Edward S. Hume, M.D., J.D.: Chinadopt
How much
Chinese Culture?
From: TLC
Sent: Sunday, March 31, 1996 1:21 PM
Subject: Musings on Maintaining cultural identity
Hi,
At 11:03 AM 3/31/96 -0500, you wrote: <SNIP>
"This may be opening a whole pandora's box. But I have
been thinking that when my daughter arrives the ideal would be to
bring her up with friends and family from many cultures (we have
a wide circle of friends from different cultures/countries and
blended families) - BUT also do things to ensure that she knows
she is of Chinese heritage and can be proud of it. <SNIP>
One couple was told that their daughter was too young to learn
Chinese. Isn't it best to learn language skills early?"
As far as acquiring language, I remember from a college linguistics class that if a child learns a second language before the age of 5, they will have a much easier time learning languages later in life. After 5, the language synapses in the brain are "set" and it is harder to learn new languages and become truly fluent in them. I think someone on this list said something about the synapses being set by 2 but I remember 5 as the age from my class. Granted college was a loooong time ago and I'm sure there are others who know a lot more than my one class taught me. Depending on the age of the child you adopt you may automatically be giving her the language skills just by teaching her english. But to answer your question, yes, it is best to learn languages early if you really want to be fluent. I can attest to this personally, I lived in Denmark from infancy to about 5 and absorbed the language from playmates and babysitters and I have always had an easy time learning new languages (and forgetting them with lack of use). My brother was born in Denmark, but we returned to the States before he was talking and he has always had a very hard time with languages.
I'm still sitting on the fence with regards to the cultural issue. I agree with wanting my child to be proud of her Chinese heritage but I question the value of expending a lot of effort to maintain her heritage. If I get her a Chinese care-taker and make a special effort to keep her in touch with her Chinese roots, won't this make her feel different from her playmates who probably won't all be Chinese? America is a "melting pot" of cultures and won't emphasizing her "Chineseness" within my mongrel family make her stand out even more than she already will? My heritage is mostly Irish and Native American but having lived in Europe for quite a bit as a child, we adopted some Danish and German culture also. My current plan is to maintain touch with the rather large FCC community here in the Dallas area and just add celebrating some of the Chinese holidays to the others (like St Patrick's day) that I already celebrate. When she is older, if she wants to learn about China, I will readily encourage her but I don't plan to spend a lot of effort learning Chinese or buying a lot of Chinese children's books to read to her, at least not any more than any other kind of children's books. I don't know where the line is drawn between keeping her in touch with her native heritage and over-emphasizing it to the point of making her feel "different". I know that opinions vary widely on this issue and welcome comments - but not flames :-).
I have a friend who is Korean, adopted as an infant into an American family who did not maintain her Korean culture and she says she never felt anything missing - she is just American with a Korean face. She does admit that most of her "best" friends have been oriental but some of that may be due to growing up in a small Alabama town with an almost non-existent oriental segment. Also times have changed over the last 20-30 years and the oriental segment of America has expanded much more into the mainstream. I have read a fair amount on this subject but am far from being an expert. I understand that the current 'politically correct' stance on foreign adoption is to raise them almost as if they were still in their birth country (or that's the feeling I get from all the emphasis on maintaining their native culture) but I may be misunderstanding what I'm reading. But I wonder if we are not doing them a mis-service by emphasizing the "Chinese" and not the "American". I believe that one of the problems in America today is all the emphasis on maintaining "native culture" and not just being American. I think that if everyone saw themselves as American and not "Irish-American", "Chinese-American", "Afro-American", "Mexican-American" etc a lot of the problems we see in society today would be reduced. We seem to be placing too much emphasis on people's differences and not the similarities.
This has gotten too much into my philosophy of life and I apologize to any I may have offended, that was not my intent. Sorry if I have bored you with my Sunday morning philosophizing, but I have thought about this a lot recently and I just don't know.....
Terri
tculp@ix.netcom.com
in Dallas
TLC <tculp@ix.netcom.com>
From: PATGORM@oitvms.oit.umass.edu
Sent: Monday, April 01, 1996 5:46 AM
Subject: Re: Maintaining cultural identity
The way I look at it, helping my daughters become familiar with Mandarin at an early age is giving them the option to choose, later, how involved they want to be in Chinese culture. To decide during these early years to not use the magic of the young child's language learning abilities, and to close the door on early language acquisition, is a loss of this once in a life time opportunity.
When they are 3, 4, 5 - they don't feel different because they have a sitter speaking Chinese to them, or because they listen to Chinese music tapes, or go to a class of other tykes and play games in Chinese. They just accept it as how things are in their house.
Since I believe language is the primary connection to a culture, and since I want them to have the choice to be connected to their culture in whatever way feels right at different times in their lives, then I figure it makes sense to take advantage of these early years and fill their brains with Mandarin.
I have no fantasy that I am reproducing in anyway their "culture". I just make efforts to incorporate what I can about Chinese culture into the every day stuff that surrounds them so it is as normal as apple pie and Christmas, not some strange exotica. Again, this is in the service of them being able to make their own choices as they grow up.
Why have them struggle, when they are older, like I do over learning every word when now the language just flies into their head and sticks like magic? To them, it is all a game, part of the fun of being alive and talking and playing with sound and communication.
I expect at some age they will let me know that they are not interested - that it is more important to fit in and be like everyone else (thought in our diverse college town, everyone else is also different). That will be fine with me, I'll take my cues. But by that time, I hope they have enough Chinese that losing it and regaining it will always be their option. Embracing their Chineseness or distancing themselves from it will also be their option. Perhaps a good analogy is growing up in some strong ethnic or religious household, and then having the option, later in life, to celebrate it and honor it, speak the language and celebrate its holidays, or put it on the shelf as not important. I just want them to have that choice.
Patricia
PATGORM@oitvms.oit.umass.edu
From: Mary Petertyl
Sent: Monday, April 08, 1996 3:13 PM
Subject: How Much Culture?
Hello all,
How Much Culture?
Surely it is important for our children to know their Chinese heritage, but we need to be careful not to confuse "heritage" with "culture." Your racial heritage (whether you're Asian or Caucasian or African American) determines your external appearance. Your culture, on the other hand, is given to you by your people/family. My worry is that if we spend too much energy on exposing our daughters to "things Chinese" and forget "things of our own families" (in my case, Polish and Maltese ... along with French, German, and Jewish) that our daughters could come to feel like outsiders because we are emphasizing what is physically different about them, rather than what brings us all together as a family. Your culture is not the same thing as your race. "Culture" comprises the customs and values that your family imparts to you through day-to-day living, traditional holiday celebrations, etc., and it is the glue that binds families/people together. Further, the immigrant European culture that I have learned is a far cry from the actual cultural experience of people living in say Poland or Malta. My trip to Italy a few years back was an eye-opener. Italians from Italy are *very* different than Italians from Brooklyn, Chicago or suburban Detroit. When our families left Europe in the early part of this century, they continued to grow and change in ways different from the people back home. (If you really want to get technical, they were probably inherently a different kind of people because they felt compelled to immigrate in the first place.)
So as far as our daughters, I think that we are setting ourselves up for failure if we think force-feeding Chinese culture and language will somehow make them feel more whole or connected. They will be American Chinese (accent on the American). They will not be like older immigrant Chinese who have one foot in China and one in America. Nor will they be like ABC (American Born Chinese), who often live a "double-life," if you will, blending into the American culture with ease, but still immersed in authentic Chinese culture from their China-born parents. Our daughters will be more like the children of ABC: Chinese face, American heart. While I do think a sense of heritage is important, our daughters' sense of identity won't come from constantly looking back to China, it will come from making them feel at home in our homes, like they *belong* there because they are our daughters.
Take care,
Mary
Mary Petertyl <70742.2560@compuserve.com>