Becoming a Multi-Ethnic Family
By Marybeth Lambe, MD
Parenting a child from
a different country or culture requires a commitment to your child’s history as well
as their future within the family. This requires sensitivity to our adopted children as
well as growth in ourselves as parents.
We have a
multicultural and multinational family through birth and adoption. We have eight children,
ranging in ages from four to sixteen. Within our family, we are Asian, African, Irish and
Spanish.
Children, who are
trying to ‘blend in’ to their family, school and their circle of friends, will
often reject attempts to learn more of their culture. “Korean camp is stupid!” a
child might shout bitterly at a parent. “I don’t want Chinese language
lessons,” complains another. How do we avoid shoving a culture at our children?
How do we approach their adoptive history when our children protest that they only want to
fit in? Like every other adoptive parent, I have wrestled with these issues.
First, we try to let
our kids, adopted and biological, take the lead in learning their life story. Like
grieving, children can often take this in only small amounts. It is too easy to
misunderstand what they want to know and give more detail than they can handle. The
question, “Why was I abandoned on the streets of China?” mean different things
to a five-year-old than it does to a ten-year-old. Asking your child a simple, “What
would you like to know?” offers insight as to whatever issues they are struggling
with. Cultural issues are much the same. Don’t try to give the whole story in one
sitting—it simply cannot be digested.
Emma Rose was adopted
eight years ago. She is African American. Before we adopted her, I looked around our
house. We had white dolls, pictures of white people on the walls, “white” music,
and standard American cookbooks. Our books had few illustrations of people of color and
our poetry books were all filled with American and European writers. We needed to
make changes in our own lives before embracing a new culture.
I am offended by the
notion that teaching cultural identity means simply giving a brown doll to a brown child,
linking up with brown people and teaching only Emma about the wonders of her historical
country—Africa. Any changes in our lives, our home, had to occur before Emma Rose
came. I did not want the biological kids we already had to think that any changes were
just for “Emma.” Therefore, before she came, we put up artwork from around the
world—pictures of Africa, Mexico, Asia, Ireland, and more. The dolls became brown,
black, red, green...The books that my biological kids received were from authors of the
world and had illustrations to reflect that. We listened to music of Peru, Africa, China
and Native Americas.
My point is that we
all needed to become “multicultural,” even though it was just in this
superficial way. Furthermore, our home had to reflect this appreciation. We did not want
our infant daughter, Emma, to feel this was only done for her. By the time she was old
enough to notice (by 20 months) she saw big sister with a collection of dolls of all
colors; dad reading a book on the history of Africa; big brother had posters of Martin
Luther King and Chief Joseph...
To me, adding only the
culture of Emma’s historic birth country was just as bad as having only
“white” culture. We wanted to communicate embracing people of all colors.
As I said before, we didn’t want Emma to feel, “O.K., I get the brown doll, Sara
gets the white doll, Shen Bo gets the Asian one.” There is enough of that
pigeon holing in the world outside our walls and I wanted to at least break that image in
our home.
Since adopting three
children from China as well as having more biological kids, we have seen some success in
this approach. There is no sense that the African art in the living room is more for one
kid than the other. Brendan and Sara are taking the Mandarin classes with Yuanjun and
Chengming. Emma Rose is learning Irish dancing as well as taking a course in Swahili. Shen
Bo has “twins,” as he calls his baby dolls, and one doll is brown and the other
white. Pale freckled mommy listens to Native American music as well as her old folk
collection. Mark has become quite the international cook while Bren has an extensive
collection of blues and jazz. Emma Rose takes great pride in demonstrating Kwanzaa
at her school. She is also beginning to learn the tumultuous history of blacks in America.
Chengming enjoys teaching Chinese dance to the little girls in her class and also shows
off the difficult art of writing Chinese characters.
All of these
examples are only small successes. They will not keep our children from facing prejudice.
They will not keep them from the pain of irrational racism. Living as an adopted child is
difficult at times. Living as a minority, in a white family and white society, is
frequently painful, or worse. But small teachings of cultural strengths and
traditions help build self-image and courage.
The one thing we don’t want to have happen is for our children to reject their
culture because we pushed too hard. Embrace it yourself and they are much more likely to
follow along. Make an effort to embrace many cultures in activities, friends, food, art,
books and music. Demonstrate that in some small way, all of you are now Chinese, African,
Irish, and Hispanic—for that is the final truth. I do not mean to say that we can
then claim to understand what it feels like to face prejudice in the outside world. This
would be a grievous mistake. I just mean to say, let us model our own joy and pleasure in
exploring cultures—so that our children’s heritage does not come to feel like
another burden to our sons and daughters. §
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