Cool Forum! Intro's?

[Joyster]

I just wanted to be the first to post. lol But this is a topic very near and dear to my heart, I thought a round of intros might get us started.

I'm Joy, I'm interracial (part black, white and native). I married a white man, we have two sons. A two year old and a 7 week old. Both boys are pretty light skinned, light hair and in my DS2's case, blue eyes, but that may change. As it stands now I'm pretty much raising two kids who don't share my skin colour and have been assumed as the nanny before *Grrrrrrrrrr*. However, I'm okay with their skin colour, and have to let them form their own identities. My father was bent on me being black and American (I was born and raised in Canada and love being a Hoser) so I know not to force the issue with my children and that chances are, they will celebrate their whole identity if not identify completely with it. I don't know if that makes sense, but I have a 7 week old so I'm sure you'll give me some latitude. *G*

We also live in Toronto, which makes being interracial and a multicultural family pretty easy, despite a few morons assuming me as the nanny, but on the other hand, if that's the worst I receive, I'm pretty lucky in the larger picture.

[aprilushka]

Hi Joyster!

A lot of people have been asking for this forum, so we're excited to see it.

I'm a white American with no Europea ethnic identity married to a Russian. I speak Russian and Russian is the language of our home. I expect our kids will identify wholly American but I want them to know and appreciate their Russian roots as well as speak the language passably. We spend a fair amount of time with DH's relatives (considering that they live over there), so hopefully we will be able to do this, for the most part. I have encountered some negativity toward our Russian as the home language policy, although generally people see why we are doing what we are doing.

[EVC]

I'm so excited for this forum!!!!!


I am American, dh and our dog :) are both Ukrainian (dh just got his 10 year green card--woo hoo!), dd was born in Armenia (but is a US citizen). Russian is our home language. We are really struggling with dh's adjustment to life in the US (we have been here 2 years now), so I hope there will some threads about that :) I'm also interested in the issue of bilingualism in children.

[purplegirl]

i am so glad this forum is here. i'll be back to post my story later!

[CharlieBrown]

checking in. I am American and DH is from Turkey. He has been here for 20 years.

[MetasMom]

Also checking in. I'm a bilingual US-German dual citizen and passed this on to my daughter. My husband is German and we live in the U.S. We're raising Meta bilingual using the OPOL method. Looking forward to hearing from you others!

[mom2tatum]

whoops i posted a new thread out of excitement, without realizing I missed this first thread for intro's...duh. anyway, I will try to add my intro here as well after my thread pops up...

[expecting-joy]

:lurk:

We are doing a less-conventional non-immersion language thing. We have books and music in our four home languages, playdates in each, and dd has started taking classes in two (besides the dominant). We don't have a set time yet for when to speak each language, except when other native speakers of that language are visiting.

[puddingpop]

I'm so excited to see this forum! I'm Ukrainian/French Canadian, and DH identifies as just plain Canadian (I think his family has been here more than 150 years). Our son is Korean, adopted from South Korea in 2006. He's 2-1/2 years old now and we hope to adopt again from South Korea next year or the year after.

[deethai]

Great, a few new things too google, never heard about "OPOL method" or "non-immersion".

I think it's a great chance for a child to be able to learn several languages automatically at home, saves a lot of the effort later. I speak German and English and my boyfriend only Thai. I don't speak Thai very well so we don't really have a common language. We live in Thailand.

English is reasonably easy to learn for a child, but German is very hard to ever learn properly by studying it, so my thought would be that I should speak German to the child and my boyfriend Thai.

Just then we never understand what the other one is talking about to the kid ...

And how to avoid that it would pick up my bad Thai, after all I have to talk to my boyfriend somehow ...

I will try to come up with a thread about parents who don't speak a common language, so we don't have to mess around in the introduction thread. These concerns are just part of my introduction post :)

[Paddington]

Wow. :love

I'm Ange and I am Black American. Married for just shy of 8 years to my dh who is half korean/half white. We have 2 boys. :loveeyes: The first born looks mixed with white features and the second born looks white with black features. :lol Interracial genes rock. :wink

[Paddington]

Oh Purplegirl! I have locks too! :thumb

[Bunnybee]

Hello all! I'm white American (1/2 French Canadian and half English traceable to Mayflower, lol). DH is black Jamaican, recently became American citizen! We've been together 8.5 years and have a daughter who is 22 months and a son who is almost 7 months. I am SO excited this forum is here! One topic I'd like to discuss here is food!

[EdnaMarie]

Hi all. I am trying to stay relatively anonymous and am just popping in to say "hi".

[mamefati28]

I got a little to excited and posted a new thread with an intro...haha
So, DH is West African (Senegal!!!) and I am American.
DH speaks wolof, french, and a little english..I speak English and a little wolof
He is darker than dark and I am whiter than white!
We have a BEAUTIFUL 18 month old son who I hope to solidly root in 100% pure love....
I am so happy to connect with all of you!:love
I feel as though this forum should have been here originally, with all the blessings and hardships multicultural families face...
Cant wait to share and learn with all of you!

[Bad Mama Jama]

Hello all. I am a single mama to a wonderful little girl and I am happy to be your resident moderator. :love Welcome to all the families here!

[nevaehsmommy]

HI.I am a single mommy. My daughter is 20 months. I am am American with a mix of other backgrounds, I call myself the mutt. My daughter is dark skinned. The only problems I have had so far are other dark skinned older women making remarks about me nursing her. She is however the only dark skinned child in our SMALL town. The rest of everyone else is amish, since I dont speak german I am not sure what they say.

I love her to pieces and thank G-d every day that she is mine and I have the privalage to raise her.

I would like to rack your guys brains on what to do with her hair, and how to incorporate her heritage with out being over bearing.

[nznavo]

We're not a multi-racial family but have multi-cultural experiences. We've been expats in a number of places for about 10 years and have lived/had extended stays in 3 countries since our son (3) was born. I guess he's the multi-cultural one - I'll be curious to see how he identifies as he gets older.

[wallabisfarm]

Yay to the new forum! I am Sara, a white Californian, married to Japanese dh for five years. We live in Japan now, and are expecting to meet our adopted-child-to-be soon. He or she will probably be two to three when we meet, and has almost certainly got at least one Japanese first parent, perhaps two. We are on the edge of exciting things! Our present cultural issue - beds and how to fit the family in to them.
Nice to meet you all!

[ewe+lamb]

Don't you just love MDC - so I'm all Scottish, dh is all Algerian, we have two kids who look more like me than dh which I totally didn't expect!!! We speak English and French and I'm trying to get dh to speak Arabic and Berber with them but it's not easy giventhe political climate at the moment. We've been together for 16 years - 13 years married next month, we met in Italy (Venice), lived in Edinburgh, Scotland and now in Paris. I'm highly involved with LLL and love all NFL stuff. great to meet you all - I'm so excited about this forum:rocks

[EdnaMarie]

Welcome, wallabisfarm, to MDC and to this sub-forum.

[kerilynn]

Hello all!!! I am Keri ~ I am white, german and french-canadian
My DH is black, born and raised in Illinois, and doesn't know much about his ancestors, except that his grandmother was part Indian.

Our son looks white with black features, and has crazy curly hair. It is silky, not textured, but puffs like an afro if combed or brushed.

My stepdad and therefore my entire stepfamily are also black, so being white, I am actually the minority at our family reunions :)

[The4OfUs]

I don't happen to be part of a multicultural family, but am part of a multicultural circle of friends IRL from my college years, all of whom are still just like family to me. So I'm kind of crashing this thread, but wanted to say that I'm SO glad that this forum has happened! Hope you don't mind me lurking and learning from time to time. :love

[LaffNowCryLater]

Hi everyone!!

Well, I am white (Irish on my mom's side, "French Canadian," Irish-Scots, Native American on my dad's side) and Dh is African-American (I'm sure there was miscenegation in there though).

My 4 and 5 year olds also are black, german, and Native Amercan from their dad's side (my EXSO).

I am due with #3 in May!!

[mama2rey]

I am really excited about this forum. I am Colombian with German Jewish grandparents. My DP is U.S. born with her parents being from Mexico. We have a son who is 7 weeks old. We both speak Spanish and plan on teaching D.S. Spanish. Thankfully his DP's parents only speak Spanish-we also found a babysitter who is caring for him 20 hours a week who also only speaks Spanish.

So far we speak a mixture of both English and Spanish to D.S. - we are trying to figure out a good method of teaching him Spanish.

[Bad Mama Jama]

HI.I am a single mommy. My daughter is 20 months. I am am American with a mix of other backgrounds, I call myself the mutt. My daughter is dark skinned. The only problems I have had so far are other dark skinned older women making remarks about me nursing her.
I understand the nursing thing. When my dd was tiny, a horrified woman asked me was that my child that I was nursing. :duhMy dd is pretty fair and I am more of a caramel color. I politely told the lady that no, she wasn't mine and I just came to the daycare to nurse random children. She laughed awkwardly and said something to the effect of, I didn't know she was Black. Gee, she didn't tell you? :lol

My dd is a host of things, but for the most part, our family identifies itself as Black.

[mowilli3]

How exciting!!!

Hi, mamas! I'm Mo. I am the mama to two tornados, a DD who is anxiously awaiting her 3rd Bday in 2 months and a DS who is 15 MO. They are constant motion and sources of laughter. I am African American with some white and native ancestors. My DH is white mid-western English with an Irish grandmother. Our DC are as cute as buttons. They look just alike except that DD is very fair with blond hair and hazel eyes and DS is browner with brown eyes are sandy hair.

Like OP, I get the nanny confusion, too. But I don't have much time to pay attention anymore with the tornados whirling around.

Glad to meet you.

[hottmama]

I'm white, and my partner is black. We're both originally from Louisville, Kentucky, USA. My 5 yr. old is mine from a past relationship, and is also white. My 2 yr. old is biracial. We've been friends for 8 years, and have lived together for a little over 4 years now. We got married last June. :love

[j924]

What a great forum. I am white. My dh is Carribean. Our children (3dds and a ds) run the gamut in shades of skin and hair texture. I'm very excited tolearn from you mamas.

[ncas72]

I'm so excited to see this forum! I am Black American and DH is White. We have one child, DS who is 19 months today.

It's great to meet you all!

[superstella]

Hello! My dh is Greek, and I'm Greek-American. We use OPOL, dh only speaks Greek around the house, and I use English. So happy to have this forum! We live in small town America in a place that is not so accepting of outsiders ("foreigners") so it's good to have an online community to connect to at least.

[grumpybear]

Hello,
I am Filipino and DH of almost 4 years is White American.
DS is 22 months old and is definitely a mix of both me and DH. He gets more of DH as he is getting older.

Great to meet everyone!

[Pynki]

I understand the nursing thing. When my dd was tiny, a horrified woman asked me was that my child that I was nursing. :duhMy dd is pretty fair and I am more of a caramel color. I politely told the lady that no, she wasn't mine and I just came to the daycare to nurse random children. She laughed awkwardly and said something to the effect of, I didn't know she was Black. Gee, she didn't tell you? :lol

My dd is a host of things, but for the most part, our family identifies itself as Black.
:coffee:spitdrink:rotflmao:blowkiss:BRILLIANT!

[purplegirl]

I am back to properly introduce myself. I am black American. My dh is a multiracial Caribbean man. We don't have children......yet:(. I am thrilled to meet others who have multicultural families!!

[Kwynne]

Hi,

I'm a black, Caribbean rooted, Canadian birthed and raised queer gyal, partnered to a Canadian born, New Zealand rooted, prairie white girl. We have a mixed race black baby boy who is 22 months (and currently being put to sleep by his mommy - and not liking it!)

My dd is a host of things, but for the most part, our family identifies itself as Black.

For now, we identify my son as black as well.

[mamadecuatro]

I am caucasion, dh is Puerto-Rican. We have 4 blue-eyed (well, one has brown-eyes) sweeties who are learning spanish. I am fluent, too :)
It's fun to visit Puerto Rico and let them hear EVERYONE speaking spanish around them! Makes them feel, not so different!

[mamefati28]

For now, we identify my son as black as well.[/QUOTE]

I would like to expand on this issue as well...maybe start another thread?
I have so many questions about this.....
When you say for now..what do you mean?
Why do you identify him as black?
What are your thoughts about kids who are 1/2 black 1/2 white having to "pick a color to identify with?" (I am using these 2 as the example as I have seen this happen the most with these youths)
I am very concerned about my son having to "pick a color to be", everything is so black and white it seems...is there a middle ground?
Respectfully
MF

[lisac77]

Whooo! Multicultural mamas unite!

I'm Lisa, an American of European/Canadian ancestry. My DH is from Iran. We have one child, 4.5-year-old DS who is, of course, Iranian-American.

DH spoke Farsi/Turkish (he comes from a mixed area in Iran and speaks both languages) to DS for the first 18 months of his life. At that point he got a job that took him away from home too much and we have since stopped the OPOL approach.

My dad is half French Canadian, and speaks French to DS. DS will be starting French classes in the latter half of this year after he turns 5 (minimum age for the local language academy).

[sphinxie]

Paddington, love your senior title :wink

Very cool to have this forum! I'm American, DH is Bosnian or Yugoslavian. Boy have we had our ups and downs around cultural differences! Finally after nearly five years together and a year and a half of marriage, we seem to be developing our own culture :love We live in Canada.

My family is also sort of multicultural. Part of my father's family was New England francophone, and he made sure we kept that up. My mother works in classical Indian music so we grew up among Indians. DH is also an India wala, we met there in fact. Basically spelling all this out reminds me of how many languages I don't know and wish I did :p

No kids yet, we are planning to TTC in the summer. I am hoping the OPOL method (Serbo-Croatian and French) will work for us.

[rabbitmum]

Great sub-forum! :thumb

I am Norwegian, my soon-to-be husband is English. He has lived here for ten years and doesn't speak the language (he says). Each of us speak our own mother-tongue with our two year old son, and he speaks a mixture of Norwegian and English.

I'm very interested in all sorts of bi-lingual issues and considerations!

Some of you may think that Norwegian-English isn't really very multi-cultural, as we're both from Europe, neighbouring countries, both white, both brought up Christian(ish) - but you would be surprised at how many cultural differences there are between our countries, and how much of an impact they sometimes have on our family life! :)

[Hollycrand]

Hi!

I am American (of European descent, Scots-Irish, German, English, Welsh) and my husband is German-French. We also have many differences in many issues, having been raised in two different countries.
We use the OPOL method, raising our kids multi-lingual (English, French, and the German the learn from being in Germany) and multi-cultural.

[bellevuemama]

Just checking in, neat forum :)

I'm caucasian, DH is Korean. We intermix Korean and American culture pretty regularly, celebrate both sets of holidays etc. I speak Spanish and English (my mother grew up in Puerto Rico, I was raised bilingual) and he is re-learning Korean (he's lost a lot of it from lack of practice).

Glad to see everyone!
Bellevuemama

[hakeber]

Hi. I'm Rebekah. I'm an American and my husband is Scottish.

[Bad Mama Jama]

For now, we identify my son as black as well.

I would like to expand on this issue as well...maybe start another thread?
I have so many questions about this.....
When you say for now..what do you mean?
Why do you identify him as black?
What are your thoughts about kids who are 1/2 black 1/2 white having to "pick a color to identify with?" (I am using these 2 as the example as I have seen this happen the most with these youths)
I am very concerned about my son having to "pick a color to be", everything is so black and white it seems...is there a middle ground?
Respectfully
MF

Well, I cannot speak for the other poster, but for myself. My dd's biological father is what I call "of indeterminate background." We know that his mother is Italian, but his father, well no one is sure, but it is guessed that he is Black or part Black. Who knows?

Those people are not involved in our lives at all and I suppose I could incorporate a bit of the culture in, but I haven't as of yet and it is hard to do so without paying respect to all of the cultures that also created me. Black folks are a mix of things and mine range from Native American to Creole, so it is difficult to pin down one specific culture to incorporate.

It is easier to say that we are a Black family because for me, I have always acknowledged that, for me, Black means a host of influences. Is that pretty clear? Or is there a better way that I could phrase it?

[emmasmommy]

I'm Natasha. I'm Canadian and my dh is Swedish. We have lived together in Germany (where we met), Sweden (dd1 was born there) and now in Canada. We use the OPOL method for our kids to learn both languages. We are also lucky to live near a city with a Swedish community large enough to support a Swedish language school. DD1 attends the school every Saturday morning and dd2 will join her next year when she turns 3. The school has programs from preschool to high school age. Not only are the girls getting more exposure to the language from the school, but they are also making friends that speak Swedish. DD1 is already noticing that she is a bit different than her kindergarten classmates since she is the only one who speaks 2 languages, so I think having friends at Swedish school in the same situation is helpful to her. It is also helping her that a friend she made in her swim class recently moved her from Germany and is still learning English, so she doesn't feel so alone in speaking a different language anymore (we are in a very small town with relatively few people from other cultures/countries).

[Kwynne]

Black folks are a mix of things and mine range from Native American to Creole, so it is difficult to pin down one specific culture to incorporate.

It is easier to say that we are a Black family because for me, I have always acknowledged that, for me, Black means a host of influences. Is that pretty clear? Or is there a better way that I could phrase it?

Although our families are different, I think you've said it pretty well. I had gone into this in my original posting, but then read the guidelines and interpreted them as not being so cool with dialogues of this nature. I don't know. It seems a bit weird to me to create a multicultural forum and not realize that there will be different ways in which race and culture are understood, and, seeing as this is often so closely tied to racism (at least for the folks of colour) that things might get...uh.. a little heated.

But in the interests of NOT getting heated :), we ID my son (and myself) as Black for political reasons. Historically, our roots are haunted with the realities of colonialism, such that the "purity" of race becomes a farce. Thanks to the brutal realities of slavery in my history, trying to piece myself off into fractions doesn't work very easily and also resurfaces scientific racism (octoroon, quadroon, yikes!). And also I wonder, to what purposose does it serve to move away from blackness by making sure to ID the "other" parts of you? We know that many people who read as "white" are also probably part Aboriginal/indigenous/native/African/?? (as are many "Black" people) but often they don't see the need to ID as variously raced. Also, Blackness is so often vilified, it took quite radical politics to make it something positive to ID (black is beautiful - free Huey!) and that is something I want to reclaim, for myself and for my son.

Anyhow, as for my son, his donor is Ukrainian-Canadian (white), one of his moms is New Zealand/Ukrainian-Canadian and one of his moms is me, African/Caribbean-Canadian and variously raced due to a West Indian lineage. My son is shades lighter than me, but lives in a very structured society that only gives him so much room to move. For now, that means we are politically identifying him as Black (trying to use the one drop rule subversively I suppose) but know that race identifications change so quickly and so often, that the door is open for him to create whatever racial ID he wants (and gender ID, and sexual ID as well). His ID as Black is a political category as well as a racialized one. He is donor conceived and queer parented, from a family with multiple adoption histories. So his 'roots' as it were are quite complicated as it is, we will see how he puzzles them all out as he gets older.

I'm sure that sounds more complicated than it should be. Maybe a thread on this would be beneficial.

[happyhippiemama]

Hello!!

We're Crystal and Bryan, two caucasians from Iowa, and I'm preggo.

DD's biological father is Black and Mexican-American. It's tough figuring out how to insert multi-culti aspects into DD's life when both DP and I are white and our community is also ridiculously white.

[Joyster]

For now, we identify my son as black as well.

I would like to expand on this issue as well...maybe start another thread?
I have so many questions about this.....
When you say for now..what do you mean?
Why do you identify him as black?
What are your thoughts about kids who are 1/2 black 1/2 white having to "pick a color to identify with?" (I am using these 2 as the example as I have seen this happen the most with these youths)
I am very concerned about my son having to "pick a color to be", everything is so black and white it seems...is there a middle ground?
Respectfully
MF[/QUOTE]


I know growing up, I hated having to pick a race, there was a lot of pressure from my dad and my peers. I use many races nowadays depending on the crowd. However I will not ever be "fully" black or experience life as a black person would. I don't quite get the same level of discrimination. However I'm certainly not getting the same priviledges as a white person either. I think with interracial people, race can be fluid...ideally it would be the same across the board, but it's a long way off. Personally I am going to let my kids self identify based on how they're treated, with a little guidance from mum. I think there should be a space for middle ground and am fighting for it, but society isn't there yet...maybe when I'm done with it. Muahahahahaaaaa!

[Kwynne]

I should also add that our kid goes to a Francaphone daycare, and will go to French Milieu school. We speak both French and English at home, but we might start the OPOL approach. Although French is the colonizers language (ha!) I am still very invested in my baby being billingual, as his grandparents on my side speak Kweyol, a French patois from the Caribbean. I was never introduced to it, but can understand it (thanks to my French-immersion schooling) so I want him to have the option as well.

[Bruden]

Greetings fellow multi-cultural peeps!

My husband grew up in Sweden with Polish parents. Then he married me, an American and we lived in Sweden for a few years. This means we're a Polish/Swedish/English speaking family. We're having a lot of success with the OPOL method and my son currently attends a Swedish school here in Sac once a week.

I'm sure you guys can relate to how fun it is to have more holidays to celebrate and varied dishes from those countries.

[chicaalegre]

Glad this forum exists...I haven't had occasion to use it up till now but I suspect that as dd gets older it will become more and more useful.

I am a white Midwesterner (of German, English and Welsh ancestry, but with little connection to those cultures save for some family recipes) and dh is Mexican (of Indigenous and Spanish heritage). DH and I usually speak English to each other, sometimes Spanish, and we want our daughter to be fluently bilingual. We live in the US but plan at some point to live in Mexico (dh is from Michoacan, central highlands).

I speak English to dd, and dh agrees that he should speak Spanish to her, but he often forgets or just speaks English anyway. It's frustrating, because his English is far from fluent and my Spanish is far from fluent, so I really want us both to speak our native languages so she learns them correctly. I guess I'm not that worried about it, but I don't want her to be confused.

In terms of culturally mixing our families, we plan to celebrate American and Mexican traditional holidays, foods, customs, etc. I would really like to find other Latino families in our area so that dd has other Spanish-speaking friends, but dh tends to be very mistrusting of other Mexican immigrants and doesn't want us to.

We live in a cooperative community full of bilingual families from all over the world--I'm thrilled that dd will grow up (or at least spend her first few years) with friends speaking a multitude of languages and sharing different customs.

[Needle in the Hay]

Some of you may think that Norwegian-English isn't really very multi-cultural, as we're both from Europe, neighbouring countries, both white, both brought up Christian(ish) - but you would be surprised at how many cultural differences there are between our countries, and how much of an impact they sometimes have on our family life! :)

I definitely consider that multi-cultural!!

As for us, my DH is French, I have dual citizenship and our DS is French (hopefully he'll soon have dual citizenship--his parents need to get off their duffs and get it for him already!).

[kateena]

I can see there are some very interesting discussions going on here, I would love to join :)

I'm half American, half Swiss, though I've lived in Switzerland for most of my life. My husband is Rwandese, but grew up in several African countries. We're raising our daughter in Switzerland (for the moment at least, we have considered leaving in the past). Our daughter is exposed to four languages on a regular basis, and we're very curious to find out what she'll end up speaking :D

[peace_laughing]

Hi all. I am glad to see this forum. I am caucasian, comprised of Native American, Scottish, German..... DP is Hindu - Punjabi. Baby is expected to be here any day now. DP speaks Hindi/ punjabi and swahili. He is of Indian descent but was born and raised in Kenya. I definitely want DC to lean Hindi and hopefully swahili will work it's way in too.

But I am looking forward to having some place to discuss some of the potential things that life with this baby of 2 very different cultures will bring me.

[Danelle78]

Afternoon. I'm American, DH is German. We're raising Carmen with both languages. I can't believe this place finally exists.

[delfin]

hello!!!
im delfina, argentinean of european(basque/italian)roots. my partner is from england and we live in mexico with our little mexican baby. im sure he will pick up both languages at some point, not sure wich one first. i speak spanish to him, but english to my partner, many mexican friends around, so let's see.
glad to see this forum manifested!

[heyitstwins]

Thanks so very much for this forum. I need to be around this diversity.

From first appearances, my family looks like an African-American family. My husband is biracial, we are not sure exactly what heritage his mother has, and his father is African-American (probably mixed with a host of backgrounds also). My mother is a myriad of of cultures, African, Dutch, Creole, she tells us. She's a mysterious woman, I don't know much about her. My father is Ghanaian. I have a lot of respect for the fact that as a black person in America, I at least have lineage in Africa I can be sure of, and a lot of my peers, cousins, aunts, uncles, do not have the privelege of knowing this.

So this is us in a nutshell.

Peace and thanks for reading.

[aussiemum]

well. I'll be damned. It's the new multi-cultural forum.




.......................




:jumpers:





I am an american by birth, & DH is Australian. We have lived in Australia for the last 9 years.

[lovinannah]

I am a white american, and my ex is from Nigeria (although born in the states, he was raised in Nigeria). Our daughter is a beautiful combo of us both! Look forward to communicating with others as my daughter and I are not a common site. How do I instill a love of her heritage when Daddy doesn't like to talk about it and his family has been brutal to us not loving? How do I make sure she loves how beautiful she is growing up in her white surroundings? DD is loved to pieces by my entire family. My concern is others in our community. Children like to touch her hair on the playground. And when I breastfeed her some people have been shocked, saying they didn't think she was mine. DD is 2 1/2 and understands what people are saying already. She likes to talk about different skin tones (Mommy's pink, Gramma's cream, Grandpa's tan). Looking for guidance to raise DD with pride and love of self and others.

[Mosaic]

It so much fun to hear about all the diversity on MDC!

I was made in the USA - Ukranian/Irish/Russian/French Canadian/so white I'm nearly see-through. DH is a born n' raised Venezuelan, now a US citizen as well. We speak English/Spanish to each other but just Spanish to 19-month old DD, who picks and chooses which word she likes between Spanish, English, and ASL.

At this point, I nearly consider myself Latina, and I'm most interested in helping DD adore her Spanish language skills and Venezuelan heritage, though I have received a lot of push-back from my family on not emphasizing the American side enough... definitely looking to hear others' stories and advice on that in the future.

[Paddington]

Paddington, love your senior title :wink


:loveeyes: Thanks. :love

[Marylizah]

Hi!

I'm American, DH is Lebanese, we lived in France until two weeks ago when we moved to the US.

DS speaks French, English and Arabic, and we're trying to figure out how we'll maintain all three languages in the States.

So glad that this forum exists!!!!

[GinaNY]

Hi!
I'm Puerto Rican and my DH is Filipino.

Whether DS will be multilingual is definitely a concern. I need more help and will be looking into the OPOL method mentioned.

I am happy the tribe became a forum!

[pleasantstreets]

Yay! I'm American-born, of Swedish and Irish/Scottish heritage (with the requisite bit of Native thrown in through violence), and my partner is American-born half Puerto Rican/half Polish. I carried our child, conceived with PR donor sperm, so that we would get as close as possible to an accurate "mix" (surprisingly small number of PR donors - we figure it's cuz they're all good Catholic boys!)

Anyway, to look at us all we're pretty bland/white, but after learning some about whiteness/privilege/multicuralism, I want to work hard to not let our family be "whitewashed" out of our heritage. I was VERY proud of my Swedish and my Gaelic backgrounds growing up, and DP identifies strongly with PR politics and such (not so much the Polish, except for the food, but whatever), so we are going to make sure that our son gets to experience at least some of that heritage as he grows up. Also, we'll be visiting family in PR eventually (once we're sure they'll actually let us - a queer family - in the door!)

Glad to have this forum, and looking forward to the conversations here - heated or not! :)

[RainCoastMama]

I am such a dork! I've been hollering and badgering the mods for a MC forum and I didn't even know it appeared :blush

Yay!

I'm South Asian (Indian) and DH is Japanese. We both live in Canada and have 2 very adorable halfies (as we call them :lol ) They're beautiful...they look Hawaiian, although 1 child looks almost 1/2 caucasian (go figure that in the gene pool!)

Off to read and catch up!

[muttix2]

I'm biracial (half black, half white) and dh is full black. I'm learning German and speak it as much as I can to our kids, dh speaks to them in mainly English but sometimes throws in some German he's picked up from me. We also have some exposure to other languages and I'd like to get the kids stronger in Spanish but right now we're focusing on being completely bilingual in both German and English. English is definitely their stronger language, we live in the US and I'm the only one who speaks to them in German. Plus, we homeschool and that is in English so they get a lot more English. I'm ordering more German books, dvds, and audio so that I can integrate more German into our homeschooling so hopefully that'll even out the languages a bit.

[sophi4ka]

I'm a white American with no Europea ethnic identity married to a Russian. I speak Russian and Russian is the language of our home.

How did you manage to learn Russian? It is such a difficult language!!!

[mags]

Wow, I can't believe that this folder finally exists!

Anyway, I'm mags, my DH and I are a pan-asian family. I am taiwanese american, born and raised in america. My DH is korean american, born in south korea, but his family came to the US when he was in elementary school. He is pretty much americanized, but he has the advantage of having the ability to speak korean, fluent enough to get by, while speaking perfect english as well. I on the other hand can understand some mandarin and taiwanese, but I can't really speak well at all, I have a horrible american accent! :p

It may surprise many of you that although my DH and I are both asian american, we have dealt with a good deal of cultural issues regarding our parents. In many ways, it's like dealing with three cultures, korean, taiwanese and american, we often feel like we are caught in the middle. We would like to expose our children to both korean and taiwanese culture, but my DH and I struggle with this, b/c both of us have had watered down exposure to our own cultural heritage while growing up, "american." We try out best, but we presently live in an area with very little diversity, basically we ARE the diversity! So, while we can expose the kids to cultural things with books and by talking about it, it is not easy for seek out cultural activities and other asian american kids for our kids to hang out with.

[Indigo73]

Cool, well I've finally wandered over.

Lets see... DP is an all-american "white mutt" as he puts it and well I cover just about everything else. My mother was born in PR and her mother is what is often referred to as a "black" Puerto Rican. My father's mother is Penn Dutch. My father's grandfather was born in Dunoon, Scotland and my father's grandmother was Cree (Métis)

I only speak English with a smattering of Spanish, German, Gaelic & Métis (mostly swears and food related).

[ktmama]

Hi from the Aug 05 DDC, Mags!

I'm Kate, I'm American and English speaking married to a Swiss/French speaking man. We have one dd and I have one dd from a previous marriage. We practice OPOL with dd2 while dd1 learns French and dh and I speak English, but I am pushing to incorporate more French, since I've taken some classes as an adult and do know some words and phrases (and even how to conjugate some verbs!).

We live in a medium sized town, but it's a University town close to a big city, so there are plenty of French-language resources here. In fact, two of my neighbors (both SAHMs) are French-speaking, so dd2 has some exposure. Dd1 is starting middle-school next year and will begin (finally) taking French class. She's taken a few classes in early elementary (through the Alliance Francaise) and learns from my dh too.

I'm very anxious about my dd2 learning the language, at least, and my dh hanging in there with OPOL. It seems the longer he lives in the states, the more of a challenge it is for him to identify with his heritage. As he says sometimes, "I'm starting to think in English". :(

[OhDang]

Oh This forum looks awesome!!!
I am white american (french,irish,norwegian,german,enlish) basically a mutt :P. DH is spanish and indian. We are TTC #1. We get constant stares when we are out in public for some reason. It really makes me sad that some people cannot accept interracial relationships.


Dh is fluent in Spanish, and I only speak a little. I can say basic things but am trying to become fluent. We also have very different religious views which is a whole other story but somehow everything works out :love

I really look forward to being apart of this forum!

[HidaShara]

Hi everyone! I was just redirected here from the Interracial Tribes thread. :D

I'm white and my DH is Indian (East Indian vis Tanzania). We live in one of the most multicultural neighbourhoods in a really multicultural city (Toronto, Ontario) and so the mix is not a very big deal to anyone. My sister is married to a man who is Chinese/Iranian - our extended family is already set up to be all kinds of colours.

We do have some challenges when it comes to culture, though - my DH's family are Muslim and aren't too pleased with some of the parenting choices we hope to make (we're expecting our first). We're atheists, the DH and I, and so we won't raise our children within the faith. Nor would I circumcise the child if its a boy. But these are splits every new parent needs to reconcile with the previous generation, so I don't feel it has anything to do with the "multiculturalness" of our family. We're just not the same people as our parents.

Nice to meet you all!

Charlotte

[Arduinna]

I'm a typical American of European descent. Dh family is multicultural Mexican and Israeli. Dh is fluent in Spanish and Hebrew as well as English and also moderately successful in German and Yiddish and knows some Arabic.

My Spanish isn't that good, I can read and understand a decent amount but I'm not much of a speaker even though my accent is pretty good. I used to be able to read Hebrew but I've lost most of that ability.

He tried doing OPOL with dd but just didn't keep it up and it was harder for him since I don't know the language well enough so he would end up having to translate anyway for me and then he just got lazy.

[mags]

Ktmama,

It's nice to run into you again! I have to admit that I got very overwhelmed with the 8/05 group and ended up just dropping out. I can't believe our babies are 2.5 yrs old already, can you??? Time really flew fast! BTW, congrats, I see on your sig you are expecting another little one! :) I hope that everything is going smoothly with your pregnancy!

[cappuccinosmom]

I'm American born (but not "American" by culture--my family is waaaaaay out of the norm). My dh is Ethiopian, but he is somewhat outside of his own culture, having been born of a "mixed marriage" (two different tribes) and spent time all over his country with different tribal groups.

My dh is fluent in 5 languages, and I only know a few words in his national language. I had hoped that we could raise our children multilingual, but with his focus on improving his English here in the states, that's fallen by the wayside. When they start formal schooling, we will add Amharic lessons and I will learn along with them. Hopefully we will be back in his country while they are still children and able to pick up languages relatively easily.

[prairiesprite]

Hi, I am American (English-German roots), and DH moved here from Croatia just over 10 years ago. We have two great kiddos and at home we (mostly) do OPOL, but we speak Croatian at the table to make up for the fact that the kiddos hear English all day at day care.

DH's family is still all in Croatia, so I would be interested in hearing from other families who are trying to foster grandparent relationships from afar (hooray for Skype!!).

[Jannah6]

[QUOTE=Bad Mama Jama;10513978]I understand the nursing thing. When my dd was tiny, a horrified woman asked me was that my child that I was nursing. :duhMy dd is pretty fair and I am more of a caramel color. I politely told the lady that no, she wasn't mine and I just came to the daycare to nurse random children. She laughed awkwardly and said something to the effect of, I didn't know she was Black. Gee, she didn't tell you? :lol

LOL, once while I was at the park with my then toddler DS and 3 month old DD, I had to nurse my DD. Well, the nannys that sat next to me must have caught whiplash because they turned their heads so fast. You see, my DS is from my first marriage and very brown. While my DD is what my DH calls piss yellow(?). Besides the fast that I'm brown skin, the park that I frequented at that time was mainly visited by caretakers. I'm almost 100% sure that they thought I was nursing one of my charges, LOL.

As for my family, I'm African American. My husband is Albanian(parents from Kosovo), but he was born in Italy. We've been married for almost 8 years. Together we have 4 children ages 6,5,3 and 5 months. I have a 10 year old DS from a previous marriage.

[Beppie]

I am interested to hear of other families with roots in India...

I am causasian-American, and DH is from southern India (Kerala). DH's entire family still lives in India, so that is hard on him. Dh will be applying for US citizenship this year. We have 2 little girls, who both have dark hair and dark eyes, but we've been surprised by how fair their skin color is, almost the same color as mine (German-Slovakian ancestry).

I wish DH would teach them either Hindi or Malayalam (his native language) as they grow up, but he's reluctant to do that. He says they should grow up learning Spanish, since so many people speak that here in the U.S.!
Anyone have ideas on how can I get him to change his mind?

[les7699]

Hi I'm white of German descent and my daughters' father is black.

[BookGoddess]

I didn't even realize this form was finally created until I saw a post from it on the New Posts page.

We live in an area with a lot of interractial couples. It's actually more common to see people of mixed ancestry here than anywhere else in the country. However, DH and I are not interracial. We're multiethnic or interethnic. I'm Asian. He's a mix of Asian and White. We were both raised in the US. Our daughter is a lovely mix of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, and more. She has about 7 different ethnic backgrounds she could trace her ancestry to. We think she's the greatest thing on earth. :love

[HipGal]

Yay! I'm so glad this forum got started!

My dh and I both have various European/Scandinavian roots. We have one bio son and one daughter who was born in China (adopted last spring). We are all trying to learn Mandarin. Looking forward to sharing more with you all soon.

[aprilushka]

I am interested to hear of other families with roots in India...

I am causasian-American, and DH is from southern India (Kerala). DH's entire family still lives in India, so that is hard on him. Dh will be applying for US citizenship this year. We have 2 little girls, who both have dark hair and dark eyes, but we've been surprised by how fair their skin color is, almost the same color as mine (German-Slovakian ancestry).

I wish DH would teach them either Hindi or Malayalam (his native language) as they grow up, but he's reluctant to do that. He says they should grow up learning Spanish, since so many people speak that here in the U.S.!
Anyone have ideas on how can I get him to change his mind?


I don't know about Malayalam, but I should think Hindi is actually very potentially useful in business and India will only be increasingly important as an economic power in the future. Since not that many American born speak Hindi (as opposed to Spanish), it actually could be more of an edge in the future jobmarket than Spanish. That's how I would sell it. It also obviously is a connection to the culture which is also important, although it's not the language of the hearth, so to speak. At any rate, having two languages from an early age will probably only make it easier for them to learn Spanish as a third later (or another language as a third). That's actually my plan -- Russian and English from toddlerhood, and a third language (I prefer Spanish since I know it myself, but it will be their choice) hopefully starting up later in elementary school.

[hhurd]

Hi everyone. My dh and I are caucasian and our 5yo ds is biracial (caucasian/afro-american). I'm glad there's a new forum to lurk in!

[marybethorama]

I'm already behind in posts. But that's okay. I'm so excited to see this forum.

I'm Mary Beth, married to dh for many years. We have three boys (now 11, 9, and 6). We live in Western MD where dh is a professor and I'm an adjunct.

[bigeyes]

Well...we're really not multi-cultural in action because ds's biodad split and he hasn't been exposed to his culture much, so I've kind of fallen down on the job there, I guess. But we're getting there. The rest of our household is caucasian mutts German/Irish/English/Dutch with some Native American thrown in but ds is half Mexican, 1/4 dutch, maybe 1/32 Native American and 31/32 German or something like that?

The mixture of races here has been great for us though. We have some friends down the road who are from Mexico, and ds is friends with their son who is teaching him Spanish. They have also introduced him to authentic Mexican food as opposed to what I call white people mexican food, which is really all he's known before.

He also has a friend at school who is teaching him some Tagalog and another who is teaching him Thai. There is a local TV show that has a Hawaiian word of the day, plus what you pick up just from daily conversation and between dh's work and the exploration we do by being new here we're learning a lot about Hawaiian culture. I've got one Native Hawaiian client who teaches me about Hawaiian folklore and religious beliefs, so we're getting a lot of information about a bunch of different cultures in a short period of time. I'm glad that he's curious and able to soak up all this stuff so quickly, it makes me feel a little bit better about dropping the ball so badly before.

[iamthesmilingone]

O.M.G.

It here!!!

This will be a quick lil intro as I should be preparing for class.

I'm a European mix and the same goes for dh and ds. Dd is Black, Caucasian and a pinch of Native American. Without trying to make it seem like an effort, dh and I have worked to make sure she is surrounded by people of many cultures. The desire to be part of multi-ethnic communities figured prominently in our choice of her schooling and where we live. At 14 years old, she moves seamlessly between just about any type group of people. Maybe because of how and where we live, her exposure to bigotry and racism has been very limited. We talk about race issues as they come up and I do worry about what judgments will be made only on the basis of how she looks. I've tried at once to shelter her while still letting her know there may be a reality out there that is different than the world we have created within which we roam.

[FroNuff]

Wow, I'm so surprised, but happy to see this forum. It's been a long time in the coming. :thumb

I only pop in and out of MDC, in general, but I'll still introduce myself here. I'm Tia, mama to 3 girls, ages 5, 4 and 2 months. I identify myself as Black American -- my mother was Black and my father was Penobscot and Ramapough (which is a mix in itself). My husband is White American of Ukrainian and Slovak descent. We've been married for 8 years.

We live in a diverse area, however, it is not always fully embracing of other cultures and we still get stares from time to time. Our families are used to us, but we are still "different", not so much because of race but more because we're odd ducks who do things a little different than what's norm around here.

Right now, my cultural struggle is church/religion related since I'm the only Black person, or POC in our church and it stinks. The people are nice, but I wish there were another brown face to see, if anyone knows what I mean. We're at this church for the long haul, so I need to find ways to deal with this, rather than being negative about it.

Sorry for the novel!

[momof3ejs]

Hi! I'm so excited to see this forum!!!! MDC rocks!
Okay, I'm Judi (german, english, scottish, native, and everything in between:)), married to one great guy!!! (american black- self described, west indies, native, irish). Together we have 3 beautiful children- Erma 4 1/2, Elora almost 3, and Elmotie 13 months. We live in the midwest. We do our best to expose our children to all different kinds of cultures, races, lifestyles.

I am semi-crunchy, AP and my husband is pretty mainstream:irked: He tries, but... He says its a cultural thing. All of the people in his family are VERY mainstream:eyesroll , and they give us a hard time. We live in a very predominantly white area, and it's hard for us to meet other families who are similar to us with children. It seems like most of the people around here with biracial children are older, a lot younger, or just not friendly:angry

I look forward to talking with all of you and getting/giving some great ideas, advice, support, and comfort.:love

[Mommy2Amira]

Yay! a multicultural forum!:thumb
ok.. so I'm half Somali (my mother) and half Yemeni (my father). H is white (a mix of German, Irish, and a dash of native american). I believe dd is a perfect mix of the both of us.
I'm trying really hard to speak Urdu(I grew up in Pakistan) and Somali with her but I get lazy most of the time :o. especially since I'm so fluent in English and have been here so long.. excuses, excuses.
anyway, I'm glad to have this forum for reinforcement.

[eepster]

Wow, I totally missed this forum.

I'm mostly Irish-American (with a little New Jersey Dutchy) and DH is mostly Chinese-Canadian (with a little Philipino.) DH is supposed to be teaching DS some Cantonese, but has been extremely lazy about it. For some annoying reason all the Chinese for children stuff is in Mandarin or Hunan.

[WC_hapamama]

I'm of Japanese (mother), French, Scottish, English and Dutch ancestry (last 4 are my father's), and my DH is Japanese-American (4th generation).

Neither DH or I speak much Japanese. Some polite phrases, food words, and some curse words. All but 1 of our 6 Japanese grandparents are/were second generation (Nisei)... my grandmother immigrated in the early 1950s. She met Grandpa when he was serving in the army in Occupied Japan during the Korean Conflict. My mother and her brothers all speak some Japanese (not exactly fluent), but my in-laws and their siblings don't for the most part.

My mother and her siblings are/were all married to or partnered with Caucasians, despite my grandmother making her opinion that they should marry other Nikkei quite clear... to the point of disowning my mother for a while after she married my dad (only her sister visiting from Japan made her change her mind).

My in-laws are much more culturally Japanese than my mother's family is, there have been some growing pains for us. I'm familiar enough with Japanese culture to where most things I'm used to, but occasionally there's something that comes up that throws me for a loop... like my in-laws having a butsudan in the house.

Until fairly recently, my oldest 2 didn't realize that my red haired, blue eyed father wasn't Japanese. LOL

[amitymama]

I am white American and my DH is English. We met in Germany and now live in London with our 22mo DD, and another on the way. Even though we speak the same language there are enough cultural differences to keep things interesting, to say the least. :lol

[kimiij]

I'm west indian (black american) and my bf is white. We're not married yet, but looks like it might be heading that way :). Very excited about this forum :)

[Quate]

I too just noticed this forum, since I usually hang out on the TTC boards. I am a northern European blend, identify as white American. DH is Chinese (we think with a little Russian mixed in) and is supposed to become a US citizen very very soon. Hoping for kids, and hoping we can raise them bilingual, which means I need to work on my Mandarin! Also hoping to move to China for a while in the next couple of years.

[imahappymama]

I speak English to dd, and dh agrees that he should speak Spanish to her, but he often forgets or just speaks English anyway. It's frustrating, because his English is far from fluent and my Spanish is far from fluent, so I really want us both to speak our native languages so she learns them correctly. I guess I'm not that worried about it, but I don't want her to be confused.

In terms of culturally mixing our families, we plan to celebrate American and Mexican traditional holidays, foods, customs, etc. I would really like to find other Latino families in our area so that dd has other Spanish-speaking friends, but dh tends to be very mistrusting of other Mexican immigrants and doesn't want us to.


Interesting. My dh and I have had these same issues. I'm from the US and he is Mexican, or rather, was, as he is now a citizen here. We've been together 12 years and have been very flexible with respect to language and the kids. They learn bit by bit and have a tendency to speak in the language of the speaker to respond. We travel to Mexico every year and they learn heaps while we're there. We had to learn each other's languages, which took a long time, but we did it! The suspicion that your husband has of other Mexicans is so Mexican, if that makes sense. We don't associate with others for the same reason. I have discovered that there are reasons for that, but I don't want to hijack the thread!

[tranmama]

Great forum!

I'm a white American with mostly European ancestry (English and Scottish, primarily). My husband is American-born Vietnamese. I have an older son by a previous marriage to a white man. My "forever" husband and I just had a baby daughter together 5 months ago. Joe and I have been together ever since my son was a year old, so he's "daddy" in my son's eyes, though my son does have a good relationship with his biological father, too.

So, we have a mix in our family. There aren't many families like ours in the area where we live. We do have friends (2 other couples) who are like us, though: white and Vietnamese with mixed children. I don't notice looks when we're out-and-about, but my husband does. I guess I don't care enough what people think to notice their looks! :D

I am looking forward to the trip to Vietnam that our family will be taking in 2 years. Part of me would like to wait, though, until DD is old enough to remember it. But, I'd like my son to see where part of his baby sister's roots are from. And DH has never even been to Vietnam, so he'd enjoy it immensely. I'm sure we'll go again one day when DD is older, too.

DH is going to buy Rosetta Stone Vietnamese for DS and I to use during homeschooling (we're going to start this summer with a "trial run", then will probably do homeschooling "for real" at the start of his 6th grade year). I think it would be fun for DS and I to do together. I've tried to learn in the past, but Vietnamese is SO DIFFERENT! I've always been horrible at learning other languages! :o Wish me luck!

[cyndimo]

Quick intro...
DP and I are both white american -
I'm Jewish, been in US many generations, generally from eastern europe;
She's Catholic, and her family refers to themselves as wester european mutts... mostly they think of themselves as being from St Louis. :)
DS is African American and came into our family through domestic adoption.

Looking forward to adding this forum to my regular MDC rounds!
- Cyndi

[Halfasianmomma]

Yay for this forum! :thumb

About moi:
I'm bi-racial, born in Québec. Mother is québécois French with a smidge of Irish in her heritage. Father is Vietnamese with a smidge of Mongolian somewhere in his heritage. I grew up speaking French, but having been thrown into English daycare, I quickly became bilingual. In a way, I grew up at the cross-roads of three very different cultures: the Québéecois, the English Canadian culture and the Vietnamese. It was always very tough for me, especially with the Vietnamese culture, because I really felt like I didn't belong (I still don't speak the language except for food and baby talk!).

My DH look like a regular white dude. His mother is Tchekoslovakian gypsy, and his biological father was French, but his adoptive father was Norwegian. He definitely identifies more with the Norwegian culture than with the French (in fact, he's got a bit of bias when it comes to the French!), most likely because he spent over a year living in Norway when he was 16.

DH has a son whose mother is Caucasian, and we're expecting a little girl who'll be a true blue blender mix of cultures. With DSS, we've tried very hard to expose him to different traditions and cultures. We celebrate Têt, the Lunar New Year, and DSS is very comfortable eating all kinds of Viet, Chinese, Thai, and Japanese food.

For our daughter, we plan on using the OPOL technique so that she learns French from me and English from DH and DSS. She will be attending French school b/c of the laws that exists here in Québec, but I would like to have her learn as many languages as possible, if she's so inclined. Being bilingual (there was a time where I danced/taught tango and spoke decent Spanish), has opened so many doors for me; I want my child to have those same opportunities.

tranmama...good luck learning Viet! It's tough one to learn but in a way, it's simpler. The verbs are all imperative with suffixes or prefixes to indicate tense!

[AladdinsLamp]

I'm so excited about this forum!!!

I'm white and american but still have family back in the old country (england). My dh is filipino american (half and half) and his parents divide their time between the US and the PI.

We are raising ds spanish/english bilingual (I speak spanish, dh does not) and are hoping for a third language (mil's filipino language - pampangan) to get some traction in our home in the future. Dh does not speak his mom's language, and that loss makes us very sad.

We are hoping for ds to be fully bilingual, native spanish and english speaker, and fully literate in both. We would be thrilled for ds to be conversational in pampangan.

[gethane]

Oops, I ended up doing an introduction post on another thread so I'm double posting.

My three oldest are biracial (black/white). We live in rural Nebraska (town of 12K, county seat, but still pretty rural). I met my exh at college. After college we moved to Kansas City. But after I got pregnant with my 3rd when my first was not even 3, and my exh got fired from his job that provided health insurance, we moved to nebraska to live with my parents until we figured out what to do.

We didn't really expect to stay in this rural area, but my exh got a job in a town just 30 min from my parents, we ended up qualifying for a loan from the Rural Housing Development, and voila, here we stay. Once my kids started school, I didn't really want to move them. Yes, there isn't much diversity here (though they aren't the only biracial kids, there are some AA kids, + some asian kids), but they've grown up with the people they go to school with. People don't think of them as "those black kids that just moved in" which would be my fear if we moved. My oldest, almost 17, has a great set of dreds and has been asked in a nearby bigger town if the girls he was talking to could take a picture of his hair. It's very weird.

We STILL get comments. We do still experience racism. After I remarried and had 2 lily white kids the differences I experience depending on which "family" I'm out with are striking.

And though I'm a huge Obama supporter, I'm afraid to put up an Obama sign or bumper sticker for fear of vandalism. And I don't want to put my teenagers through that. At our local caucus I overheard someone shouting "A vote for the darkie is a vote for McCain," and "If Obama was meant to be president it wouldn't be called the White House." Oh, so clever. Hah. Obama still won my local caucus.

My challenges as a parent of biracial kids is different than it was when I was also part of an interracial relationship. It was much more in my face, I felt, when I was married to a black man. Now people assume my kids are adopted, at least, that's what many people ask.

I worry about my teens future. They are not familiar in any way with black culture. My ex has never taken them to meet his family (an 8 hour drive). They've grown up with a white mom, white step father, white step siblings, white grandparents. I do my best, but I've never been out of the midwest myself so .. well. ya know. I'm not the best source of info either. My oldest daughter (15) worries too. She's told me that she worries that when she goes away to college she's going to be pigeonholed.

Life's a changing though. My dh, my 2 youngest, and my 13 year old (maybe) are moving this summer because I'm going to law school. My two oldest want to stay here with their father and my parents to finish high school (can't say I blame them) but they'll be visiting me in my new, hopefully more diverse, area (unsure where that'll be just yet).

Sorry bout the book. I'm really excited to see this forum! Not sure how I missed it was here for 3 weeks!

[Leatherette]

Hi,

I was/am a third culture kid http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Culture_Kids

I didn't live in the U.S. until I was 17, and was multi-lingual. Have lost most of my languages, but can still read a few. I had a huge culture shock moving to the U.S., and I am not really over it yet:eyesroll.

I am caucasian (Italian/Dutch), and have an African American daughter.

Yay, multi-cultural forum!

L.

[mntnmom]

I'm not sure if we're really multi-cultural or not. I grew up a south-western American Protestant, DH's family is New England Irish Catholic. Neither of us identify as Christian anymore though. We are living in Germany, our kids are learning German. DH lived in Kenya for a year and would love for them to learn Swahili, but he's lost most of it. We are looking for job oppurtunities that will take us to that part of the world. I'm trying to expose our kids to Spanish, so they won't be lost when we go back to MY home, but I'm not really fluent.

[sky_and_lavender]

I'm very happy to have found this forum!

I am a white American, raised without religion (unless folk humanism is a religion?) married to a Lebanese guy (raised in a liberal Muslim family) who moved to the US as an adult. We live in the US.

We are planning to have a baby within the next year or so, and I think a lot about how to pass on my husband's culture to our child. We speak mostly English to each other, and some Arabic. We're veg*n and have our own hybrid culture that includes includes music, food, dance, literature and values from Lebanon as well as from the US. (In reality, I guess all couples have a unique hybrid culture, regardless of cultural origins.)

One of the biggest challenges we face in the "outside world" is just total lack of understanding of and too many assumptions about his culture. I worry a little about the racism any child of ours will face in the US and the West. Yet overall I feel our diversity will enrich our child's and our lives.

[aaronsmom]

I just noticed this forum was here today. :wave
I'm half Puerto Rican, a quarter Native and a quarter French. DH is Irish and Norwegian. Our DS has blonde hair and green eyes like his daddy and DD has brown hair and darker skin like me (too young to tell what color her eyes will be yet).
Most of DH's family is very rascist and didn't always accept me entirely (with the exception of his sister, who is married to a man of color and is a very close friend of mine). We don't see that part of the family or allow them around our children.
My father was born in Puerto Rico and moved here when he was 5 with my grandparents. He learned to speak english when he was in his teens.
I speak French but not much Spanish. We all spoke English growing up in my household and I took French for 7 years in school.
Nice to meet you all.

[peggyitaly]

I'm an American with Chinese and European orgins living in Italy with my Italian DH. We've got 2 dd's - one who is completely bilingual :thumb

Great forum!!

[emaye_to_2]

I'm so glad this forum is here and hope to get to know you all.

I am white American and my DH is African-American. We've got two beautiful kids: 4yo DS and 2yo DD. We live in Portland, OR, an accepting but not so diverse city, IMO. However, we moved from NJ seven+ years ago and our families are far away on the other coast.

[WilliamsMama]

Hi there! I'm WilliamsMama from NYC and I'm glad to see this forum here on MDC! I was beginning to wonder how much diversity was here on MDC.

I'm 37, half Korean and half Black and DH is Assyrian and Scottish.
Our DS is a wonderful mix of both of us, although he does look mostly like me.


I grew up in very multicultural environments and am glad that my son is, too.

[SunRise]

Hi

I'm Canadian, my partner is Turkish and my son, C. (5) is American. I'm an expat living in the USA. My son was born here (USA). Partner is currently in Turkey. We have spent several month long vacations in Turkey, but that is all the exposure he has had, well, besides being with his father and another turkish friend.

Partner doesn't speak Turkish too him, at least not as much as I would have liked him too. Son tells his French teacher that he can count in Turkish and then he makes up words. Its cute.

At one time I found a thread on MDC discussing parenting and multi cultural families and was very interested in reading other peoples experiences so am happy to see this forum finally got approved!

ttfn

[Kitsune6]

Howdy all!

I'm white and DH is Japanese/chamarro (Guamanian). DH was born and raised on Guam and came over to the states when he was 15. His mom is Japanese and his dad is half Chamarro and half Japanese. His older sisters were both born in Japan.

We have two kids that look multiethnic. They have the Asian eyes but lighter hair instead of DH's family black. They have darker skin than I do but in the summer they turn a lovely brown shade due to having pacific islander in them.

I bugged DH for a long time to only speak to the kids in Japanese but he gave up early on. I guess he expected immediate results ha ha! All the Japanese the kids know I taught them :eyesroll. My FIL (MIL passed away) visits from Japan once a year and the kids get all kinds of fun treats.

My DD loves the new Ni Hao show. It kind of bums me out that there are no Japanese kid shows.
Yikes! I'm writing a book!

Anyway...

I'm so glad this forum finally made it!! :thumb

[gabry]

Great to see this forum and the huge diversity around!
I'm Dutch, dh is Philippino. We met in the US and lived there for 10 years (not all of it together), ds1 was born there. Then we moved to Belgium, where ds2 was born.
At home we speak mostly English, although dh's Dutch is getting much better. Now he's even studying French since he works in the French speaking part of the country. Ds1 is bilingual with a preference for Dutch. Ds2 says about 5 words in each language, definitely understands both. Dh tried to speak Tagalog with the kids for a while but didn't keep it up unfortunately. We'll be visiting his family this summer - I wonder if they'll pick up some. They all speak English pretty well, tho, so maybe not.
Looking forward to seeing more on this forum!

[orangebird]

I just want to give a brief intro because I am happy to have this forum. Myself, I am a heinz 57 (at least that was my mom's nic-name for my sister and me.) On her side, her father is straight up white blonde scandinavian, and her mother is lapp, or Sami, "eskimo" from the northern tip of scandinavia. My father's side is Jewish with his father's half from eastern Europe and his mother's half from the middle east.

Either way. I have never identified as a white american person, and based on all the ridicule I faced growing up, no one else identified me as that either.

My first husband was native American. But we are divorced now and he lives a block down the street. My current husband is whitey mcwhitey and we struggle a bit, but I am growing and learning to understand and love this part of my life.

I live in a very multicultural area (by choice) and feel uncomfortable in other places, but some of these other places I hope to be more comfortable with because I don't want to live in this house forever.

And yeah MDC for finally giving in and giving this forum!! :D

[dessismama]

Really cool forum! I am Bulgarian, came to the US at 20 with my family and now a US citizen. DH is Chinese American, and also 1/8 Vietnamese and 1/16 Japanese. We have 3 bio kids who look very half-Asian and look more alike than like either of us, and one adopted DD who is Bulgarian Roma (gypsy) but looks a lot like both of us (has DH's skin tone and my features).

I tried to speak Bulgarian to each of the kids for their first few years but gave up when they became increasingly fluent in English, and in fact, DH who is extremely fluent in Bulgarian, persevered further before giving up too... We have been living in an area with very few other Bulgarians so it would have been hard to have any sort of immersion. We go to Bulgaria every couple of years but somehow our kids manage to find other English speaking kids or teach their Bulgarian cousins English...

Culturally, we incorporate traditions from both. We think it is fun for the kids to do this. DH knows more about the current Bulgarian culture than I do. He keeps up with music developments, politics, etc. My mother said not too long ago that he is more Bulgarian than we are...:)

Nice to meet so many other mixed families!!

[iriaS]

This is so nice!!
I'm Afghan/Azeri(Azerbaijan), I was born in Kabul, actually, i was the last child of my Afghan family to be born in Afghanistan, by late 1984 all my paternal family established in Uruguay and Paraguay, my younger siblings where born in Montevideo. I grew up speaking Dari and Azeri at home and Spanish outside. We had the one parent one language thing. My family converted into Christianity in 1987, but we where raised to love and respect our roots, I'm proud to be Afghan, and al my maternal family is in Azerbaijan and growing up we visit them 2 or even 3 times a year.
In terms of how i look, i'm blonde, some people don't believe me that i'm the mix that i am becuase i'm blonde:irked: hmm, they are even red headed people in Afghanistan. I have green eyes, they're big you know bushy blonde eyebrows, gotta love them!!!:p
My DH is South African, he has Afrikaans as 1st language, English as 2nd language and Zulu as 3rd, his mother taught him Zulu even though she's actually of Dutch herritage.
My babies where all born in Namibia, they are fluent in English(with that cute accent), Afrikaans, Dari and some Azeri here at home, while in school my older girls speak mostly German with her peers(as German is a main language in Namibia), while in classes they have English and some Spanish, the twins will eventually pick German when they go in school. I mostly use Dari with them and some Azeri for fun, though it should0t be for fun, DD1 tells me that we should speak Spanish to eachother, she says she like my accent.
So,
I'm glad there's this multicultrual forum!!

[Booflies]

I am a white Canadian and my husband is Filipino (born and raised in the Philippines - I was at his Canadian citizenship ceremony when we were dating!). Our daughter Aly is the perfect blend of both of us looks-wise. Because my husband only speaks Tagalog when he talks to his family (once/week), he's not planning on teaching Aly his native tongue. We try to incorporate some Tagalog words into our day-to-day life, though, just for color!

[HappyNappyMTB]

I am a dark skinned black Caribbean(jamaican, st. thomian, bahamian, dominican) woman and my DF is a Mexican man. I am preggo with our #1. Both my sig other and I speak English and Spanish(he more fluent than I) but i also speak some Russian from my previous engagement, and some Japanese which i just started learning. When the baby gets here i want it to be well rounded and educated in its speaking skills and understanding me. I tend to switch between English, Spanish and Russian, depending on the mood im in!! Does anyone think that this will confuse the child? Maybe they wont speak it and thats fine but i want them to understand me with no problem. Am i worrying too much?

[TeaLeaf]

DH (US born) and I (French born; 20+ yrs in US) cover just about every country in Western Europe in terms of heritage. I am literate in French, English and Italian and DH English only. We use the OPOL method with DS; I try to remember to use only French with him and DH naturally English. This will compartmentalize French, oh well. I wish I could toss Italian in the mix, but there is only one of me :)

I found this neat site with articles among which raising bilingual kids if anyone is interested: http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/

[SinginMamaTo2]

Great forum!!! It's so cool to chat with mamas from all over the world!!!

Dh is full Sicilian, born and raised in Morocco, first language being French. Me,being adopted, I thought I was Italian and German up until a year ago when I found my biological parents. I'm actually Sicilian as well!! And Cherokee with a bit of Irish in the mix. My DC's look mostly like me (strong genes):wink. Especially the high Cherokee cheek-bones. DH is teaching all of us French.
I enjoy reading everyones stories.

[MeloMama08]

Well this is just great!!!! Multi-ethnic families really are becoming closer and closer to the norm, it seems from my vantage point!!!

I am a white American of Scottish descent raised by non-indoctrinating Mahayana Buddhists, and my wonderful DP is Dominican, raised by slightly more-indoctrinating Catholics!

DP has a 1/2 Dominican 1/2 Puerto Rican daughter who is 6 and GREAT and we spend lots of time with her, although she doesn't live with us full time. She speaks fluent Spanish, as does his whole family including about 10 aunts and uncles and 25 or so cousins that live really close to us!!!!! So I am learning fast, having studied Latin and Italian in school, it's pretty easy!

We are expecting #1 6/02/08 and can't wait to see what he or she looks like!

Oh, another thing, my whole crew of friends from college (we all live now in NYC so I still see them a lot) was a very multi-racial group- Black American, Latino, many many half white/half black, two Latinas adopted by single white women, and more... As a result, racial/ethnic/cultural identity has always been a huge and ongoing topic of discussion for all of us with our diverse backgrounds.

I love multicultural learning!!!!! I can't wait to hear all of your voices.

[PattyCakes_726]

Hi all! I'm happy to have found this forum.
I'm of mostly Irish-English ancestry and ex-DP is from Kenya. I'm very fair and he's very dark. DS has medium brown skin and black hair full of soft curls. I also have two nephews from Korea and a SIL from Japan.

[amathyst]

I'm so glad I found this forum! I've been a heavy lurker of MDC forums, but not a big poster. Hopefully that will change.

I'm Amanda - I'm a native Minnesotan (very much white-Scandinavian background!) and my partner, Rey, is from Barbados and is of African-descent. We have one daughter, Marley (20 months), who is biracial and beautiful! We are consciously raising her biracial (of course!) and am so glad to have another tool & springboard to utilize in this journey.

:thumb

[EdnaMarie]

Welcome to all the new women in our multicultural forum.

[lena1984]

omg, i feel so dumb for not realizing we had this forum eariler :innocent

I'm lena, bi-racial(white/black...but raised with a white family) american born and raised married to dh Abdul who is Somali(born and raised, has lived in the us for 10 years now)

we have 1 dd Iman,and maybe more beanlets down the line :wink

i look foward to chatting with all you here :love

[purplegirl]

Wow! There are lots of us out there. Welcome! Welcome!

[jemama]

Hi Everyone! Nice to see this forum. I'm a freckly faced white girl from the states and DH is Filipino. We met while we were both active duty Navy.

[jgm06]

hi! I'm an American...born and raised in New England and my dh is Filipino...born there and moved to US when he was about 9. We have a ds (23 months) who is a good mix of us both but definitely has the features of his dada. Dh speaks to DS primarily in Tagalog and I'm slowly picking up on some words/phrases as well which is helpful since DH family all speak tagalog when we're together. Glad to have found this forum!

[elizaveta]

My name is Liza and I'm Russian-American, dh is Russian. Dh's stepfather is half Somalian and half Yemeni, but a citizen of the Emirates. Brother in-law's wife is from Ethiopia (oh yeah, tons of evil eyes between fil and sil :D) and my stepfather is Filipino. DD is two and a half and was born in Russia, but has lived in America and here in the United Arab Emirates (where we live now). She is currently speaking tons of English at the moment, a lot of Russian and a little Arabic. :)

:wave

[rredhead]

Hi! I'm Robyn.
I'm white, DH Max is white, and our son Jackson is black & white. Jack is adopted, via an open, private domestic adoption. We have a relationship with his birthmom, who lives in another state. We are in California, in the SF Bay Area.
I've been on MDC for awhile now - since just before Jack was born, and he's 2 now. I just found this forum last week, looking for something else. It will be great to have another resource.

Cheers!

[slmtoya]

Hello! My name is LaToya, I'm black, I've been married to my husband Stephen, who's white, for a little over three years. We have a son, Christopher (who will be 2 next month) and #2 is due sometime this fall.

Both of our families have always been very supportive of our relationship, which is refreshing in the world of ignorance that we live in.

I'm glad to have found this forum. I really could've used this a long time ago.

[Renai]

I'm a black American and my dh is Mexican. Thrown into the mix is my daughter, who was conceived when I was raped by a white guy (Scottish/Irish heritage, great grandparents were immigrants). I'm fairly dark, and my daughter very light, so, like Joyster, I got the "am I the nanny" looks, especially if I was caught nursing (:bigeyes:jaw Oh, she's yours??!!) It was funny and annoying at the same time.

Anyway, we homeschool bilingually, I'm fluent in Spanish, though it took me a bit to get to this point. She corrects me periodically; I didn't start speaking to her in Spanish until she was about 18 months and it became necessary. She's currently 8.5 yo. She's being raised in a Mexican culture, as in our place in NM, there's a very strong immigrant culture here, to include my dh. Some day, we'll tell her about her other part of her heritage (dh is skeptical, but even I was raised with a stepdad and feel it's important she knows). She loves watching Irish dance and notes her hair looks like the ladies on Lord of the Dance :).

I will also be introducing more German and Japanese into our day, both of which I'm familiar, although I'm not sure how.

[kai's mom]

Hi, I'm married to a man from China and have two boys (ages 5 and 2) who look mostly Chinese. I also get the questions when I'm alone with one of the boys, "Oh, he's so cute - where's he from?". I usually say, "Right from my uterus." I try my hardest to get my dh to speak only Chinese to the boys (I speak enough), but it is an uphill battle.

I'm so looking forward to discussions on this board with so many diverse families! It's very refreshing!

[Renai]

I also get the questions when I'm alone with one of the boys, "Oh, he's so cute - where's he from?". I usually say, "Right from my uterus."

I wanted to say that-- then offer to show them the scar. Or when they'd ask "she's YOURS??" while nursing, I was tempted to tell them, "nah, I breastfeed any child that happens to latch on." :irked:

[my2kidz]

Hi, I am new to all of these great forums, I like it here! I live in the U.S. and am half black half white. I am married to a man who is half hispanic, half mexican-indian. My husband and I have almost the same skin color, except his skin has reddish undertones and mine more tan. Our children look like a little of each of us, you can see a picture of my daughter in her blog below.

[kJad29]

Hey everybody!!!

I'm new to the multicultural threads. Yay!!! I'm so happy that this one is now up and running. I just found out about this one today! :love Well I'm Nigerian American (born and raised in the US, Nigerian father, Black American mix mother) and my DH is of Eastern European decent (4th generation Polish, Hungarian, Croatian). We've been married for over 2.5 years and have been ttc for quite some time as well. I'm usually in the ttc forums and I'm really actually supposed to be lurking. So at least I know I'll have another MDC home when we get pregnant (whenever that will be). I'm so happy see all of the diversity on these threads! It's awesome to see so many ladies with their multicultural families of various types. This is just too cool! I'm really here to learn about what you all do with the "is that your baby" comments, to just the general loving being a multicultural family. So I'm all ears and taking notes....:notes2:

[Fay]

Hooray, we finally have a multicultural forum! :)

We are a bicultural family: DH was born in Taiwan and is an atheist, I'm Caucasian (Irish/German family history) and a devout Catholic. I am raising our boys as Catholics. DH's parents thoroughly americanized him as a young child, so I am always looking for ways to introduce Chinese traditions at home.

[Erzse]

We're bicultural here, I'm Hungarian, DH is Mexican born and raised, his mum was from Spain, and his dad is from Argentina(but was raised in Mexico).
DH is white, blonde hair, hazel eyes, fair skin, i'm the dark one actually. I have olive skin, dark hair and the unfitting blue eyes.
DD was born in Budapest, we go to Hungary 3 times a year.

DD is blonde, white and blue eyes, she got my eyes. People don't ask me if i am the nanny, mostly because she looks like me but of course she looks more like DH. I speak Hungarian to her and DH in spanish.

[grrangela]

Hello! I'm so excited to see this forum; I've been lurking patiently and awaiting its creation. :)

I'm Angela. I'm white and a transplant from DC to Baltimore (not a geographically large distance, but for those of y'all who have made the move, you know it's a big change, and one that I'm SO happy about having made). My partner, Joel, is black and a transplant from Kingston, JA, to DC, to Baltimore, with many stops along the way! We have a five-year-old daughter named Ruby, who spends her days running our candy store with Joel while I commute back and forth to DC until the store is doing well enough to get me off that hamster wheel. ;)

[noahandlinasmom]

Hi my name is Donna and I am white American and my husband was born in South Korea. He was adopted as an infant, so culturally we are mostly american, but I hope we can all visit Korea one day. We also hope to adopt from around the world. My aunt is married to a black man and they have two biracial girls. My husbands family is also very multicultural because of adoption and have Mexican, black, native american, white and of course himself Korean. My kids look more korean than white, and yet no one has ever asked me if there mine..

[doulaLeah]

Hi Ladies, it's so great to see a forum like this. I'm Leah, a pasty white American- DH is Anthony, half white half Korean, who was raised by his Korean Mom. His childhood was very Buddhism centered, and I grew up attending Catholic schools. There are quite a few cultural differences between us, but I think that makes things a little more interesting.
We don't have any children of our own just yet, but we're looking forward to trying within the next 6-12 months. I can't wait to get to know you all better.

[ernalala]

Hi,

I am a native Belgian raised in Belgium, who moved to Turkey to marry and live there with her Kurdish-Arabic origin husband.
We live here for almost 8 years now and have two children, aged 2 and 4.
I am fair-skinned with freckles/light brown hair/darkbrown eyes, husband dark olive skinned/pitchblack hair/brown eyes, son of 4 with olive skin/medium brown hair/drakbrown eyes, son of 2 with fair skin/medium blonde hair/drakbrown eyes. Kids look like a mixture but look most like me too.
We raise our children in a multi-langual and multi-cultural manner, without religion since we are either atheist or non-practising ourselves.
We use the OPOL method quite strictly, I speak Dutch with them, my husband Turkish.. They are also exposed to English since my husband and I started out in English and often still have conversations in English, mixed with Turkish and Dutch. Some Kurdish comes in by my in-laws, too, but we live far from them so the Kurdish input is very very little, and merely passive. I am a SAHM at the moment, my eldest son of 4 goes to private pre-school for half a day. So he gets half of the day a Turkish 'language-cultural-food' bath, and the other half mainly the Belgian version, and evenings and weekends are mixed :-).

One of the nice things here, I find, is that breastfeeding and also long-term bf (not unusual untill 1,5-2) , is looked upon as something relatively normal, comparing to how it is perceived in Belgium. Also SAHM is more accepted in this country than in my home country nowadays, but in both countries it is less (or not) appreciated when you have a degree.

I feel both integrated (NOT assimilated and will never be nor want to even if I would ever get dual citizenship) and very much Belgian (probably that 'strange' foreign woman in the middle of the street..many people also 'know' me from hear say, sometimes when I randomly speak to someone in the neighbourhood, I get to hear 'Oh, you must be that foreign lady living next to blablabla, I've been hearing lots about you' ??? :-).
I have both positive and negative experiences being a foreigner in my new home country. And of course I do miss my other homeland and friends/family there and like to travel there once every one or two years or so, if possible, but more difficult and expensive when children involved.
We often have family from both sites visiting for a couple af weeks a time, spread over the year. Nice, but these are always stay-overs so a lot more work to do and less privacy at times. Spring-Summer-Autumn can be busy at times!

I do not know any other foreign young mothers in my area (only at the other end of town, 1h travel). So it is nice to have found this new forum at MDC to discuss some 'multicultural' topics.

Regards,

Erna (31)
Me :bfs:1bftot:
H:love
4y old:sunshine
2m old:banana
:cat:

[EuxJai]

What a neat sub-forum! Love it!

DS is a dual citizen: Canadian and Swiss... but has zero Canadian and Swiss DNA :lol: !

I am Swiss (well, now also Canadian) but my family is originarily from the Czech Republic (so a mix of German/Polish/Czech in me). DH is Canadian but his family is originarily from Iran.

I speak to DS in French and DH speaks to him in English.

[Dauno]

I'm Spaniard, DH was Irish and SO is Irish to.

[skai]

I don't know whether we are really multicultural, but we're definitely multilingual. :D

I'm a Finnish-speaking Finn, DH is a Swedish-speaking Finn and we live in Holland. No kids yet. If we're lucky enough to have children, we plan to use both of our native languages with them.

Now we speak mostly Finnish at home and with my family, Dutch at the Uni/work, English with most friends here and Swedish with DH's family.

[BarefootScientist]

Hi, I'm Mel. My family is not multicultural but we are starting to think about adoption so we may end up that way. I will be lurking and learning from ya'll. Hope that's ok. :wink

DH and I are both culturally midwest-American, racially Caucasian, and ethnically mutts - his ancestry is mostly northern European, and mine is from almost everywhere in Europe except Ireland. We have one DS.

I once dated a very dark trilingual Marshallese guy, so I have some experience with multicultural issues (unfortunately, in most cases :(), but not really as it relates to children and parenting.

Neat and interesting to read about you all!

[maiaminna]

Hi, I'm Erika. I'm American, with mostly Italian ancestry, and my SO is German. My 3 girls are from my previous marriage (their father is American w/ German ancestry, actually), and the new baby is going to have dual citizenship and, I hope, be bilingual, although I fear my SO will be as lazy about speaking German to the kiddo as he has been about helping me practice it...:eyesroll. He's still living in Germany, and though we've visited each other every few months since starting our relationship, right now paying for a homebirth = not seeing each other until December. :crying We hope he'll be able to get his visa by March.

[Barbamama]

Since I'm running my mouth a bit in the forums, I'd better introduce myself!

We're an interracial/bi-cultural, bilingual household -- I'm African-American and DH is French; we live in the US, big city on the east coast. We have one DC, a daughter, who's 18 mos old and the light of our lives. I became a mother later in life than some, and now that I have her, I can only think, "what the heck was I waiting for?!?!? this is great stuff!!!" Hoping to have at least one more DC, and to successfully navigate the challenges of raising a family in an increasingly crazy world.

That's 'bout it!

[purplegirl]

Welcome!:rocks

[kirstenb]

Hello! I'm American with a mostly German and Scandinavian background. DH is Mexican with some German and Spanish thrown in there. He moved to the States about 10 years ago with his family. We have one DS who looks exactly like me (reddish blond hair, green eyes, very pale skin) and nothing like my DH. I joke our next baby will be a spitting image of him.

Right now our biggest challenge is trying to incorporate DH's culture into our daily lives so DS can grow up to know and appreciate it. We speak some Spanish to DS but not as much as I would like. It's hard as we live 2000 miles away from DH's family so we don't have extended family nearby to help us teach him.

[pokeyrin]

Hello!

I'm biracial and I come from a mostly Chinese background. My grandfather is American but we don't know who he is.

DH is American with Polish, German and Irish background. We're expecting our first this October and I'm going try very hard to teach our child Mandarin (I speak it fluently). I wonder how hard it's going to be for me to use Mandarin at home when I only speak English at home with DH. Though I'm lucky that he's willing to learn, he even knows how to cook some Chinese using a wok and we definitely plan on incorporating Chinese culture into our daily lives.

[Collinsky]

I don't think I've posted in this thread before... I could be wrong!

My heritage is Irish/English/German; Dh is Puerto Rican. Both born in America, although he spent several years of his childhood in PR. We don't have a blingual home - although Dh is fluent in Spanish, it's not his first language and not the one he's most comfortable with. I'm trying! But my Spanish is very limited.

We're looking into fostering/adoption, so our home may become more multicultural/multiethnic/multiracial still, in the next couple years! :joy:

[Jade2561]

Whoa! I just noticed this forum existed. How cool. We are a multicultural family. I am white (Irish/Italian) and DH is Puerto Rican. We have two little girls. We are not bilingual. Dh understands Spanish but doesn't like to speak it (which is unfortunate for our daughters in my opinion).

It's interesting having biracial children. DD1 is a little brown child with straight dark hair and big dark eyes and dd2 is our little Irish baby. She is tan in the summer but is pretty pale. She has red/blond curly hair and light brown eyes. I think people think they aren't related!

[tto_girl]

Hello from a proud black lady in the UK.

3 children - hard work.

Am just finding my feet on this forum x

[feminine_earth]

Hello everyone! I have been on MDC for a while, but never knew this forum existed! How cool!

I am a white American married to a white Irishman! We've been married and living in Florida for almost three years now. I met him while taking spring break in Ireland while studying abroad in Scotland! Lived with him in Ireland for about a year, and then moved back to the states to start working on immigration paperwork. He joined me three months later, we got married, and have been here ever since! :love

We will be TTC our very first little one next month! It's very exciting! :joy:

I am worried, though, that our childrens' heritage will be pushed aside or looked over since we are both white and both speak english as our native language (DH is from Northern Ireland, and when he was growing up, it was illegal to speak Irish in the North). Originally, we were going to move back to Ireland and raise our children there, but we realized we simply couldn't afford it. Not now anyway. So the plan is to stay in the states.

I do plan on teaching my children Irish, but it's going to be difficult since I don't yet speak it myself! My husband also wants them to learn Irish, but doesn't seem as dedicated as I am. :eyesroll We will also be celebrating traditional Irish holidays (fireworks on Halloween, yay!!), and, of course, eating tradition Irish foods (which we do now). :eat:

Wonderful to meet you all! :shy

[Sonnenwende]

Hi, I'm Erika. I'm American, with mostly Italian ancestry, and my SO is German. My 3 girls are from my previous marriage (their father is American w/ German ancestry, actually), and the new baby is going to have dual citizenship and, I hope, be bilingual, although I fear my SO will be as lazy about speaking German to the kiddo as he has been about helping me practice it...:eyesroll. He's still living in Germany, and though we've visited each other every few months since starting our relationship, right now paying for a homebirth = not seeing each other until December. :crying We hope he'll be able to get his visa by March.

I lived with my husband in Germany for 3 years and he rarely would seriously speak it to me. He came to the US last year and he speaks German with me all the time. Maybe the same thing will happen with you.

The visa journey sucks. What type of visa are you going for?

[feminine_earth]

I agree, the visa situation DOES suck. Right now, we're working on getting the conditions lifted off my husband's greencard, and it's like $600. But, at least we're together right now. I feel terrible for all those who cannot be with their partners. DH and I were away from each other for five months before he moved here permanently, and it was the hardest five months of my life.

For those of you going through this, definitely check out VisaJourney (http://www.visajourney.com) if you have not already.

Love and hugs. :hug

[Teenytoona]

Hi all! Why haven't I popped in here?

I'm standard american white (mix of German, Hungarian, Czech and French) and Mr Toona is African American (not sure all heritage, but he's got some French in there). DSD-17 is white/AA mix, her son is 1/4 AA, 3/4 white; DSD-16 is AA/white, DSS-8 and DSD-6 are Mexican/AA (DP likes to call them Blaxican) and DD is white/AA.

We usually try to speak some Spanish to each other, but by no means is it our main means of communication. DP grew up in Los Angeles and learned it there, most people ask him if he's Cuban, though, when he speaks Spanish because of his accent. I learned Spanish at school and then practicing with my college roommie who's major it was, I sound mostly gringa and am not fluent, but I can hold my own, but better than some. DSS is really getting more fluent in Spanish, though he doesn't speak it much with us, I can hear it in his pronuncian of English words. DSD-6's first words were "mas agua" (more water - we lived in Vegas at the time, bet you can figure why those were her first words).

I'm here for many reasons, (not the least of which is hair-management. of which I know SO little, my hair is fine and stick straight). I"m glad to see this wonderful forum.

[eilonwy]

:jaw We have a multicultural forum?!?! I had heard rumors of such a thing, but I did not know it was a reality. How did I miss that? :scratch Sheesh, I really need to go back and read all the posts I miss. In any case, I will cut myself some slack, as it appears that this forum actually opened while I was in the hospital. :o

:wave I'm Rynna, and I'm mixed like a bucket o'paint. :loveeyes: I have four children who are all light-skinned; All of them look white except for BooBah, who (in just the right light) looks like a black child with extremely light skin, blue eyes, and straight, fine hair. :lol Bean's working a nice tan these days, and is almost dark enough right now to pass for Sicilian. Almost. I'm going to hop around in this forum a bit, now that I know it exists. :thumb