Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds

by David C. Pollock

  Like Brice and President Obama, many CCKs grow up in more than one of these cross-cultural environments. Looking through this expanded lens helps us see how the layers of cultural mixing and matching in today’s changing world are becoming increasingly complex for many children and families.

  The Ngujos laughed when they saw the CCK model. “We never stopped to think of how many of these groups our kids are in.” When asked to explain, Mrs. Ngujo said, “Well, I came from one region in Kenya; My husband came from another. We both spoke Swahili and English, but neither of us spoke each other’s mother tongue. I guess that makes my kids members of the bicultural group. My husband took a job with a large international bank, so our family immigrated to the States. There we became part of a minority population for the first time, but soon his bank began sending us on assignments all over the world. at that point, our kids became traditional TCKs. I’m glad to know there is a term to describe all four experiences at the same time!”

  President Obama himself is in six of our categories: biracial, bicultural, TCK, minority, and then educational CCK because he attended a local school where he studied in a different language from his home culture during his four years as a TCK in Indonesia. He is also a domestic TCK. When he grew up in Hawaii, he lived with his white grandparents in an environment where many others were also of mixed race and cultural backgrounds. When he moved to the mainland, others defined him as primarily “African American.” His autobiography, Dreams from My Father, describes his struggles to come to terms with his identity during that time in a way TCKs of all backgrounds understand.

  Even for many TCKs of one primary ethnic/racial background, life is getting more complicated. No longer do they navigate primarily between one host culture and their passport culture as they did in the days when Ruth Hill Useem first named them. Instead, many live in four or five (and sometimes more!) different countries while growing up. The layering of cultural influences in their lives grows exponentially as well.

  The question, however, remains: While it may be good to find a common term to describe children who grow up among many cultures, how does that help us begin to compare and contrast these experiences with all of the obvious differences between them?

  Lessons from the TCK “Petri Dish”

  Before Ruth Hill Useem gave unifying language to this experience, those who lived in these various third culture communities assumed the issues they and their children faced were specific to their group (or sector) alone. Why were missionary kids so strange when they returned to their passport country for high school or college? Why were military kids such “brats”? And on and on the wonderings went. Each group looked at sector-specific phenomena they saw occurring among children being raised in their particular system. There was no assumption of commonality between the groups because there were so many different details in how or why the families had gone to another country

  Understanding that virtually every child in each of these sectors grew up with similar experiences—such as a cross-cultural upbringing, high mobility, expected repatriation, and often a system identity as we mentioned in chapter 2—expedited the discussion for everyone. Each group no longer had to look only at the specific details of the basic phenomenon they saw; understanding and resources could be shared among all the sectors.

  By looking at the shared whole, however, issues that applied specifically to each sector became more visible as well. For example, how did the long and often multiple separations from at least one parent, coupled with the fear (for those in a war zone) that this parent might never return, play out specifically for military kids? How did the sense that they and their families represented an entire nation affect children growing up in the foreign service? How did the “God” piece of growing up in a religious system impact the missionary kid? How did watching decisions made by a parent’s corporation based on the “bottom line” that might adversely influence the local economy shape a business kid? Figure 3-2 illustrates these influences.

  In other words, it’s not entirely God’s fault that a missionary kid might carry unresolved grief; that is a common characteristic for TCKs of all sectors. At the same time, dealing with separating a view of God from the religious subculture they have known may be a challenge unique to TCKs in the mission sector. Neither is the military to blame for a person who has “itchy feet” and is always looking to move after two years. But the fear of a black limousine pulling up to the front door to announce a parent’s death may be specific to a child raised in this subset of the TCK experience. Once universals are defined, other specific issues can be discussed.

  These same lessons apply to understanding CCKs. Figure 3-3 gives us examples of what CCKs of all backgrounds share and what issues may be specific for each particular type of experience.

  Figure 3-2 Third Cultural Kids: Potential Commonalities and Differences

  (© 1996 Ruth E. Van Reken)

  Figure 3-3 Cross-Cultural Kids: Potential Commonalities and Differences

  (© 2008 Ruth E. Van Reken)

  While the idea of CCKs is a growing concept, there is one thing we know for sure that virtually all CCKs share: by definition, each of them grows up in some sort of cross-cultural lifestyle or environment, no matter the particular circumstance. One friend who has worked with the refugees of Darfur looked at the CCK model and said, “This is the first time I see my friends at Darfur being invited back to the human race. We are so used to thinking of all their issues as a result of the violence, which is indeed terrible. But we have been forgetting that in addition to that, they have lost their cultural world as well and feel that loss as all others do when it happens to them for whatever reason. Thanks for letting them be part of yours.”

  Some of the most invisible CCKs, however, may be domestic TCKs—those who have moved in and among various cultures right within their homeland. Jennifer is one.

  Both of Jennifer’s parents grew up in the upper-middle-class suburbs of Toronto. When Jennifer was nine, they became teachers for five years on a First nation (Native American) reservation near Vancouver. Jennifer went to school, played, ate, and visited with her First Nation playmates almost exclusively during those years—yet her lifestyle was not the same as their lifestyle. For example, there were celebratory rituals in the First Nation culture that Jennifer’s family never practiced. Her parents had rules for curfew and study hours that many of her friends didn’t have, but Jennifer accepted these differences between herself and her friends.

  When she was 14, Jennifer’s parents returned to Toronto. They wanted her to have a more “normal” high school experience. unfortunately, it wasn’t as normal as they had hoped. For one thing, Jennifer’s new classmates seemed to judge one another far more critically by clothing styles than she had ever before experienced. Far worse, however, was that Jennifer saw this emphasis on apparent superficiality as stemming from a lack of concern for what she considered the real issues of life.

  When newspapers reported the ongoing conflict of land issues between the First Nation people and the Canadian government, she read the accounts with keen interest. She personally knew friends whose futures were directly affected by these political decisions. But when she tried to discuss such things with fellow classmates or their parents, their response was almost dismissive: “I don’t know what those people are complaining about. Look at all we’ve already done for them.” The more she tried to explain why this topic needed attention, the more they labeled her as radical, and the more she labeled them as uncaring. Jennifer sobbed herself to sleep many nights, wishing for the comfortable familiarity of the world and friends she’d known before.

  Although she had never left Canada, Jennifer had become a domestic TCK— someone raised in that world between worlds—within her own country.

  The military is another place where domestic TCKs often develop, even though the family may never have gone overseas. Because the military subculture is quite different from that of the civilian population around it, a particular
lifestyle develops (see Mary Edwards Wertsch’s book Military Brats). When military parents return to civilian life, their children often experience many of the same feelings that internationally mobile TCKs describe when they return to their passport countries, despite the fact that they may have lived their entire lives on homeland soil.

  Raised on U.S. Navy bases in California and Washington, D.C., Bernadette was fourteen when her father retired from the Navy and her family settled in the midwestern town of Terre Haute, Indiana. Bernadette later described the experience as one of total alienation from her peers, whose life experience was completely foreign to her. “They had no idea what the PX was, how much life on a base is governed by the security issues surrounding it, or how normal it was to mix with those of different races on a daily basis because our parents were all working as peers in their various assignments. and I had no idea what it felt like to grow up in one town in the Midwest with little interaction with others who were not from your presumed social group or race.”

  This is where the idea of TCKs as prototypes for others becomes reality. As we consider why a cross-cultural childhood matters in a TCK’s life, we can begin to see what lessons learned there can be applied to other CCKs as well. For example, although the way cultural interactions occurred and the degree of mobility were different in all of these other types of CCK experiences from the traditional TCK’s world, all shared the same common emotional experience: when they tried to relate to those who “should” be their own, none of them felt as if they fit or belonged to that group any longer. This is the “like experience” described in the TCK definition—one of the new places of connection in our changing world. As we continue to find the common points that CCKs of all backgrounds share, we can see more clearly what, in fact, are unique issues to consider for those various subgroups as well.

  We will continue to focus primarily on the specifics of the traditional TCK experience as we proceed through this book. We do so for two reasons.

  1. This is the experience we know in detail.. We want to continue giving TCKs and ATCKs language and understanding for the depth and unique aspects of their own cross-cultural journey. We have seen for many years how important that is.

  2. As we do so, we invite all readers to consider common themes for the larger cohort of CCKs. What are the principles and basic understandings from the TCK experience that we can apply to other experiences as well? This book will not finish that discussion, but we trust it will start it, and expedite that ongoing discussion.

  With that in mind, we move on to why a cross-cultural childhood matters for TCKs and for others as well.

  CHAPTER 4

  Why a Cross-Cultural Childhood Matters

  I am

  a confusion of cultures.

  Uniquely me.

  I think this is good

  because I can

  understand

  the traveller, sojourner, foreigner,

  the homesickness

  that comes.

  I think this is also bad

  because I cannot

  be understood

  by the person who has sown and grown in one place.

  They know not

  the real meaning of homesickness

  that hits me

  now and then.

  sometimes I despair of

  understanding them.

  I am

  an island

  and

  a United Nations.

  Who can recognise either in me

  but God?1

  —“Uniquely Me” by Alex Graham James

  Who Am I?

  This poem by Alex, an Australian TCK who grew up in India, captures the paradoxical nature of the TCK experience—the sense of being so profoundly connected yet simultaneously disconnected to people and places around the world. Again, the question is this: What makes Alex, like Erika and many other TCKs, feel this way?

  Before we can answer that question, we need to take a closer look at the world in which TCKs grow up, a world filled with cross-cultural transitions and high mobility. These two related but distinct forces play a large role in shaping a TCK’s life. Through this lens, we can later see how some of what we learn can be applied to CCKs as well.

  One other note: We realize many adults also experience cross-cultural transitions and high mobility as they embark on international careers, and their lives inevitably are changed in the process. By looking into the impact of culture and mobility on their children, it is our hope that it will give them language and concepts to better understand their own journey. But we also believe it is important for these third culture adults to understand some distinct differences between making a cross-cultural move for the first time as an adult and growing up cross-culturally. People who initially go to another culture as adults undoubtedly experience culture shock and need a period of adjustment. They, too, have lifelong shifts in their worldview after a major cross-cultural move, but their basic value system, sense of identity, and establishment of core relationships with family and friends have already developed in the home culture. Most often, they clearly see themselves as Koreans, Americans, Australians, Kenyans, or Indonesians who happen to be living in another place or culture. Their basic sense of who they are and where they are from in this fundamental place is intact, even though they also may initially feel like strangers in their home country if they return after being gone for a long time.

  Unlike third culture adults, TCKs move back and forth from one culture to another before they have completed the critical developmental task of forming a sense of their own personal or cultural identity. A British child taking toddling steps on foreign soil or speaking his or her first words in Chinese with an amah (nanny) has no idea what it means to be a human being let alone “British” yet. He or she simply responds to what is happening in the Moment.

  To have a meaningful discussion about TCKs, it is essential to remember that it is an interplay of these factors—living in both a culturally changing and highly mobile world during the formative years—rather than any single factor alone, that leads to the evolution of both the benefits and challenges we describe as well as the personal characteristics. To better understand how the interplay of these factors works, we need to look at each one separately. We will begin this chapter by taking a look at the cross-cultural nature of the TCK’s childhood. Then, in chapter 5, we will move on to high mobility.

  The Significance of Culture

  All children, including TCKs, face a myriad of developmental tasks as they grow from helpless infants into healthy adults. Among them is the need to develop a strong sense of personal identity as well as group identity, answering the questions Who am I? and Where do I belong? Traditionally, the family and community mirror back the answers and the child sees his or her image reflected in them. Hans Christian Andersen’s fable The Ugly Duckling reflects how this process of finding personal and group identity works.

  When a baby swan emerges from its shell in the midst of a nest of ducklings, mother duck is shocked and the other ducklings laugh at the clumsy, overgrown, freakish supposed-specimen of a duck. In the story, the presumed duck siblings bully and mercilessly tease the odd creature. Soon the baby swan accepts the judgment of his community, believes he is ugly and runs away. Not until much later does he see himself differently. He finally meets other swans and realizes they reflect his own image in a beautiful way. At last this little ugly duckling understands both his personal identity in being a swan and that he does, in fact, belong to a community.2

  Through the ages, this process of learning identity and culture has occurred so naturally that it’s been like breathing. It happens all the time, but until someone chokes and can’t catch a breath, no one notices what’s going on. Because it is such an unconscious process, however, we need to take time to dissect it so that we can find some important keys to unlock the mystery of why common TCK characteristics occur later on. We begin by looking in general at what culture is, how it’s learned, an
d why it’s important. Then we will compare how the process of cultural learning is the same or different for those who grow up among many cultures from children born and bred in the more traditional monocultural experience.

  What Is Culture?

  When we think of the word culture, obvious representations such as how to dress, eat, speak, and act like those around us come to mind. But learning culture is more than learning conformity to external patterns of behavior. Culture is also a system of shared concepts, beliefs, and values.3 It is the framework from which we interpret and make sense of life and the world around us. As cultural anthropologist Paul Hiebert emphasized, culture is learned rather than instinctive— something caught from, as well as taught by, the surrounding environment and passed on from one generation to the next.4

  In other words, young mothers don’t buy books on How to Teach Your Child Culture. From the Moment of birth, children are learning the ways of their community. Parents speak a particular language to them. They are clothed and carried in ways defined by that community as “right.” Pink is for girls, blue is for boys. Tie the baby on your back. Put the baby in a safe car seat. As the children grow, extended family members reinforce the concepts of how life is approached and lived. “What do you say?” asks grandma after handing her grandchild a cookie. Later, teachers, peers, and others in the community reflect and teach how life is to be lived “properly” in this place.

  The Role of the Visible and Invisible layers of Culture