Members of this broad third culture community often have other characteristics in common, including:
1.Distinct differences.. Many TCKs are raised where being physically different from those around them is a major aspect of their identity. Even when external appearances are similar to either their host or home culture, TCKs often have a substantially different perspective on the world than do their peers.
2. Expected repatriation.. Unlike immigrants, third culture families usually expect at some point to return permanently to live in their home country. Not all do, but that is the general presumption when they first leave their home countries, and this expectation shapes countless decisions along the way that affect their children, such as educational choices or making efforts to learn or not learn the local language.
The following characteristics are more dependent on “why” and “where” the families are living outside their culture but are still the reality for many third culture experiences.
3.Privileged lifestyle.. Historically, employees of international businesses and members of missions, the military, and the diplomatic corps have been part of an elitist community—one with special privileges bestowed on its members by the sponsoring organization, the host culture, or both. Often, there are systems of logistical support or “perks”: those in the military can use the commissary or PX; embassy or missionary compounds may employ home repair or domestic service personnel; diplomatic families may have chauffeurs to drive the children to school or around town. Even without the perks, there are entitlements such as worldwide travel to and from their post—all at the expense of the sponsoring agency, or “supporters” in the case of missions.
4. System identity.. Members of specific third culture communities may be more directly conscious than peers at home of representing something greater than themselves—be it their government, their company, or God. Jobs can hinge on how well the adults’ behavior, or that of their children, positively reflects the values and standards of the sponsoring agency. This is the reason Dr. Ruth Hill Useem talked about the “representational roles” of many TCKs.
The first two characteristics of living in a culturally diverse and highly mobile world are true for virtually every third culture person. The degree to which TCKs may differ from their host culture, expect to repatriate, enjoy a privileged lifestyle, or identify with the organizational system varies a bit more depending on where (and why) their families are living outside the home culture, but they are still the reality for many third culture experiences.
The magical connection, however, that happens when TCKs meet is more than a sharing of these facts alone. There is something about growing up in and among many cultures that creates an emotional experience and bond that transcends the details. What is that?
A SAMPLE SLICE OF THE “NEITHER/NOR” THIRD CULTURE
ATCKs Rob and Heather are citizens of different countries who grew up on opposite sides of the globe. The only thing they share is the fact they were both raised outside their parents’ home cultures. They met at a lecture on the third culture term at a Families in Global Transition conference and began chatting during a break.
Rob spoke first. “i felt pretty skeptical before coming to this conference, but maybe there is something to this third culture bit. It never occurred to me that the military lifestyle I grew up in had a culture that was different from my home or host cultures. Ijust thought of myself as an American in Japan.”
“Why?” Heather asked.
“I was nine when my family moved from oregon to the ‘American Bubble’ in Japan—that’s what everyone called our military base. It seemed completely American. Through the commissary or PX we could get Cheerios for breakfast, nikes to run in, and even Pringles for snacks. The movies in our base theater were the same ones being shown in the states. Man, we even had tennis courts and a swimming pool just like I did at my YMCA in Portland!”
Heather looked at Rob with amazement. “I can’t believe it!” she said. “I’m at least twenty years older than you, I’ve never been to Japan, my dad worked for the British government in Nigeria, but I can relate to what you’re saying!”
How come?” asked Rob.
“Well, I really don’t know. Iguess I never thought about it before. Maybe because we lived in a ‘British Bubble’? We just didn’t call it that. Although we didn’t have a Px or Commissary, we did have kingsway stores in every major city. They imported all those wonderful British things like marmite, Weetabix, and Jacob’s cream crackers. We also had a swimming pool and tennis courts at the local British club. It all seemed very British and very normal.”
Rob responded, “Yeah, well, I don’t know about you, but for me, even with so many American trappings, life in Japan still wasn’t like living in Portland. When I left the base and took the train to town, I suddenly felt isolated because I couldn’t understand the people chattering around me or read most of the signs.”
”I know what you mean,” Heather responded. “With all our British stuff around, it still wasn’t like living in England. I had a Nigerian nanny who taught me how to speak Hausa and how to Chiniki, or Bargain, for things as I grew up. I wouldn’t have done that in England. But I probably got more into the local culture than you did since we moved to Nigeria when I was two.”
“Well, I got into the local culture too,” Rob said, a bit defensively. “I mean, after a few months I found Japanese friends who taught me how to eat sushi, use chopsticks, bathe in an ofuro, and sleep on a futon. But my life wasn’t like theirs any more than it was like life back in Portland. For one thing, I went to the local international school, where I studied in English instead of Japanese.”
“I understand that, too!” Heather exclaimed. “my life wasn’t the same as my Nigerian friends’ lives either—even if I could speak their language. Ihad a driver who took me back and forth from school each day while most of my friends had to walk long distances in the heat of the day to attend their schools.”
“So did your life overseas seem strange?” Rob and Heather looked up in surprise to see that someone had joined them.
Both shook their heads at the same time in response to the stranger’s question.
“Nope, not to me,” said Rob.
“Me either,” interjected Heather.
The newcomer persisted. “but how could you feel normal when you lived so differently from people in either your own countries or Japan or Nigeria? seems to me that would make you feel somewhat odd.”
Rob thought for a quick Moment. “Well, I suppose it’s because all the other American kids I knew were growing up in that same neither/nor world the speaker talked about today. All my army and international friends had moved as often as I had. We were used to saying good-bye to old friends and hello to new ones. No big deal. That’s life. Nothing unusual since we were all doing it. Idon’t know—it just seemed like a normal way to live, didn’t it, Heather?”
“Exactly. I lived the same way all my other British and expatriate friends did. They had house help. So did we. They flew from one continent to another regularly. So did i. When we went out to play, all of us wore the same kind of pith helmets so we wouldn’t get sunstroke. To me, it’s just how life was.”
While both Rob and Heather happened to grow up in an easily identifiable expatriate community, expatriate families who live in less defined communities still find ways to keep some expression of their home culture. In Indiana, the Japanese community has organized special swimming classes at the local YMCA for their TCKs because they want to maintain their traditionally more disciplined approach to training children than is expected of most American children. They also conduct Saturday classes when all academic subjects are taught in Japanese so their TCKs maintain both written and verbal language skills. A similar thing is happening in Slovakia. The Koreans working for international businesses send their children to the international schools during the week but have Saturday school there to make sure they can fit back into Korean schools when they repatriate.
But all this talk about the third culture should not distract us from understanding the most crucial part of the TCK definition, the fact that a TCK:
“ . . . is a person . . . “
Why are these words critical to all further discussion on third culture kids? Because we must never forget that, above all else, a TCK is a person. Sometimes TCKs spend so much time feeling different from people in the dominant culture around them that they (or those who notice these differences) begin to feel TCKs are, in fact, intrinsically different—some sort of special breed of being. While their experiences may be different from other people’s, TCKs were created with the same need that non-TCKs have for building relationships in which they love and are loved, ones in which they know others and are known by them. They need a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives and have the same capacities to think, learn, create, and make choices as others do. The characteristics, benefits, and challenges that we describe later in this book arise from the interactions of the various aspects of mobility and the cross-cultural nature of this upbringing and how they do or don’t help meet these most fundamental needs, not from some difference in them as persons.
“ . . . who has spent a significant part . . . “
Time by itself doesn’t determine how deep an impact the third culture experience has on the development of a particular child. Other variables such as the child’s age, personality, and participation in the local culture have an important effect. For example, living overseas between the ages of one and four will affect a child differently than if that same experience occurs between the ages of eleven and fourteen.
While we can’t say precisely how long a child must live outside the home culture to develop the classic TCK characteristics, we can say it is more than a two-week or even a two-month vacation to see the sights. Some people are identifiable TCKs or ATCKs after spending as little as one year outside their parents’ culture. Of course, other factors such as the parents’ attitudes and behavior or the policies of the sponsoring agency add to how significant the period spent as a TCK is—or was—in shaping a child’s life.
“ . . . of his or her developmental years . . . “
Although the length of time needed for someone to become a true TCK can’t be precisely defined, the time when it happens can. It must occur during the developmental years—from birth to eighteen years of age. We recognize that a cross-cultural experience affects adults as well as children. In 2000, during the Families in Global Transition conference in Indianapolis, Paulette Bethel, Joanna Parfitt, and Christine Dowdeswell convened a group of interested attendees to look at what they called third culture adults (TCAs): those who go overseas for the first time after growing up in a more traditional “monocultural” environment of their passport culture. The difference for a TCK, however, is that this cross-cultural experience occurs during the years when that child’s sense of identity, relationships with others, and view of the world are being formed in the most basic ways. While parents may change careers and become former international businesspeople, former missionaries, former military personnel, or former foreign service officers, no one is ever a former third culture kid. TCKs simply move on to being adult third culture kids because their lives grow out of the roots planted in and watered by the third culture experience.
“ . . . outside the parents’ culture.”
The home culture is defined in terms of the parents’ culture, because often TCKs have a different sense of “home” than their parents might. For that reason, we will generally use the terms passport country or passport culture to mean the parental country or culture. Most often, TCKs grow up outside their passport country as well as culture, and the stories throughout our book predominantly feature this more typical TCK experience. It’s important to recognize, however, that children can have a TCK-like experience who never leave their parents’ country but are still raised among different cultural worlds. We will look at this reality in chapter 3.
“ . . . The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.”
This brings us back to Erika.
As she flew back to the United States, Erika wondered how it could be that life felt like such a rich dance in and through so many cultures, while at the same time that very richness made it seem impossible to stop the dance. To land in Singapore would mean she could celebrate the hustle and bustle of that wonderful city she loved so much, but then she would miss the mountains of Ecuador and the joy of touching and seeing the beautiful weavings in the Otavalo Indian markets. To end the dance in Ecuador meant she would never again see the magnificent colors of fall in upstate new York or taste her grandmother’s special sunday pot roast, but to stop in new York or Dayton, where her parents now lived, meant she would miss not only Singapore and Ecuador, but all the other places she had been and seen. Erika wished for just one Moment she could bring together the many worlds she had known and embrace them all at the same time, but she knew it could never happen.
This is at the heart of the issues of rootlessness and restlessness we will discuss later. This lack of full ownership is what gives that sense of simultaneously belonging “everywhere and nowhere.”
“ . . . Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK’s life experience . . . “
Obviously, there are specific ways each home and host culture shapes each TCK. (Rob loves peanut butter and jelly, but Heather prefers Marmite; Rob eats his Cheerios and speaks Japanese, while Heather eats Weetabix and speaks Hausa.) But it’s not only food and language that shape them. Cultural rules do as well.
• After living in London where his dad served as an ambassador for six years, Musa had trouble with how people dealt with time when he returned to Guinea. Instead of relaxing as others from his home culture could when meetings did not begin and end as scheduled, he felt the same frustration many expatriates experienced. Musa had exchanged his home culture’s more relational worldview for a time-oriented worldview during his time abroad.
• At his summer job in Canada, Gordon’s boss thought he was dishonest and lazy because Gordon never looked anyone in the eye. But where Gordon had grown up in Africa, children always kept their eyes to the ground when talking with adults.
Certainly cultural practices are incorporated from the unique aspects of both host and home cultures, but the third culture is more than the sum total of the parts of home and host culture. If it were only that, each TCK would remain alone in his or her experience.
“ . . . the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.”
Erika returned to Dayton, ohio, after her long, final flight back from Singapore. She began teaching high school french and spanish during the day, and tutoring international business people in English filled her evenings. Once more she tried to accept the reality that her past was gone. Life must go on, and she couldn’t expect anyone else to understand her when she didn’t understand herself.
Then a remarkable thing occurred. Erika met Judy.
One evening Erika went to see a play and got there a few minutes early. After settling in her seat, she opened her program to see what to expect.
Before she could finish scanning the first page, a middle-aged woman with curly, graying hair squeezed past her, settling on the next seat.
Why couldn’t she have a ticket for the row in front? that’s wide open. Erika rolled her eyes to the ceiling. All I wanted was a little space tonight.
Then it got worse. This woman was one of those friendly types.
“Hi, there. I’m Judy. What’s your name?
” Oh, brother, lady. I’m not into this kind of chit chat. “I’m Erika. It’s nice to meet you.”
There, she thought. That’s over with. And she turned her eyes back to study the program again.
“Well, I’m glad to meet you too.”
Why won’t she leave me alone? Erika wondered.
The lady went on. “I come for th
e plays every month but I haven’t seen you before. Are you new here? Where are you from?”
C’mon, lady. Erika was becoming more internally agitated by the Moment. This is the theater, not a witness stand. Besides, you don’t really want to know anyway. “I live here in Dayton,” Erika replied, with cool politeness. That ought to end it.
But Judy continued. “Have you always lived here?”
Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds Page 4