Strange Tribe, Part 3
Socialization of a multicultural child
Remember that quote from Thor Heyerdahl that started this story?
Once in a while, you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.
Raising a multicultural, bilingual, X-hybrid child in a child-free, international teachers’ dormitory on a huge university campus environment is stretching even Heyerdahl’s definition of “odd situation”. Trust me on that one.
Our story continues. Co-parenting, it’s not just for breakfast anymore.
*************’
Strange Tribe, Part 3
After grandmother’s departure, with only three of us in our tiny campus apartment, peace now descended. Well, maybe not always exactly peace. My wife shared many of the traditional values of her mother. Now, with a full array of options from two different cultures to choose from, our co-parenting produced daily friction and frequently spawned difficult decisions about the best course. My wife was just as committed as her mother to raising this child in the ways she thought best for him. Fortunately, my wife had also inherited her mother’s fierce independence – even, at times, independence from her mother’s dictums. We were indeed a strange tribe, this tiny nuclear family. A strange tribe, you say? Strangest of all was this darling little boy, making his entry into an evolving blend of modern and traditional worlds.
One additional factor shaped CS. We were living on a huge university campus during his first years. Although we were surrounded by thousands of people every day, there were no other small children for young Chester-the-toddler to play with. He got his initial impressions of the world while living in a child-free environment. The youngest children were 17- and 18-year-old freshmen. So, in his first three years, CS developed a worldview in which there were no children. This meant, obviously, that he was merely the shortest adult in the room.
This outlook was enhanced by the continual presence of students from my English classes. These products of China’s One-Child policy were absolutely entranced by their new “baby brother”. The teacher’s son never met a stranger. He saw only the loving, doting eyes of an adoring new sibling. In Zhengzhou at that time, sighting any foreigner was still a rare occurrence. But a cute foreign baby who was just beginning to walk and explore the world was a sensation. Don’t forget that he was also bilingual; he had heard both English and Chinese daily since birth. Unlike his father, Chester could talk to people in Chinese. Additionally, this boy proved irresistible to some members of the female gender – just those, as Bing Crosby sang, “from three to ninety-three”. His father (me) grew up in the comfortable anonymity of small-town uniformity. Chester, on the other hand, grew up accustomed to being treated like a celebrity – but a very approachable, cuddly celebrity.
There were other contributing factors in forming our strange tribal customs while isolated on our little academic island. In those first three years when we were still living on the campus, we had exactly two brief visits from American family and friends. Although phone conversations were possible, the 13-hour time difference was a formidable barrier to connecting with Chester’s American family. It was largely true for my wife’s family also. Instead of living in a family cluster, her hometown was an hour’s drive away. However, other foreign teachers from many countries were living in the foreign teachers’ dormitory. These foreign teachers happily adopted this young child and exposed him to a wide range of foods, languages, and customs. But, mostly, it was just the three of us against the world. “Baba, Mama, Qiao Qiao. We are family.”
Logistics dictated that I was both father and grandfather to this growing boy. Because of my obvious age, it was common from the very beginning for me to be assumed to be the grandfather – and a rather elderly one at that. (My own grandfather back in Missouri was a youthful 43 when I came along as his first grandchild.) Upon providing clarification of me being the father-not-grandfather, this gained me some wry grins and many thumbs-ups from my Chinese contemporaries. I grew accustomed to this grandfatherhood expectation and, as he became mobile and fluent in Mandarin Chinese, this was also normal for young CS. After endless repetition, we both became inured to the understandable mistake. Not so with my wife, however. Continuing with the mistaken presumption from our appearance, if I were the boy’s grandfather, then this woman beside us must then be the child’s grandmother – and Mama definitely did not like this unspoken presumption of her grandmotherhood. That was one aspect of becoming a mother at age 40 that she had not been prepared for. A strange tribe, indeed.
Often, I would ask my wife, “How did two grumpy old people produce such a happy child?” Indeed he was. From the very beginning, CS was a quiet, observant, blissfully happy child. Of course, given his background, it took a lot to surprise him. In his daily life, everything – values, clothing, food, entertainment, customs, and digital devices – was constantly reviewed for utility and measured against quite viable alternatives from different cultures and languages. Co-parenting from two different cultures while living in a multinational teachers dormitory may not always be smooth and the course obvious but it has its benefits also. Parents can consciously choose what their child learns from a wider set of rules, expectations, and standards than a monoculture child could ever see. We gradually came to accept that we were, indelibly, a strange tribe. Strange but not dysfunctional.
**************************’
In the next installment, we leave the cloistered, relatively quiet university campus and leave for a new city, a new life. It’s a great big world out there; time for an almost-three year old boy to start exploring it.
And, if this tale of our strange tribe is intriguing, please stop by my Buy Me A Coffee page and buy me a coffee. More if you are feeling generous.