<p>^ Because it is nice to know something about the country and culture of your birth. That doesn’t mean it has to be all encompassing. Just like most of us are interested in our cultural history and background. We are not born into, nor do we live, in a vacuum.</p>
<p>I’m a white adult adoptee from the “Girls Who Went Away” era. I have six cousins, my mother’s sister’s children, who are also adopted. Although they were all born in the US, one boy is half-Korean, adopted in 1965 and one girl, adopted in 1970, is of Chinese descent. In those days, adoptive parents were told to take their children home and love them and nobody would ever know the difference, but these two were in the vanguard of transracial adoption and it was rough on both of them. Our whole family accepted them and I never thought of them as anything but my cousins, but apparently a lot of people in the community had issues with it.
Anyway, their Asian backgrounds were never discussed and any mention of it was discouraged. In those days, people thought the less you talked about something, the less it mattered (in fact, that went for adoption in general.) They’ve both been successful as adults, but I honestly don’t know how much they’ve had to do with their Asian cultures.</p>
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<p>Meaning paperwork to renounce any Republic of Korea citizenship he may have?</p>
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<p>Acquisition of US citizenship does not necessarily cause loss of any other citizenship, since other countries may still consider a person their citizen even if s/he acquires another citizenship.</p>
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<p>There were still laws in many states against interracial marriage until the Supreme Court struck them down in 1967. So it is not surprising that a lot of people had issues with interracial families.</p>
<p>“Meaning paperwork to renounce any Republic of Korea citizenship he may have?”</p>
<p>Yes. We followed the instructions given to us by the adoption agency. After he was naturalized we filled out the necessary forms and sent all the documentation required to the SK consulate in NYC (iirc.) </p>
<p>I don’t know what adoptive parents are told to do now. We did this 18 years ago.</p>
<p>There was a point where part of the process of adopting from China was pledging you would continue to expose the child to Chinese culture. Don’t know if that still applies.</p>
<p>We raise/d our girls with respect for all their identities. </p>
<p>When speaking of disgruntled adoptees, you have to realize not all adoptive parents are the same. (Hey, not all birth parents are the same, either.) And, what may have characterized adoptions a generation or two ago has changed due to awareness and how many more people have opened their hearts, in this way. And are perfectly and completely comfortable with it. As are their friends, families, neighbors, schools, etc.</p>
<p>Interesting question and purely theoretical to me. I don’t have an adopted child nor am I adopted, so I don’t really know. I think I would raise the child in my culture, but educate myself about the biological parents’ culture and be prepared to expose my child to it as he desired. If the child looked different from me, I would guess he would be curious about the other culture and I would expect some awkwardness. I am idealistic enough to think it would all work out.</p>
<p>I think some of this has to do with where you live. If a child grows up in NYC, it’s inevitable that (s)he will come into contact with people from the culture of his/her I “biological” homeland. It’s also fairly easy to expose your child to that culture. </p>
<p>There are many organizations of Korean adoptees. In recent years, the South Korean government has begun reaching out to these organizations and has helped organize journies “home” for adoptees.</p>
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<p>Agreed. </p>
<p>That was my point when I said my impression was their experiences seem to be mainly an indictment of the individual adoptive parents jerkiness/unfitness as parents along with the racial climate of the extended family and area those disgruntled adoptees were raised. </p>
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<p>My understanding is that if the gaining US citizenship occurs during toddlerhood as that falls below the extreme young age cap, Korean immigrant children…whether adoptees or not would be exempted from being liable for conscription. Emilybee’s adopted child would be covered under this provision. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if they immigrated/were adopted at slightly older ages like 6+, the parents need to go through a more involved procedure to renounce that kid’s SKorean citizenship before the mid-late teen years to be safe. </p>
<p>If they fail to do so before those years lapse, the child concerned will be liable for conscription the moment he’s within SKorean territory and won’t be allowed to renounce SKorean citizenship until he’s served his mandated term of military service. </p>
<p>Knew several Korean-American immigrants who avoided going to SKorea or ended up being drafted while visiting SKorea because their parents failed to renounce their SKorean citizenship before that mid-high teen age cap. </p>
<p>Considering most came as young elementary schoolchildren as young as 6, were very Americanized, had lost Korean language skills, and had to face 2 years of service in a military well-known for its harsh discipline, it was a traumatizing experience for many of them…especially in the beginning.</p>
<p>SKorea’s military discipline is such many South Korean men make it a point to try acquiring good English linguistic skills and jump through bureaucratic hoops so they can do their 2 years of service as liaison soldiers(KATUSAs) serving with US military units because this is one way of turning 2 years of what could be a harsh existence into a relatively cushy one by SKorean military standards.</p>
<p>If the child lives in America and is being raised by American parents, then the child’s culture should always be American. I don’t think it makes sense for a family from Michigan who moves to Florida to stick their children in a freezer so they will remember their cold Michigan culture. I also don’t think it makes sense for a child born in Korea to be force fed Korea food or suffer other Korean “culture” if the child is growing up in America.</p>
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<p>In our present multi-cultural society, what exactly is “American”? My bio kids grew up in CA and can’t help without being exposed to Hispanic, Black, Asian and European cultures. That’s American.
I’ve always introduced food from different countries to my kids and now they are very cosmopolitan, sophisticated foodies. There’s no food that they won’t try or fear, unlike some of their friends to whom ethnic food is Italian.</p>
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<p>It’s not like the parents are moving to the birth country. The child will grow up surrounded by American culture. Of course force feeding a child and making him/her suffer is not good. However, embracing food from another culture and exposing the child to the culture in a positive way is another. The parents I know who expose their children to another culture ENJOY it. They find it fun to learn about that culture. It is educational and mind-broadening. I can’t imagine how anyone would find that offensive.</p>
<p>I know people who have taken lessons in African or Scottish dance because they are interested in learning about the culture of the country/continent from which their ancestors came. One of my friends who has a parent from China has learned Chinese. We have a lot of immigrants from Mexico around here, and most everyone, Hispanic or not, eats at Mexican restaurants. How can learning about another culture, the one of your birth or not, be a bad thing?</p>
<p>What, by the way, is “American” culture? I live in North Carolina, and the culture here (food, music, dialect, manners) is, in some ways, very different from the culture in New York, Alaska, Hawaii, Wisconsin, or Texas. I’m glad of that. When I travel around the country, I want to experience different ways of doing things.</p>
<p>Is there a difference though between learning about another culture and being raised to consider yourself part of another culture? Every American learns about other cultures to one degree or another.</p>
<p>I don’t know how you could raise a child in any culture but your own even if you wanted to try. Which I wouldn’t.</p>
<p>Flossy – I don’t think you could raise your child in another culture unless you moved to that country. The adoptive parents I know teach their children about the cultures of their birth countries, but they aren’t trying to replicate those cultures in their homes. They raise their children in their own religion(s), eat what the other people in their area eat, go to movies and malls, and do most of the same things the other families around them do – in addition to exposing the children to the cultures of their birth countries.</p>
<p>the child’s culture should always be American. The child’s national identity is now American. Culturally, we can all be influenced by our heritage. No one is talking about force feeding. Luckily, in my family, they didn’t make me eat the pickled herring.</p>
<p>When mine were in lower school, they’d get little red packets of coins from an adopted friend born in China. What’s wrong with that?</p>
<p>“I also don’t think it makes sense for a child born in Korea to be force fed Korea food or suffer other Korean “culture” if the child is growing up in America.”</p>
<p>No one is force feeding the culture on their kids. Most do think it is very important to expose them to their cultural heritage to some degree, but will leave it up to the child how involved they wish to me. My kid had very little interest, but I know some younger teens, who still go to Korean Camp. They go because they want to, it’s fun and they have made lasting friends through the years. </p>
<p>It’s not an either/or thing.</p>
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<p>cobrat, it is really infuriating the way that you think that you are an expert about every subject. It’s especially infuriating when you write posts that are utterly devoid of sympathy. I am reminded of the criticism a friend made of someone else when we were in college: “She notices the light shining on a brick wall and thinks that means she’s empathetic.” </p>
<p>As I wrote in the adoption thread, I’m not adopted. I don’t have adopted kids. I do have an adopted sibling and adoption is unusually common in my extended family. I also have friends and co-workers who have adopted. Some of those adoptions are transnational. Some are across races. </p>
<p>I’m not an expert on adoption and don’t purport to be. However, I’ve seen some people who had emotional problems because they were adopted. No matter what cobrat thinks, in MANY of these cases, the problems were NOT because the parents were jackasses. In fact, I’ve known parents who had more than one adopted child and one had no problems at all and another was a total basket case about it. </p>
<p>The assumption that if an adopted child–especially a child whose features let the entire world know that (s)he is not his/her parents’ biological child–has problems this means that his/her adoptive parents did something wrong and/or are flawed human beings has about as much validity as the assumption that all autistic children have parents who did something wrong. </p>
<p>Don’t misunderstand me. I am not criticizing people who adopt and I’m especialy not criticizing those who chose to open their minds and hearts to a child whose skin color doesn’t match theirs. I am ONLY saying that some adopted kids-- even those who are white and could “pass” as their parents’ biological child–have trouble dealing with the idea that their birth mothers gave them away. </p>
<p>My adopted sibling wanted to find said sibling’s birth mom and did. I don’t think the fact that my sib had a “hole in my heart” which drove my sib to find sib’s birth mom means that our parents did anything wrong. </p>
<p>My D’s friend was also driven to find her birth mom. She did. And when she did, they could talk in Korean–thanks to the young woman’s adoptive parents. BTW, she’s very close to her adoptive parents. They were just about perfect parents. Still, a kind young woman knew the circumstances which had forced her mother to give her up. She felt a need to let her birth mom know that she had ended up in a warm and loving family and had had a happy childhood, so there was no need to feel guilty about giving her away.Due to very unusual circumstances, she was able to tell her birth mom this and it took away a lot of her biological birth mom’s guilt about giving her up for adoption.</p>
<p>I adopted my daughter from China. We live in Brooklyn, NYC and were zoned for a not-great elementary school. I was extremely fortunate to be able to enroll her in a gifted program at a Chinatown (Manhattan) elementary school, something that wouldn’t be possible now. It was extremely inconvenient in many ways–no school bus for us, I schlepped her to school on the subway from pre-k through 5th grade (she took the subway by herself in middle school). It was a priceless experience for both of us. The elementary school was an amazing place with an outstanding principal. Over the years, I became friends with many parents and we compared notes about various extracurriculars including Chinese language and dance schools, but also about swimming lessons, teams, etc. I encountered various reactions to us from Chinese-Americans. Almost all of them have been positive encounters.</p>
<p>My daughter has had various opinions and feelings about her birth parents and her birth country, and I can’t say that what she thinks now as a high school senior will be what she will think for the remainder of her life. I think that she may have a very profound reaction to giving birth (if she does–I never did) since her baby would be the first genetic relative she has known since she was a baby. But maybe not.</p>
<p>She wrote her amazing Common App essay about growing up as a Chinese-American Jew. She has friends from many, many cultural groups, including Chinese-American kids. Virtually all of them are as American as she is and I am–how many of us are from families that came over on the Mayflower or on a slave ship or were born into a Native American family? We are all Americans.</p>
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<p>That’s my point. If a kid is adopted from Korea, there is no reason to teach him or her Korea culture; have him or her learn Hispanic, Black, Asian, and European cultures because that mix is the American culture. If the kid wants to rap while eating tacos and french fries and speaking in a southern drawl or New England accent, that’s how the kid should be raised.</p>
<p>There is no magic formula. I am not adopted but my mother is Asian, my father was American. I knew many kids in my situation as we were with a lot of military and international families. There was no set or consistent way that another culture was brought into the home. My mother did not return to her country for over 20 years after she left it, and none of us kids went there until we were adults and could pay our way there. There simply was not much extra money in our family, nor in my mother’s family, for going back and forth, and my mother’s family was fragmented and would not host her or any of us for any extended period of time, mkaing such visits expensive. Too expensive for us. </p>
<p>My brother is raising his children bi culturally, really tri culturally. Again not adopted, but doubt he’d do any differntly if his children were. He wants as much exposure for his children’s culture as he can manage, and he and his wife can afford a lot more in terms of direct visits than our parents could. Also it is a major consideration in his mind as well as his wife’s so they do make world cultures, particularly those in the backgrounds and histories of their kids important. My parents did not address unless it came up directly. </p>
<p>So I have see with those kids I knew who were adopted. More of an effort is made these days to connect ones birth past right up to the birth parents, when this was not the case with adoptees of my generation. But things will still vary according to the priorities and lifestyles of the families.</p>