having a baby of a different race... preparing the older sibling(and myself)

[hollynichole1]

I am a super white girl. I look very Caucasian. have a Four year old son (who will be 5 by the time the new baby comes). He is from a previous marriage and is also white(mostly Irish)... also very Caucasian looking: fair skinned, blue eyed, light brown hair.  my partner at this time is Half Japanese and we are expecting a baby girl in Jan. Seeing my bf's nieces and nephews I'm expecting this baby to be very Japanese looking, even tho she'll only be a quarter Japanese. 

how, or should i even, prepare my son for the fact that his new little sister isn't going to look like him... He has "cousins" on my partner's side that he knows are not white(they are 1/2Mexican, 1/4 white and 1/4 Japanese... but look very much Japanese)  and he identifies them as his family. he calls my partner's mom (full Japanese) grandma. i don't think he really will have a problem with it, but I'm not sure really. 

I'm also worried about how he may react to other people's reactions of the kids being different races. he is very protective and if someone doubts they are siblings he will probably get very offended. 

how can i help them as they grow to deal with the public? are there any other things i should be concerned about or looking for?

also any tips on how to prepare myself for having a child that may look so very different from me? my son looks exactly like a blue eyed light haired version of me, but I'm not so sure about this one. we already get a lot of looks as a family with my bf being Japanese but I'm not sure how i'll handle the stares or comments when it's me and my children alone. 

[IsaFrench]

just to say, my son has a class mate whose father is asian looking (didn't ask but I think Vietnamese) and the mom is French, very ordinaryly french looking ... and that boy does NOT look AT ALL like it is his father (I got nosey and asked another mom whom I know, who knows them a bit more, he is his son, he is NOT a son of hers by a previous relationship ) he doesn't have a single asian feature .... whereas both little brother are a cute mix of both races ....

I don't know how the odds are distributed but be prepared that ... it might not be what you expect ....

+ in the region of France bordering Germany, there are a lot of  north african population that settled down and some of married local girls => depending on the make up of the ancestry of the wife, sometimes the blond hair/blue eyed type does overtake the "usual" result of children with rather brown features ... it all depends on the gene lottery ....

[Imakcerka]

My friends son is Korean/Caucasian, when he was born you could tell. Now you can't. She's sad about it since she wanted him to have her asian qualities. I really think you just won't know. And hopefully it won't even matter.

[beautifulnm]

prepare yourself? It's your child regardless of what ethnicity is apparent. I don't understand what you could possibly mean about preparing yourself and your other children, all humans look minutely different even if they're of both the same parents..

[bluedaisy]

I probably wouldn't make a big deal about it until you see what the baby looks like...as the pp have said, your baby might be very different than what you expect, and my biracial daughter looks SO different now than she did when she was born. 

In terms of your son, I would just be matter of fact about it - that the baby's dad is part Japanese and so the baby has some of his features, just like he has some of his dad's features. 

My daughter doesn't look like me at all - she looks a LOT like my husband.  It doesn't bother me - I have to admit though it was kind of odd when she was born - she looked chinese (my DH is African) and had a very yellow skin tone and straight black hair - TOTALLY different than what I had pictured.  If I hadn't seen her come out of my body I wouldn't have believed she was my child!!  Her looks have changed and she now looks more "biracial" like what I expected - I think she is beautiful and amazing and I can see other parts of myself reflected in her even though she doesnt look anything like me.  Even when you have two people of the same race, sometimes their child looks only like one of them and not the other

[saralm]

I am European American and my husband is Chinese American.  Before we had our daughter who is 2 now I spent quite a bit of time thinking about race and what it means, especially in our family. 

In the end I came to the realization that I can love my husband even though he looks quite different from me.  I can love me daughter too.  And as it turns out, looks are hard to predict...my daughter looks like a blend of us.  Try to keep in mind that even if your child doesn't have your physical features, he or she is still your child.  They will have other less visible features that come from you. 

I found that few people ask me about my daughter's race and no one thinks that she isn't my daughter.  I get the occasional question about what race she is but it is rare. 

[Mulvah]

Originally Posted by beautifulnm 

prepare yourself? It's your child regardless of what ethnicity is apparent. I don't understand what you could possibly mean about preparing yourself and your other children, all humans look minutely different even if they're of both the same parents..

I never post on this forum, but I have to say, I agree with this. 

Edited by Mulvah - 10/16/11 at 6:00pm