Growing up Canadian While Living Abroad by Geraldine Mac Donald-Moran

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Bi-Cultural Parenting: Two Culture Homes

Whether living in Canada or living abroad, the unison of partners from dissimilar cultural backgrounds poses a challenge to raising children in a bi-cultural home environment. More frequently we are seeing the combination of traditions, ethnicities and customs in this global village: It is no longer taboo for one to unite with another of different race or background as our societies become less conservative and our communities a unique and plentiful blend of ideologies.

But family traditions are difficult to alter, especially when personally important; and since parents are generally inclined to pass on inherited customs to their offspring, there may be conflict of interest with their partner's beliefs or customs.

Christmas for example, and its relationship to all things Christian, is one particular season of celebration when traditions may clash. These festive times, in general, can be the most obvious periods of conflict for some international families.

While the daily, intimate show of beliefs and habits can be temporarily dwarfed in comparison to the mighty display of tradition during seasonal episodes in our culture; it is the familiar practice of customs at home, that create a balance between how traditions were cultivated in our lives, what we wish to share with our children, and what our children will pass on to future generations.

You don't necessarily have to be from different cultural backgrounds to experience discord and so fostering an agreeable parenting atmosphere is truly a universal, magnanimous challenge.

In our experience, here are a few important aspects to consider when raising children in your 'bi-cultural' home. Some are highly specific to the particular cultures and persons involved (in our circumstance we have matriarchal Canadian and patriarchal Mexican backgrounds to consider). What are your backgrounds to consider?

Do you celebrate Religious festivities and what are your personal views about this topic? How do you integrate your spiritual belief systems? What is expected of you as a parent, according to your gender, at home or in society?

What language will you speak? What foods will you place on your family table? What conduct is considered polite, impolite or offensive in your cultures? What sort of behavior will be expected of your children individually, in groups, and according to their gender? How do expect them to dress? What sports would you encourage them to play, if any? Will they share the table with you or is it customary for children to be segregated to another room and be attended to by hired help?

What family celebrations can you revise or live without? How do you combine inherent attitudes from one culture that stray far from the norm in the other?

If you have singular ideas about the importance of child rearing, how can you merge those ideas with those of your life partner? How do you prevent yourself from spontaneous judgment about the ways in which your partner wishes to raise his or her children? Can you co-operate, no matter which society you choose or are circumstantially required to live in?

The process of falling in love is often not conducive towards the resolution of issues such as these: Many of us have discovered in the years succeeding the wedding, or unification, that the challenges are demanding but the rewards great.

Children, who are raised in bi-cultural home environments, unequivocally, have advantages that provide them with broad-spectrum, life experiences. They are often presented with the advantage of dual language learning; unique family customs, interesting and varied traditions, and the exposure to bi-cultural stimuli that goes beyond common, no matter where they live.

Unfortunately, there may also be high parental expectations, when inevitably each parent anticipates their children to act, think or behave in socially acceptable ways: ways that they learned as children in their respective societies.

If we, as parents in bi-cultural homes, can be open and accepting by the blending of our two cultures into a nuclear unit, we can offer our children the better of two worlds; the results of which, can be harmonious for the family at home and the greater community beyond.

The implications of accepting our partner's set of individual beliefs, values, customs or traditions are overwhelming at times (perhaps depending on the amount of differences we perceive or encounter between the two backgrounds).

Sharing ideas and beliefs may not be enough but compromising on them is a real solution. Plan for the dissolution of individual or historical traditions and make room for the combination of new experiences. Bring Religious festivities together and embrace the belief systems that formulate each. Celebrate multi-cultural holidays and be open to other, foreign ways. Keep a sense of humour yet maintain a sense of cultural self- identity in order to pass on your heritage to your children, in what is to become their compound way of life.

It is a wonderful day when the languages, traditions and customs you treasure, flower in the mouths and hearts of the children you cherish but the cumulative effect of a harmonious, bi-cultural home environment is even more spectacular on a day to day basis. Culture, after all, is to be shared and enjoyed in celebration!

© Geraldine Mac Donald-Moran


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