Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds

by David C. Pollock

  At any rate, there are three common reactions we see from TCKs as they try to sort out their identity issues, particularly when they are in the hidden immigrant or adopted boxes:

  • Chameleons—those who try to find a “same as” identity. They hide their time lived in other places and try to conform externally through clothes, language, or attitudes to whatever environment they are in

  • Screamers—those who try to find a “different from” identity. They will let other people around them know that they are not like them and don’t plan to be.

  • Wall owers—those who try to find a “nonidentity.” Rather than risk being exposed as someone who doesn’t know the local cultural rules, they prefer to sit on the sidelines and watch, at least for an extended period, rather than to engage in the activities at hand.

  In later chapters we will give examples of each of these types of responses. In the end, however, TCKs and their parents don’t always share a common sense of national identity or a similar sense of “home.” This can be distressing for some parents. In addition, throughout life TCKs and ATCKs may encounter other unexpected or unrecognized cultural misunderstandings with teachers, peers at school or in the workplace, and their spouses or significant others. Why? Because, once more, what they appear to be outside, or by passport, isn’t who they are in the invisible places within. We see in this experience what Weaver warned us would happen—more confusion when what we expect of each other is not what we get.

  While cultural identity is far more complex than the simple model in Figure 4-3 depicts, we have seen in the many years since our initial conversation that formed this model what a great starting point this concept is for many TCKs, ATCKs, and countless others of many backgrounds to understand their stories.

  Lessons from the TCK “Petri Dish”

  If, indeed, Dr. Ted Ward declared that TCKs were the prototype citizen of the future back in 1984, what are the lessons learned from their experience in this cross-cultural piece that we can apply to others in today’s world, beginning with other types of CCKs? The following are some of the kinds of stories we hear.

  International adoptee Crystal Chappell writes in “American, Korean, or Both? Politics of Identity Reach Personal Levels”:

  Because of their appearance, Korean American adoptees face assumptions that, as Asian Americans, they are foreigners. “They always expect a story explaining why you’re here, why you’re so acculturated,” Chappell says. “I’ve been complimented on how well I speak English! Duh! That’s the final clincher.”16

  Crystal, and many others, are literally in the adopted box of our cultural identity grid. She may look quite different from her adoptive family, but she has grown up in that family’s cultural world. Those from the dominant culture of her adopted land see her and presume “difference” at the deeper layers of culture when, in reality, she is far more like them than different from them.

  But it can get even more complicated for some children in today’s world.

  Kenny’s parents moved to the United States from China when he was four years old. They worked hard to give him the best education possible, enrolling him in a rigorous private school in their area. As a high school senior, Kenny had to do primary research for one of his classes. He wondered what topic to pursue. “Suddenly,” he said, “it occurred to me for the first time that I probably live a very different lifestyle than most of my friends. At school they see me as an American but don’t realize that every day when I leave, I become Chinese. Neither my grandmother, who lives with us, nor my mother speak English. Inside the walls of my home is an all-Chinese world.” he then added, “I’m sure they don’t realize that every time I go to China to visit our family, I become Chinese. The minute I get off the airplane, I change my clothes, my language, and my mannerisms completely, and they don’t know I’m from America. I do the reverse when I come back to the States.”

  Kenny, like the children of many immigrants, attends school in the dominant culture but goes home each evening to an entirely different culture. Minorities or biracial/bicultural kids can have similar experiences. They may grow up in the same city but daily go back and forth between various cultural worlds as Kenny did. Is it possible ethnic communities of immigrants were, and are, in some ways, interstitial cultures similar to that of the “third culture”? Think of what post-integration school busing in the U.S. Has done for years in terms of moving children across cultural borders on a daily basis. In the early days of busing, Paulette Bethel, an African American of Creole descent, was bused to a former all-white school in New Orleans. She says of that experience, “Each morning I left a black world to enter a completely different white culture. Each evening when I returned home, my parents expected me to be black again.”

  For many across the world, political realities also cause social upheavals. When the Berlin Wall fell, the cultural milieu of those who had never ventured beyond the confines of life within those walls changed remarkably. Suddenly previously unseen vistas opened to them. New architecture, new thinking patterns, new governmental structures altered their world completely without them ever moving to a new town or country. Practically overnight, parents shaped in one cultural world found themselves raising children in an entirely different reality, with no guidance from their own experience on how to accomplish such a task. Consequently, these children had no role models in the older generation to watch and learn how life was to be. Tea is one of these children:

  “I was born in Belgrade, the former Yugoslavia, and my Mom’s side of the family is from Croatia. The war started, and then I had to ask if I am Serbian or Croatian, because there was no more Yugoslavia. We never experienced the war, thankfully, just the economic effects—terrible inflation, my Mom receiving her salary in flour and sugar bags instead of money.”

  When Tea was 10, her family moved to Taiwan. After her parents divorced, Tea, her brother, Branko, and their mother moved to Switzerland to live with her new stepfather. Of that time she says, “My first five years in Switzerland were bad because I couldn’t speak German and because I didn’t like my new high school.”

  Although she is enjoying her college days better, when asked where she belongs, Tea says, “Nowhere, really. I used to belong in Belgrade (Serbia) and in Taiwan, but I don’t anymore. And I don’t really fit in here in Switzerland even though I’ve lived here for seven years. Right now I have the most sense of belonging here at the university.”

  Our drawers and hearts are filled with these stories. None of the examples cited here lived their cross-cultural experience in the traditional TCK mode—a parent with a career going overseas to one country, staying for awhile, and then repatriating. Yet, over and over, they tell us they relate to much of the TCK characteristics described in part II of this book. So what is the common thread of connection for all these stories?

  One main theme many CCKs of all backgrounds seem to share with traditional TCKs is trying to develop a sense of personal and cultural identity when the world around them mirrors back changing definitions of who they are. Like TCKs, their lives are also filled with multiple cultural worlds, even though an ethnic community may be substituted for a host culture and so on. Think of the various cultural identity boxes Kenny fits. At school, where the majority culture is white, past generations might have considered him to be a foreigner. In today’s world, he is probably assumed to be “one of the gang.” Others looking at him and at our grid might assume he is in the adopted box. He doesn’t look like the majority population, but because he speaks with the same accent, likes the same entertainment, and wears similar clothes, most fellow students and teachers presume his life parallels theirs in the deeper levels of culture too. Yet none of them go home to a Chinese world. And what cultural identity box is Kenny in at home? A mirror? His grandmother speaks no English so how can she mirror his experience? A hidden immigrant—assumed to be the same but inwardly different? What about when he goes to China? Perhaps he is simply a true bicultural person? Maybe our grid it
self needs to grow. The fact is for countless children, sorting out their basic sense of cultural identity is becoming very complicated. When asked if he felt his ultimate identity was Chinese or American, Kenny himself had to think for a Moment and said, “I guess I’d have to say I feel more American than Chinese.”

  What about Tea? She, too, could be in any cultural identity box at any time, depending on her surroundings and circumstances. Many CCKs we know seem to live perpetually in the hidden immigrant or adopted categories. Because, like traditional TCKs, their lives also have been shaped by many cultural worlds, their visible and invisible layers often do not match.

  A few years ago, Ruth and cross-cultural consultant Paulette Bethel began to use the term hidden diversity to describe and expand the basic concept contained in the idea of the hidden immigrant and adopted boxes—the idea that what you see is not what you get. They define hidden diversity as “a diversity of experience that shapes a person’s life and worldview but is not readily apparent on the outside, unlike the usual diversity markers such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and so on.”17

  Our philosopher friend Barb Knuckles wonders if this hidden diversity so many CCKs experience creates another shared experience:

  Maybe the great commonality is that the children often are different than their parents’ generation in cultural and identity ways, so they can’t really “go home” to their parents world . . . Is that the commonality with tcks, too? that is true for people who come from noncollege families and communities, and then go off to college and end up jumping a couple social/educational levels. They never can really go home the same way again . . . I wonder whether it is an in-betweenness. [These] children do grow up in a different world than their parents, but in the same world as their own generation. Those whose family’s culture and expectations shape them enough to not be at-home with peers and . . . Enough to not be at-home with parents, are at-home with others who are equally home-less . . . Maybe that is the commonality, an identity that is not unified internally.18

  Is this so? We invite further discussion, but we believe there is a bottom line: Any time children grow up among many cultural environments where they are true participants rather than just looking at the “other” from a distance, the deeper layers of their cultural selves and identities are being formed in nontraditional ways. These are important factors to consider as our world continues to increase the degree of cultural mixing in years to come.

  As we said earlier, there are two major overarching realities of a TCK’s life. This cross-cultural lifestyle is one. Now we look at the second one—mobility.

  CHAPTER 5

  Why High Mobility Matters

  I had adored the nomadic life. I had loved gallivanting from Japan to Taiwan to America to Holland and onward. In many ways, I had adapted well. I had learned to love new smells and vistas and the mysteries inherent to new cultures. . . . I had conquered the language of internationalists, both the polite exchange of conversation in formal settings and the easy intimacy of globetrotters. I was used to country-hopping. To move every couple of years was in my blood. In spite of the fact that foreign service life is one long continuous meal of loss—loss of friends and beloved places— I loved it. The warp of my life was the fact of moving on.1

  —Sara Mansfield Tabor

  SARA HAS WRITTEN ABOUT ONE OF THE GREAT BENEFITS countless TCKs mention when they reflect on their lives: a wealth of experience where traversing time zones and date lines while skipping from one airport to another is part of normal life. The amazing places they have seen and cultures they have witnessed are almost beyond belief for those who have not lived this way. There is no question that this is a great gift.

  Yet, as we have looked at the cross-cultural nature of the TCK experience in some detail, we have seen how the very richness of the first overlay—growing up in a culturally diverse world—can still result in some real challenges along the way. What about the second main overlay of the TCK experience—high mobility? Are there equally significant paradoxes for TCKs that rise from this part of their lives as well?

  We believe so. Did you notice the phrase that Sara almost off-handedly tucks into her account of the joys of mobility? She acknowledges that this wonderful, highly mobile lifestyle is also “one long continuous meal of loss.” Why?

  As we will soon see in our discussion of the Third Culture Kid Profile in part II of this book, the benefits from both the cross-cultural and highly mobile nature of life for TCKs are great. But for TCKs to use them well and with joy, we must understand the underlying dynamics and fundamental challenges of growing up with high mobility as well as those of a cross-cultural upbringing. Again, remember a challenge isn’t necessarily a liability. It can spur us on to greater things. But it is something we have to figure out how to work with, and work through, to succeed in reaching our goal. So let’s take a look at why high mobility is such a significant factor for many TCKs.

  When someone asks us what, despite the many benefits, we see as the main challenges TCKs and ATCKs face, we answer, “Finding a sense of personal and cultural identity and dealing with unresolved grief.” While the two distinct forces of cross-cultural living and high mobility intertwine to create the overall picture of the TCK Profile, the reality is that the matters related to identity are primarily embedded in the cross-cultural overlay, and the issue of unresolved grief is connected most closely with the mobile nature of this experience. To understand why, we’ll first define what we mean by high mobility and see what normally happens during any cycle of mobility. Then we’ll consider what extra factors may intensify “normal mobility” for TCKs and how, when not recognized, they can lead to special challenges.

  Defining High Mobility

  People often ask how we can say that high mobility is one of the two main characteristics of life for most TCKs when it’s obvious mobility patterns vary so widely among them. Some move to a different country every two or three years with parents who are in the military or diplomatic corps. We can see that their lives are highly mobile. Others stay in one country from birth to university, so mobility wouldn’t appear to be an issue for them. The advent of short-term assignments for the employee often means the family stays home. How can this be a life impacted by high mobility?

  All TCKs, however, deal with mobility issues at one level or another. Children of parents in business like Erika or those with parents in the foreign service usually take a month of home leave each summer. Missionary children may only return to their passport country every two to four years, but they usually stay away from the host country for a longer period of time than other TCKs might, sometimes up to a year. Each leave means saying good-bye to friends in the host country, hello to relatives and friends at home, good-bye to those people a short time later, and hello again to the host country friends—if those friends are still there. When a parent takes a short-term assignment overseas, there are frequent and repeated cycles of mobility within the home itself as this parent travels while the remainder of the family stays in one place. Military families have known this type of mobility for generations. In today’s world, more and more families living overseas have known the unplanned mobility of having to evacuate due to violence in the host country. TCKs who attend boarding school have other major patterns of mobility: Whether they go home once or twice a year or spend three months at school followed by one month at home, each coming and going involves more greetings and farewells—and more adjustments. Paul Seaman describes this pattern of mobility well.

  Like nomads, we moved with the seasons. Four times a year we packed up and moved to, or back to, another temporary home. As with the seasons, each move offered something to look forward to while something had to be given up. . . We learned early that “home” was an ambiguous concept, and wherever we lived, some essential part of our lives was always someplace else. So we were always of two minds. We learned to be happy and sad at the same time. We learned to be independent and [accept] that things were out of our contro
l. . . . We had the security and the consolation that whenever we left one place we were returning to another, already familiar one.2

  Besides a TCK’s personal mobility, every third culture community is filled with people who continually come and go. Short-term volunteers arrive to assist in a project for several weeks and then they are gone. A favorite teacher accepts another position a continent away. Best friends leave because their parents transfer to a new post. Older siblings depart for boarding school or university at home. The totality of all these comings and goings—of others as well as the TCKs themselves— is what we mean when we use the term high mobility throughout this book.

  Why Mobility Affects Us

  Any time there is mobility—ours or someone else’s—everyone involved goes through some type of transition experience as well. In actuality, life for everyone, TCK or not, is a series of transitions: a “passage from one state, stage, subject, or place to another.”3 Each transition changes something in our lives. Some transitions are normal and progressive—we expect them, as in the transition from infancy to childhood or from middle age to old age. Sometimes these life transitions include physical moves from one place to another, such as when a young person goes off to university in another state. In most cases, we know these transitions are coming and have time to prepare for them.