Woe is me
Oct 10, 2006 The Story of My Life
I’m feeling sorry for myself because fall is my favorite season and I can’t take walks to enjoy the leaves or take the kids to pick apples or meet the other unschoolers at the pumpkin patch today. Damn broken toe.
My writing group was such a godsend last night. I’m still struggling with what to do (art vs. commerce) but I think they’re helping me ferret it out. Leslie especially has this way of furrowing her brow that reminds me a lot of my favorite therapist, Barbara. (It’s a furrow that says, “I am concerned. I care.”)
It’s only 9:30am and already I’ve yelled at the kids (as in projecting to the backrow) but Noah said he’d take Madison outside and leave me to drink my coffee in peace. I’m watching them from the kitchen table and they’re playing some kind of crash and fall game with her trike and his scooter. I’m pretty sure I should put a stop to it but then again they’re having a pretty good time.
Possibly related posts
I like this post a lot
Oct 9, 2006 Adoption
Knocked Up…Knocked Down: The question of adoption and race
You know, it’s not necessarily a sign of moral superiority to be “willing” to adopt transracially or transculturally. In fact, I’d say sometimes it’s a sign of moral superiority not to be.
(I’ll add here that I was really naive at the front of all this. Not that I would do anything differently, just that I was pretty naive.)
Possibly related posts
All access (subtitled: Explode the Code)
American Family » Love is sometimes a Battlefield.
American Family takes the time to expand on her education post and it’s worth checking out. See, if I were to debate A about our differing educational values and only came at it from a “But Alfie Kohn says…” I’d be missing his point. Yes, you can concentrate the discussion down to “what way works best?” but at a certain point A might say, “But I’m Chinese.” And I might respond with, “And I’m not.” And then we’d be at a cultural impasse. My choice to reject academic pressure has a different resonance for me than it does for Chinese A.
You know how Jane Brown infamously said that internationally adoptive parents are a fifth best choice? (And I’ll assume that domestic transcultural adoptive parents are a fourth best choice.)
The first, she believes, is for
children to remain with their birthparents; second-best is for a child to be
adopted by, or remain with, a member of the extended family; third-best is to
be raised by people of the same race in the country of one’s birth, and
fourth-best is to be raised by members of the same race outside the country of
one’s birth.
(quoted from The Pain of Adoption)
What she’s talking about are the levels of adoption loss — the loss of a biological connection and then the loss of a cultural connection. If we adopt transracially/transculturally, our children become biracial/bicultural regardless of their biological roots. Both Twice the Rice and A Birth Project wrote about this recently (click the links). (American Family also just wrote about this in her infamous and hilarious Emergency Code Whitey entry.)
My goal isn’t to do “as good a job” at nurturing Madison’s black self as a black parent could because that would be an impossible goal. I can’t understand the nuances of black culture the way I could if I had grown up there. I can read about them, I can visit them (as an observer, as a tourist) but I can’t live them. Like American Family respecting A’s core values about education as a cultural issue even if philosophically they are not hers. When they discuss/debate what to do for M (their daughter), her acknowledgment that this is a cultural divide will benefit the both of them because it explains what’s at the root of his argument and it also explains why it’s not at the root of hers.
It’s kind of the same thing when people say that doing a white child’s hair is as difficult or as important as doing a black child’s hair. No, it isn’t. Even if the two children have the exact same hair texture, if one child has pink skin and one has brown, the state of their hair has different cultural connotations. There’s an extra layer to the discussion. We can exchange hair tips, talk conditioner, and trade beads and baubles but when we send our kids out into the world, they bear a different weight in their curls.
There are a lot of challenges in being a transcultural parent (and I include bio parents who are transculturally parenting — especially if they do not have a co-parent who reps the culture of the child) and for me, one is trying to make sense of when my values are more or less important than the values of the child’s birth culture. So between my two kids, I have very different discussions in my head. Like I never ever ever considered sending Noah to a Christian preschool or an academically-oriented preschool but I would send Madison to a Christian, academically-oriented preschool provided that she wasn’t a minority child there. (I’m still holding out for preschool because I haven’t found one yet where she won’t be a minority child. I’ve found daycares but not preschools — except for one that’s about 45 minutes away. Ack.)
The way I figure it, Madison doesn’t just need African American peers and role models, she also needs an introduction to African American culture in an intimate, care-giving way. This includes an understanding of the importance of Christianity as a cultural value and also an understanding of the expectations that black adults have for black children. I know that we’re less strict than is the wide cultural expectation for black children, (which is to say that I’m not turning my generalization into assumptions about individuals) and in a preschool where she is being taught by black teachers, she’s going to get that. That’s about giving her access, which gives her choice.
When I think about a strict, less play-based preschool and the potential “harm” of that, I have to weight that against the potential benefits for each of my kids. For Noah, there isn’t a whole lot of benefit in going against our family values about preschool but for Madison, there is. It’s the same thing as parenting for temperment (making the decision to, say, go to Boston and leave the toddler when I’d never have left her brother) — different kids need different things.
What we fifth and fourth best choice parents have to do is give our kids access to choice. That doesn’t mean that every white parent with a Chinese child has to sign said child up for math camp or that every white parent of an African American child has to send that child to mostly black preschool. But it does mean that considering those things is part of what we need to do as we think about how to give our kids access. I mean, I can’t teach Madison to code-switch no matter how many Langston Hughes books, Fugees CDs or black baby dolls are in our house. Hopefully preschool will be part of giving her access to her options. Likewise, math camp and Chinese school may offer opportunity M and her sibling-to-be.
Possibly related posts
I did it!!
Oct 9, 2006 The Story of My Life
I fixed it! Now I have to clean it up and make sure it’s all working.
I can’t believe I finally figured it out! Look how high I am! Ha!
Possibly related posts
I need to get me some work
Oct 8, 2006 Book work
I spent yesterday coding for my project (the money-making scheme) because I want to get moving but the program wouldn’t work. Hours I spent! Hours! And I finally gave in and went to the help desk (I couldn’t find help on the forums) figuring I’d wake up to an answer. You know what the answer is? They can’t figure it out either. Plus side: Proves I’m not an idiot. Minus side: Still doesn’t work.
So I guess I’ll need to start from scratch and reinstall. I hate starting from scratch.
Other work-ish news. I’ve absolutely positively ceased work on my book that wasn’t. Why? Because I had all summer to do it and I didn’t so I must not want to write it. At all. Plus I don’t have the creds to get paid enough to make it worth it to me to write it. I still don’t know what kind of career I want to have but I’m getting an idea and I need to do more time in the trenches writing shorter serious nonfiction. Problem is, you know, money. I need to make it.
Which is why I’m going back to that coding. Argh.
