Must we pass language and culture onto our kids?
CVK
I’m on a parenting roll today. 
I just read this great post on Kimchi Mamas, a blog written by a group of Korean and married-to-Korean mothers. One of the contributors, Twizzle, was telling her coworker about the blog, and he sheepishly asked her, “Why Korean culture? You don’t speak Korean. You’ve only been there once. I don’t understand the interest.” This question prompted a bit of soul-searching on behalf of Twizzle. I definitely recommend reading the entire post, in which she shares her family history. But here’s an excerpt:
I am interested in Korean culture because it is my history, it’s part of who I am, and, most of all, it is part of what my daughter is. I want Honeybee to know about her roots. Because I, like my mother, married a white guy, (though not an American – he’s Canadian), my daughter is one-quarter Korean. She’s even more removed than I from the source culture, but in many ways, she has already been exposed to more than I ever had been until recently.
We celebrated Honeybee’s “Baek-il” at 100 days and had one rockin’ ass “Dol” celebration for her one year anniversary. She attends a daycare run by a Korean-born woman (of my mom’s generation) and her half-Korean/half-African-American daughter, and hears the language spoken frequently. She calls her grandmother (my mother) “Halmonie.” She loves mandu. I will continue to expose Honeybee to things and people Korean and will foster in her a profound appreciation for her roots from my side of the family. In the process, I will discover my own roots—which I missed out on for most of my life—until having had a child of my own.
I think this post poses a really interesting question. I’ve always said that I would be one of those annoying moms who would send my kid to Chinese school on the weekends, because it’s important to me that my children learn to speak Chinese. When I told my sister this, she was surprised. While both of us do speak Cantonese quite fluently (though our skills get rustier each year we live in the U.S. and we both have a bad ”gwai mui” accent), she feels no particular need to pass the language or culture onto her future kids. In her view, she and I already represent a somewhat “diluted” version of Chineseness (not racially diluted, but culturally speaking) and she’s surprised that I would care that much about preserving a strong sense of Chineseness in my children.
I think this issue of whether or not to make a strong effort in passing language and culture (however you define that) onto your children is central to parenting, but may be of particular interest and relevance to parents who are themselves mixed. I’d be curious to hear our readers’ thoughts on this issue…
Lyonside wrote:
My spouse and I are planning to start a family soon (like by 2007- eek!). He’s Puerto Rican, but speaks no Spanish (his parents cried “Assimilate” on one hand but then used Spanish to talk privately around the kids). I’m white/black mixed, and ethnically my family has held onto the Irish/German and Bermudan/African-American the strongest (not much to say about the French and English).
The husband WANTS our kids to know Spanish, to identify with their PR side (the chance he really didn’t have), but I’ve warned him that w/out at least one parent being fluent, the kids won’t be fluent either. To get around that, we plan on adding bilingual books and songs to the basic repertoire (yes, I’m already collecting), to incorporating Spanish and English to early reading excercises, and (probably most importantly) enlisting his mom to speak conversational Spanish to our kids, and to brush up on my own Spanish so I know what my MIL is saying about me ;P.
That said, I know that the best way to force a kid away from something is to push too hard, so I aim to make the “cultural” stuff as fun and natural as possible. I’m also not limiting books, music, etc. to OUR cultures - I want our kids to see diversity of all types in what we promote, what we read, what they see… I want them to be exposed to every age-appropriate thing. I want them to see themselves as individual but not unique, as normal, as part of a tapestry larger than themselves. I dont’ want them to feel isolated, or, as my mother and I dubbed it, “Only One Syndrome” (the state of being, with few exceptions, the only XXXX in the room.) I guess what’s more important to me is to provide the tools so that our kids can develop and explore their own identity, and not be completely manipulated/dominated by what society will try to tell them.
Posted 04 May 2006 at 10:33 am ¶
Anonymous wrote:
It’s an interesting point. If someone who was raised in the U.S. has a French/German/Hungarian/any other European parent, would anyone expect that person to be strongly connected to that heritage and/or speak the language? I doubt it. While a strong cultural connection is a positive thing, it seems that the whole idea of “getting in touch with your culture” is an idea saddled on people of color. Is it another way of marginalizing? Discuss…
Posted 04 May 2006 at 4:00 pm ¶
Daniel wrote:
This is a good issue to discuss and I’m pretty sure that there will never be one solution that will fit all situations. As the father of three children, one of whom is already 18, I can say that no matter what issues I have stressed or not stressed, all of my children are so much like me that it is a bit scary. There’s nothing like having a discussion with your angry teenager, discovering that the most annoying part of the conversation is that she is employing the same speech patterns and logic that you employed at the same age. How did she do that? I never taught her to talk like that! Oops! I guess I did.
I think that if you have a strong connection to a particular culture, language or tradition it will come naturally to you to relay this to your child. In Carmen’s case, for example, since she is already fluent in Cantonese, it should come naturally to her to speak in that language throughout her child’s life in addition to English. (Assuming she has children in the future- Forgive me Carmen didn’t mean to make plans for you!) Additionally, I would imagine that she may discover several things about her culture that her child will reflect back in a natural way. We often don’t realize how certain habits and traits that we have are perceived by others until we see our own children acting out in a like manner. There are those enlightening moments as a parent where we discover much about ourselves from our kids. It is always good to teach our children about the things we know and have experienced. It is also just as valuable to learn things along with them. The most important goal is to raise healthy children who are prepared to make their own way in the world. We do need to set behavioral guidelines for our children and give them some perspective. Giving them unconditional love, however, is the most important lesson we can ever teach.
Posted 04 May 2006 at 5:19 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Anonymous: Culture is not limited to language. Culture can include any customs, festivals, religious practices, foods, etc. that are a part of a cultural identity.
So, one could be marginalized if English is a second language and/or the child is not in an environment with an extended English vocabulary. Of course, there are a lot of English-only households where books are rare items, libraries foreign embassies, and the vocabulary is stunted at best. I’ll take a fluently bi-lingual kid who reads over a monosyllabic monolingual kid who watches 8 hrs of Sponge Bob (*shudder* my nephews-in-law*) any day.
Posted 04 May 2006 at 5:24 pm ¶
Space Nakji wrote:
I don’t have kids myself, but my siblings and other mixed Koreans I know do. One comment I’ve heard from them regarding whether and how much they would expose their kids to Korean culture and language was that 1) they didn’t really get to make those choices for themselves growing up, and if they had had a choice, they probably would have chosen to get more exposure, esp. to the language, so they wanted to provide that for their own kids; and 2) the experience of becoming parents and having a family made them rethink the ideas of family, culture, and roots differently than they had as individuals, i.e. it wasn’t just about satisfying their own individual identity issues but about making sure their children would know who their grandparents and great-grandparents were. Also, more practically, 3) they realized that their kids were going to ask questions about their cultural heritage, and they wanted to be prepared to answer them.
Posted 05 May 2006 at 12:26 am ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Lyonside, in my post I intended “connected to the heritage” to encompass all of those things you mention. And yes, I think every normal parent wants their kid to be smart and articulate, but my point is, that in general, people of color and mixed folks always have that “getting in touch with one’s culture” thing hanging over our heads. I’ve had several experiences in the past where I’ve felt people were testing me (one girl actually asked me if I “knew the colors of my flag” when I told her I was mixed ???) Another time, a stranger (who happened to be a middle-aged Caucasian woman) struck up a conversation with me in a restaurant–when I mentioned that I was taking a trip to China, she said, “Good. You SHOULD get in touch with your culture.” (uumm, don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, lady.)
Needless to say, those people were just being wildly inappropriate and obnoxious. I sure as heck know that a fully Caucasian person raised in the States would never have received comments like those…
Posted 05 May 2006 at 9:05 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Anonymous: I see where you’re coming from now - your post mentioned language first and then culture, so I’d assumed you meant the same thing.
I agree, the questioners in your example were intrusive and obnoxious. If someone tells me they’re travelling to an Asian country (regardless of appearance), I’d ask if they were traveling there to visit people (family, friends) or on vacation - not to get “in touch” with a culture. God knows noone can really do that any country if you’re only there briefly.
I guess I just know too many people who know people who live or work somewhere on the continent. But for some people, everybody they know lives within the same square mile, and everything outside the nation is “foreign.” (le sigh)
It seems that most European-Americans are assumed, by appearance, to have been here for decades if not centuries, unless an accent or something else seems “foreign” pings with the observer. Just like all African-Americans are assumed to be descendents of southern slaves. I blame the swiss-cheese history we all learn in school.
As for the flag-girl comment, I would have been like, “Yeah, Red-White-and Blue” (or whatever nationality flag you’re born/raised under). She sounds like a true twit.
Posted 05 May 2006 at 10:02 am ¶
TrollWatcher wrote:
I thought Lyonside already had kids??
With blue eyes if I remember correctly…??
Posted 09 May 2006 at 6:35 am ¶
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