” but real friends with several other families who shared similarities ours and who shared a lot of our concerns about teaching our kids Chinese, staying in touch with China/Chinese culture, etc.
But the biggest turning point with Chinese school was a particular argument Mr. A and I had. Mr. A struggled with his own feelings of annoyance and other mixed feelings about Chinese school. He didn’t want to spend every Sunday afternoon there (neither did I, actually) and he kept coming up with excuses to avoid it.
One day, we had a knock down drag out fight about it and I told him that if he wanted our kids to be comfortable around Asian and Chinese kids, HE was their ticket to fitting in. I would keep showing up because I thought Chinese school was important for the kids, but I would never be able to help our kids blend in. HE had to show up. HE had to claim their place at the table until they are old enough to do it themselves. If he wanted them to be proud of being Chinese, HE had to walk the walk, talk the talk, and take the lead.
And bless his heart, he stepped right up to the plate and did it.
Not only did Mr. A arranged his schedule to take M to Chinese language class each Sunday, he convinced his dad to come with them and help M with her lessons too. (I do dance class so I can chat with my friends.) Mr. A stuck his neck out and learned to cook more traditional Chinese food, which eventually made me brave enough to try again myself. (Prior to that and before I got my new cookbooks, my attempts were TERRIBLE!) And he takes the lead on Chinese holidays: explaining why the traditions are the way they are, leading the ancestor prayer, talking about his family’s own history, etc.
So now, we are living our new normal. While we were a little clunky and unsure at first, now, we are comfortable with the level of committment, culture and community we have created. We know our girls won’t ever be “Chinese” exactly, but we think we are laying a solid foundation for them as Chinese Americans. We hope that the strands of culture and connection we are weaving through their memories and their day-to-day lives will serve them well as they grow into adulthood.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I will. Already, I can tell I will feel defensive about my own inadequacies but I will read it because knowledge is power. Like all parents, adoptive parents included, I am trying to do the best for my children. I have known from very early on, I will never be adequate to this task. It is a relief, to be able to share this burden with Mr. A.
I think you are a very wise person. As a Jewish mother with a Jewish spouse and obviously Jewish children, it is still important to identify with our culture and actually DO things as a family that are Jewish. Our children are now 20 and 17, and I honestly can say that it really did work. Our kids identify strongly. It is not because my husband and I are both Jewish, it is because we did fun things as a family on a regular basis that connected our children to their heritage, and because we also sent them to school where they could learn Hebrew and their history. Many people we know did not do things, believing that just because they were Jewish that their kids would identify, but they do not. It is the hard work that you and your husband are doing that will make the difference for your children. In some ways you are lucky because your children will know something important every time they look in a mirror, but it is through your connecting them with what is special about who they are that their love for their culture will support them in their knowledge about themselves.
As a white mother raising multiracial children (and doing so alone) I struggle with this issue so much. I know absolutely nothing about Indonesian culture and it feels contrived and awkward at best and terribly offensive at worst to try to connect my boys with that culture (“Look boys, I bought a blanket from Indonesia, just like where Grandma’s from!”). Until I read the review you linked to, I had never thought about how my situation is similar to that of families involved in transracial adoptions who do not have connections with their child’s culture of origin. That is a very useful way for me to reframe this for myself. I unconsciously find myself expecting that my boys will learn about their Indonesian heritage from their dad (and that he is far more fit to teach them than I), even though I know realistically that even were he more involved in their lives, his connections are fairly tenuous as well. Looking at this with no expectation that anyone else will do this work really helps me to see it differently and see my own role differently. I feel much more empowered.
I am the white mom and hubby is the Asian dad. I do more than him in passing on culture from both sides of the family. If I have any questions, though, I can just ask him.
I actually tend to feel sorry for adoptive parents who are both of different ethnicity than their child, in this respect. I can put my son in a kimono and not feel like I’m doing the “wrong” thing. But a white mom married to a white guy has to worry about whether she is doing the right thing dressing her child up in a traditional costume.
I’m a 2nd gen Asian American and one of my most memorable events was the first time I got made fun of because of my race.
They did the “slanted-eye” thing along with the “ching-chong” crap. Everyone laughed (I was the lone Asian kid).
And even though both of my parents are Chinese, they couldn’t really understand what I was going through because it never happened to them.
As a result, I went through a period of shunning my Chinese culture, trying to act as white as possible and hoping the kids would just leave me alone…(didn’t work).
Luckily we eventually moved to a place with more Asians and I didn’t feel as alone anymore.
So I think it’s good that Mr. A might have went through similar things and hopefully he can better prepare M and L for them.
Thank you for the update. I know your plan was very much shaped by living as a family and thinking about being Asian and white and adoption, but the reasoning and results makes me think I should think harder about what I want to teach my kids. I don’t think we talk about race enough. And maybe we don’t even talk about heritage in general enough. Thought provoking. (And I looked back at your white cultural teaching satire post and laughed so hard.)
Great post. You and I started out in kind of the same place. Like you, I thought a lot about how to pass on Korean culture to my daughter. . .and at some point, I realized that my role was to facilitate, rather than try to pass on a culture that isn’t mine. Instead of Korean school, she goes to the market with her dad and halmoni. Of course we also eat Korean food, read Asian-American books, etc., but the trips to the market are the most important.
I also make sure we’re around lots of people of different races/ multiracial families. She has lots of playmates who are biracial, and I think in the end that may be more important than the Korean stuff.
It’s so hard for 2nd generation Chinese/Taiwanese parents to pass on a culture that they themselves are not that familiar with. That is the case with me. We had been going to Chinese school, and now have a Chinese tutor. We try to read books about Chinese culture. I need to work on Chinese cooking, though.
What I find surprising is that nowadays, the schools are interested in Chinese culture, as well. Both of my kids’ preschool & grade school celebrated Chinese New Year this year, which I thought was really great.
Mothers most often prepare the food, mothers manage the holidays, mothers buy most of the stuff in the house, mothers read most of the books and tell most of the stories. Mothers are the cultural heart and soul of a family.
This is why I’m so excited I’m a lesbian. I can share in that motherhood-role.
As a white-on-both-sides person of Chicago extraction, I’ve had a decent amount of enjoyment exploring the ethnicities within my whiteness. My Grandpa’s Dutch heritage (he came over in 1907) my Irish great grandparents who had lived in cabins in Ireland with sod floors, the Bavarians who still spoke German in the 1930s and 40s and taught my grandparents to speak it. I can only imagine that your efforts to explore Chinese culture take up a lot of time and effort and might seem more interesting, but it’s worth a ponder to explore your side of the equation too, if it appeals at all. White isn’t the sole definition, there’s a lot of complexity to delve into there.
Altho I’m betting I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. When it comes to cultural/racial complexities, you’ve done a lot more groundwork than I in that vein.
Good for Mr. A!
I read the post on Harlow’s Monkey and thought of you when she mentioned the book saying that “adoptive parents were disinterested in current modern, Chinese American history or politics.” I know you’ve talked about that in the past and it bothers me too. I’m interested in hearing what Jacobson learned.
This is a great post and as an expatriate raising my kids Brazilian American kids I can identify. For me the hardest part is not giving them enough “Americaness” for fear of them losing their ties to Brazil, particularly to the language. I really try to hold off, but they seem to “crave” the “majority language and culture,” especially Linton who is younger and really wants to blend in. Sometimes I practically have to “force” him to speak Portuguese. Hopefully the effort will pay off for all of us.
I have it pretty easy with the culture thing. Dad is very Chinese, hates American food, TV etc.
Grandparents are non English speakers and only speak to the kids in Cantonese.
We celebrate all the Chinese Holidays with family and friends including American holdays with a Chinese twist…. a steamboat Thanksgiving instead of turkey! lol
We also celebrate Christmas as a family too with traditional Chinese food and family.
They have tons of cousins who live close by who will be going through the second generation thing with them. I just feel bad being that I’m white, if they will feel like it’s not fair if/when they do get teased by some little racist punk on the play ground…hopefully that will never happen!
Great post – and thanks too, for the links which led me back to relevant earlier posts I hadn’t seen. “Emergency Code Whitey” made my morning!