<p>Hm… I’m actually thinking about this now. I had a good friend in high school became pregnant. She’s white, the baby’s father, another one of my friends, is Asian (so the child looks Asian), and actually all four grandparents are white because the father was adopted (he and his sister were adopted from Korea when he was an infant and she was a few years old). She is now married to a white man and has sole custody of her daughter… I’ve never thought about the fact that most people probably assume her biological daughter is adopted. </p>
<p>I doubt very much that her daughter is being raised with “Asian” culture because neither of the child’s parents were raised with “Asian” culture and I know the dad has zero interest in his birth country. </p>
<p>I guess this whole conversation is just strange to me. It’s natural to be curious about your heritage- I am and I was raised by my bio parents. However, the idea that culture is somehow innate and you need to be connected to your birth “culture” (which I don’t believe is a thing) is just strange to me.</p>
<p>^ when we adopted, DH said that if total strangers saw the four of us, they’d probably assume either he or I had a prior relationship. But we’re so bonded (were, from day one) that it must be clear to others that we’re family. I was more worried someone would think I am their grandmother.</p>
<p>I think a child whose appearance is different from the parents’ can be curious, quite naturally. I personally think, better to acknowledge it than to assume it won’t matter. In adoption, there are a slew of things you *don’t * assume. There’s some testing of the waters.</p>
<p>Also, I have always felt that my girls’ personal history is theirs. It’s real. Some of this is hard to put into just a few lines. But their history IS that they came to us through the miracle of adoption.
They may want to know more. Mine asked, why did we adopt, how did we make the decisions and proceed, did we want girls, what were our first impressions? A lot of birth kids ask this sort of thing, too- but in adoption, there is an extra component. </p>
<p>There is no one hard and fast way, razor. You can expose him or her to the mix in America- and the traditions in our own birth families or where our own grandparents came from- and still acknowledge their own reality, let them know and come to appreciate. Some kids need this less than others. But I think some of us agree, it makes for grounding.</p>
<p>In my H’s family, we have an adopted biracial nephew, from a white Jewish bio-mom and African-American bio-Dad. This nephew was raised in a very observant, traditional Jewish home. He was sandwiched in-between four sisters (two older, two younger) who are biological children of the adopting parents. He grew up in a lily-white suburb where nobody in their circle looked anything like him. Sometimes, he heard ignorant remarks. My SIL heard astonishing rude remarks about herself.</p>
<p>Around age 10, my good-hearted SIL awkwardly but lovingly brought him into contact with African-American music, literature and history with an emphasis on books about heroes. It made him feel knowledgeable and proud about that part of his identity he could not otherwise access as a child. His initial curiosity waned after around six months. As an adult, because he’s American, he made friends of every race, religion and creed.</p>
Unless adoptive American parents are going to raise the child in the child’s native country, why does it really matter? </p>
<p>I know a lot of bi-racial children that look more like the race of one biological parent, rather than a hybrid of the two. Are the parents then supposed to raise their biological bi-racial children according to what race their children’s appearance favors?</p>
<p>I have two adopted grandchildren–both from Russia. My stepdaughter and son-in-law went to the orphanage in Russia each time to get their kids. They’ve made an effort to expose the kids to Russian culture and language but it turned out that one of the kids (who they adopted when he was older–15 months) has RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder). Grandson with RAD is in counseling and is now (age 12) very upset that his birth mother abandoned him. He’s also very angry with his adoptive parents because he thinks they should send money to his birth mother because he’s sure she’s poor and believes that’s why she put him up for adoption. No one believes this is true–at least that’s what the adoption people have told my step-daughter. </p>
<p>Despite their parent’s efforts neither child seems interested in being Russian. Oldest kid is happy to be here and says she doesn’t care to know about her birth parents. </p>
<p>Adoptive parents are saints–I couldn’t handle what my stepD and in-law do.</p>
<p>I have a friend who had a child when she was a college student. She did not marry the father. My friend is white. The father is African-American. She gave up the child for adoption.</p>
<p>The child dreamed of meeting her birth mom. At age 19 she found my friend. She excitedly told all her sorority sisters at her all-black sorority that she was going to meet her bio mom.</p>
<p>Only thing was…in all of her dreams about her birth mom…it had never crossed her mind that her mom was white. Not once. So when she met my friend, she was stunned.</p>
<p>So, no, you don’t just raise a child in the culture she “appears” to be.</p>
^^This.^^ I have wonderful adoptive parents who did the best they could with the information and instructions they were given, much of which has changed since 1962. The biggest thing I wish they’d done differently was respect my individuality more - realize that while I loved them with all my heart, I was a separate, very different person who didn’t necessarily have the same preferences and feelings that they did, and that this was OK and not a reflection on them. They were told, as all adoptive parents were told at that time, take this child home and love him or her and no one will ever know the difference. My life would have been so much easier if those differences had been acknowledged and respected.</p>
<p>No adoption here. However, had considered adoption but (finally) had our son. In line at the grocery store once two ladies ahead of me were discussing an international adoption organization, they saw me and made an assumption my infant son was adopted. No, I told them, he was mine- he looked more like his North Indian father than me with my Nordic looks. Which culture did we raise him in? Ours. The one where we were living. He got doses of my side of the family and his father’s. His all Indian American born and raised cousins had different accents because of the state they were raised in and ate more Indian foods. Their mother cooked American favorites (vegetarian mainly) and I cooked Indian dishes my H liked. </p>
<p>In college a Japanese American friend was local in the Midwest and for her birthday her mother served us a birthday dinner one year. The main dish was a chicken casserole- just like every kid of my generation had growing up. I had hoped for something ethnic.</p>
<p>I know an Indian couple who came to the US as adults and adopted a child from India. He is, of course, American culturally. His growing up food choices were mainly South Indian because that is what his mother knew how to cook. </p>
<p>I notice regional cultural variations in different parts of this country. The term “Hispanic” evokes differing cultures depending on which part of the country you are in. Mexican culture is very different than Puerto Rican although they share a Spanish language. </p>
<p>You can’t help but raise your child, biological or adopted, mainly in your own culture. Otherwise the child is not truly yours. You do not promise to care for a child as one of your own by treating them differently. There can be a learning curve for such things as how to style hair to fit the individual (my perfectly straight hair does not prepare me for dealing with any level of frizziness).</p>
<p>I also have noted how children of immigrants (well educated professionals) come to realize that their children have the local culture flavored with family culture- just like those here for generations. They can’t live here and give their children the experience of living where they are from. Some forever consider themselves to be of country X, but their children are Americans. An adopted newborn or baby from another country will not know/remember the old country.</p>
<p>How much culture from one’s ancestors is retained depends on each family. It’s Thanksgiving. Which foods are considered must haves at your table? Talking with someone randomly I discovered that lasagna was always part of the meal, not turkey- reflecting Italian roots. Would you add foods from your child’s past? perhaps, if you like them. We do Indian/up north fusion dinners- vegetarian and non (usually no turkey because none of us care for it that much). Need my pumpkin pie, others need their southern favorites.</p>
<p>My family is polish and we very seldom eat polish foods, and the food is really the only place our culture comes into play. My Busia brings a couple of polish dishes to holidays which a couple of people eat and that’s about it. We are as american as they come. To me, making it a point to bring up a child in its biological parents culture puts an unnatural and unnecessary emphasis on ancestral culture… at one point I was interested to know my moms family came from Poland, it is fun to go to the Polish restaurant once in a while, but it’s not like being Polish is a huge part of my identity that I feel empty without. I am an American first, because that is where I live.</p>
<p>I wonder if pushing this bio-parents culture thing too much could serve to make the child really feel like there is a hole in his life where his parents and their culture should be and where it really isn’t. It seems to me it would be psychologically more healthy to grow up identifying with the culture they are in now, so long as their parents culture is not forbidden to them when they become curious about it. Otherwise they are just being reminded regularly that they are not the same as the only family they know. I think they should be allowed to identify with their family first, and experiment with other traditions and cultures when they develop that interest themselves or you are just going to confuse the child.</p>
<p>Ema…- you poor thing. I’m half Polish and my aunt made the best Polish sausage for some holidays, few brands come close (and many shouldn’t be labeled as such). Of course it wasn’t exactly heart healthy, but… My mother had a more mixed heritage so not too many foods got passed along. My father grew up knowing Polish foods I wouldn’t want. And, neither side had terrific cooks or food cultures (hint- won’t find my ancestry’s cultures represented by restaurants). Having no grandmothers (short life spans typical on both sides) also prevented many traditions from being passed on.</p>
<p>I have heard that foods are the last thing to disappear in a family culture with assimilation.</p>
<p>This is actually common with many families where the parents and/or older relatives don’t care for turkey whether immigrant or multi-generation American. </p>
<p>My parents are among them along with a few older relatives and folks from many parts of the world or the US. They opt for substitutes like chicken, duck, roast ham, etc instead of turkey.</p>
<p>You mentioned Nordic a few posts back. I have not encountered a Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, or Danish restaurant, and the only Swedish restaurant I have seen was in an IKEA store. Polish restaurants also seem to be scarce.</p>
<p>There are quite a few Polish restaurants in the NYC area. Ate at one in Brooklyn and another in the East Village. </p>
<p>There’s also probably many Polish restaurants in the Chicago area considering the large ethnic Polish-American population there as well. </p>
<p>Also, had weekend lunch at a Norwegian restaurant with some friends in midtown. While a bit pricy, the herring was excellent and went well with the Aqua vite liquor.</p>
<p>I don’t think so. My daughter’s genetics aren’t mine. Raising her, every day was a wonderful mystery: what were her talents? how tall would she be? In the nature-vs-nurture dichotomy, nature plays a huge part, and her genetic background was completely unknown. As she grew up, there were months and years when she was very sad that her birth family was unknown to her, and not a little anger from time to time. I didn’t put a hole in her life.</p>
<p>She lives her life with a Chinese face. In my very humble opinion, she needs to be prepared for people to make an assumption about her when they first saw her. When I went to middle school parent-teacher conference for the first time, I remember seeing cognitive dissonance face to face, as the teacher (in a school with a good number of Chinese-American kids) tried to reconcile this older white mom with the name of the Chinese kid in his register book. My kid deals with this over and over.</p>
<p>She does consider herself to be more secular-Jewish-American (whatever that means) than Chinese American but she is comfortable in her skin, looking at the world through her (physically) Chinese eyes. </p>
<p>But I think that in a way, I was very lucky that we didn’t “match.” The most poignant stories I have heard from adoptees are those who were not told they were adopted and found out as adults, sometimes when their parents died and could no longer tell them the story, or when when they or their parents were ill and testing proved the impossibility of a genetic relationship. No matter how much they loved their parents, that is a terrible thing to find out that way. And once the genie is out of the bottle and they know they are adopted, an adoptee needs the love and support of his or her family to understand the fact that his or her story didn’t start with the mom s/he knows and loves rushing to the hospital to give birth. Whatever the reason may have been, every adoptee starts with a hard-to-swallow fact: that the parents that created him/her didn’t raise him/her.</p>
<p>If say, a White American couple adopts an ethnically Korean baby born in the U.S., and the baby’s birth parents are 3rd generation Americans, is it necessary for the parents raise the child with an awareness of Korean culture?</p>
<p>Or does it matter only if the child was born in Korea? If so, why would it be different?</p>
<p>I was born to American parents in a foreign country where the people are ethnically different from me, but we left that country when I was two. Should my parents have raised me with an awareness of my “birth culture?” I am not a citizen of that country.</p>
<p>I have two adult stepdaughters, and one is adopted (back in the day when pregnant teenagers were sent away to “the home for unwed mothers”–ugh). Since I am an older mom, I had many friends who adopted children in the 1990s. My son’s preschool looked like the UN. So I’ve reflected a lot on the complexities of adoption. My SD looks nothing like any of her family. She’s Caucasian, but still I believe she felt painfully different. She also has a genetic disease, and medical details were hard to come by. (Eventually she found her biological mother, and that was only a so-so experience.) So even though there are no cultural differences, that feeling of otherness has contributed to emotional problems. My MIL once said that my H has two kids: our son and my H’s biological D by his first marriage. When my H got angry at her, she said, “Oh, but M is adopted.” Try living with that all your life! As all the stories here show, adoption is complicated, and I don’t believe that introducing Korean or Russian or Chilean traditions is a panacea. Thoughtful, but it’s so much deeper than that. </p>
<p>My son’s serious GF was adopted from Korea as an infant–grew up around few Asians. I think she had more Asian friends in college, but that’s America–at least where we live. We have not “met the parents” yet, but they sound like really nice people. I’m sure she does deal with her adopted-ness, but she has a good head and heart, and she’ll address those issues in her own way and time.</p>