What she's up against

Quite aside from problems that she may face because she’s adopted and because she’s Asian, my daughter faces a whole laundry list of potential problems simply because she’s a girl.  I’ve recently come across a couple of news items / blog posts that demonstrate what I mean.

The first is a letter written by Dr. Kelly Flanagan to his three daughters.  Flanagan was in the cosmetics aisle of his local Big Box store and was depressed by the spectacle of rows upon rows of bottles and boxes and packages of products that are pitched to women who want to make themselves “beautiful”. 

When you have a daughter, you start to realize she's just as strong as everyone else in the house -- a force to be reckoned with, a soul on fire with the same life and gifts and passions as any man. But sitting in this store aisle, you also begin to realize most people won't see her that way. They'll see her as a pretty face and a body to enjoy. And they'll tell her she has to look a certain way to have any worth or influence.(1) [emphasis mine]

The second is a story – controversy might be a better word – about a Duke University freshman who has become a porn star ostensibly to help pay her college tuition.  This is bad enough, but there are people out there who think that what she’s doing is – somehow – liberating.  She’s a feminist, you see.  I’m not sure when sex for money stopped being “prostitution” (which I always thought was considered to be a Bad Thing) and became “empowering”, but such is our fascinating modern world.

So, here we have a couple of very different messages, archetypes of those that will constantly bombard my daughter:

1.     You haven’t got to LOOK beautiful to BE beautiful.  Don’t let people tell you that you’re somehow worthless because you don’t meet highly artificial standards of physical beauty

2.     Use your body!  SELL your body!  Show your Power as a Woman(TM) by getting naked and getting freaky!

I think that you can guess which message I favor.

I don’t say that there’s anything wrong with a girl – a woman – trying to make herself look nice.  The world is what it is, and there is a good bit of research to support the common sense observation that better-looking people tend, all other things being equal, to get ahead in life; their looks are a natural advantage.  There’s certainly nothing to be gained by making oneself UNattractive, by deliberately dressing badly, not being decently groomed, etc.  The problem arises when, as Flanagan warns his daughters, one allows appearance – body shape, hair style, clothes, shoes, etc. – to be the sole indicator of self-worth.

My daughter will see many, many images every day of what she “SHOULD” look like.  She’ll be bombarded with advertisements for products and clothing and shoes and tanning salons, all promising to make her more “beautiful”.  Worse, she'll be told, often explicitly, that she is nothing more than "pretty face and a body to enjoy".  What will counteract these messages?

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(1)    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-m-flanagan/words-from-a-father-to-his-daughter-from-the-makeup-aisle_b_4670638.html

My favorite pics

As my wife has posted her two favorite pics of Caroline, I thought I'd get in on the act.  I admit to spending a lot of time looking at the photos we've been lucky enough to get.  I think you'll agree: she's adorable.

 

"C'mon!  What are you waiting for???" 

 

 

 

 

"Chop-chop!"

Race and culture

When we started down the path to adoption, I discovered that we had to attend parenting class.  I braced myself for blocks of instruction on how to care for a small child including (shudder) how to change a diaper.  Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I found that the focus of the classes was on the psychological challenges faced by adoptees and their parents, including issues and questions and problems regarding race and culture.  We were taught that it is important to honor our daughter's birth culture, and we plan to do that as well as we can.  But, as I've thought more about it and read what other adoptees have written on the subject, I am increasingly wondering just what all of it means.

According to wiki:

Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications. While some researchers sometimes use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race often is used in a naive or simplistic way, and argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance by pointing out that all living humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, and subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.(1)

In other words, there is not very good agreement among scientists about exactly what the word "race" means and, to the extent that there is any agreement, it is not of especially lengthy pedigree.  In short, "race" is a fuzzy human construct created to differentiate - usually for discreditable or downright wicked reasons - between people based on some observable physical traits like skin color or eye shape.  What many (most?) people mean when they talk about "race" is racial stereotypes.

This is not to say that "race" isn't a real thing on some level.  When my daughter and I (one day soon!) are face to face, or look at ourselves in the mirror or in a photograph, we will see that we have some pretty marked differences in appearance.  Her eyes are almond-shaped and nearly black; mine are more round and hazel green.  My nose is somewhat longer; her skin is of a rather different tone (I think that I may be forgiven for thinking that she looks pretty perfect).  How we shall deal with these differences - more accurately, how we shall deal with what other people make of them - is a question that I ponder a great deal.  Because, once we get past the gross physical differences, I expect that she will be much like any other North Carolina girl.  This leads to questions of culture.  Again, wiki:

In the 20th century, "culture" emerged as a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be directly attributed to genetic inheritance. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings:

1. the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and
2. the distinct ways that people, who live differently, classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.(2)

Once again, we see a concept that hasn't got a universally-accepted meaning and has really not been in use for very long.  Again, "culture" is often used to describe stereotypes, and usually invidious stereotypes at that (do NOT get me started on how we Southerners are portrayed in most films and TV shows!).

ARE there differences between the "cultures" of one group or country and another?  Certainly.  But how far up or down does this go?  To what extent can we say that there is an "American" culture or a "Chinese" culture without almost immediately reverting to stereotypes that can quickly be showed to be so full of exceptions and caveats as to be nearly meaningless?  And, more to the point, is this "culture" something that can be taught to a child in the way that we teach them ABC's or the multiplication tables?

Let's assume that I try to honor my daughter's Chinese culture, or even teach it to her.  How can I possibly do this in any meaningful way?  I will have spent perhaps three weeks there.  I have been acquainted with only a tiny number of Chinese people (and are Chinese and Chinese-Americans the same?  I think not).  I speak a very limited amount of Mandarin.  How can I try to teach ANYBODY "Chinese culture"?  For that matter, can I teach anybody "American culture"?  What is that, exactly?

And would I be doing her some disservice by trying?  She will, at least until she is old enough to make her own decisions about such things, live in America as an American.  She will learn to navigate in the "American culture".  If I try to teach her anything different, it seems to me that I will be handicapping her.  If I may indulge in a simplistic simile, it's like teaching a child to eat with chopsticks, then taking him to eat where everybody uses a fork.

What I think is really going on with "honoring" or "celebrating" the birth culture is an attempt to cope with a feeling that international adoptees seem often to have: they are not (because of how they look) merely a stranger in a strange land, but a stranger in their own families.  They look in the mirror and see that they are different.  Other people will hardly hesitate to point this out on a regular basis.  They are constantly told, implicitly if not explicitly, that, "You don't belong here." Well, if they don't belong HERE, then is it not unreasonable for them to think that they belong THERE?  But... do they?  In the invaluable documentary "Adopted: The Movie", Frank Wu talks about being a Chinese-American going to Taiwan:

"Nothing brings it home quite as much as taking a trip back to Asia because you realize, 'Gee, that's funny: I look like people here.  I have the same hair, the same shape of eyes, the same tone and texture of skin.' But as soon as I open my mouth, people think I'm really stupid or uncouth.  Or, as soon as I walk down the street, they immediately know there's something wrong with me."(3)

They know because Wu is an AMERICAN.  He walks, talks, thinks, even stands like an American.  As my daughter will.

There are many potential problems that will face us as a transracial family.  My daughter, a person whom I am to protect and care for and nurture above all other people, will be subject to various pressures because she isn't white, because she doesn't look like me or her mother or anybody else in her family.  The very idea that this will happen hurts me.  How can I teach her to cope with it?  How can I armor her against the thoughtless people who will tell her how "lucky" she is or against the jerks who will call her a "chink"?

I don't know.  Somewhere in the mix of race and culture and adoption and her individuality lies an answer.  We will have to find it together.

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(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_classification)

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture

(3) "Adopted: Chinese vs. Adopted Chinese" [video file]  Retrieved 2014, March 16
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZl885JaKDc

Sunday Snapshot:  Our Sweet Baby Girl

We found out this week that since we have LOA we are allowed to share photos of our sweet baby girl.  We absolutely adore her and cannot wait to bring her home.  We are hoping to travel mid-May, but our agency thinks we may get pushed to early June. 

Caroline is currently 16 months old and if the stats we received are accurate, she is very tall.  She is described as being very sweet, friendly and loves her foster parents and foster sister.  Even though we can't wait to get her, part of me hurts for her foster family.  They have loved her so much.  We are so appreciative of their care of her.  Caroline's foster sister will be joining her family soon too and I'm sure it is going to be really tough on the Foster Parents to lose both of them so close together.

We have received about 20 photos of Caroline.  These are 2 of my favorites.

Caroline at 14 months:

 

 

Caroline at 11 months.  She looks like she is very happy and full of personality.

 

Hooking up with Nihaoyall.com

PHOTO CHALLENGE DAY 8:  IN THE CORNER

I'm already a day behind.  I will have to catch up tomorrow.  This is Mallory Sitting on my Corner Chaise.

SUNDAY SNAPSHOT:  NICOLE'S BABY SHOWER

Baby Showers are so joyous.  What can be better than joining with friends to celebrate the impending arrival of a sweet little one.  We will be having a shower in the near future for our sweet Caroline, but today was Nicole's day.  My sweet friend Nicole is expecting a baby boy near the end of May.  Can't wait to meet him.  The theme was "A New Chapter Begins".  It was all about books and their characters and in lieu of cards, everyone brought a book.

First - The Beautiful Mother to Be:

Add a doting Dad:

 

 

Big Sis went with her love of Frozen!

 

No Book Party can be complete without the Grinch!!!

Gotta have some food including green eggs and ham!!!

And of course, what's a shower without punch!!!

Together this makes for one Happy Family.  We all cannot wait to meet the wee lad in May!!!

Hooking up with Nihaoyall.com

Happiness

I have many hopes and dreams for my daughter.  As I ponder them, it occurs to me that the top of the list must be that she will be happy in her life.  But what does that mean?

I think that many people (including me) often confuse "success" with "happiness".  Now, they are pretty closely linked: I don't think that a person can IN GENERAL be happy if he is not successful (consider a certain well-known failed artist who parlayed his unhappiness into that little fracas known as World War II).  The converse, however, is certainly not always true: people can be quite successful and at the same time deeply unhappy.  How many famous and apparently "successful" people go mad, lose themselves in drugs and alcohol, or take their own lives?  They are the victims of their own success or, perhaps more correctly, they've traded happiness for success.

I must guard against this with my daughter.  I must not push her to do things that make her unhappy in the interests of making her "successful".  I must not push her to live the life that would make ME happy.  I must be on guard for signs that, while she might be bringing home good grades and awards and the other symbols of success, she is doing so at the expense of her happiness.  This is a problem with some "elite" kids in our society: they are pushed to excel in academics, sports, extracurricular activities and their social lives so much that they start to become mentally exhausted or, worse, get the idea that their self-worth is so tied up with good grades, trophies, awards and being part of the "in crowd" that any failure makes them feel like a hopeless loser.(1) Patty Cogen notes that this sort of pressure is very common in internationally-adopted children as they tend to have parents who are very well-educated and materially successful and push their children to follow in their footsteps.(2)  This makes sense: "This worked for us, so it should work for you." But is being v2.0 of me or my wife going to make my daughter happy?  Maybe, maybe not.  She will have to find her own way.

But there's another trap in this: raising a lazy or aimless child.  I must try to teach her good work habits, to be organized, to set goals, to try hard and to keep trying in the face of setbacks.  Amy Chua's "Tiger Mom" model is perhaps an answer to this: by setting the highest standards, by forcing the child to excel, the child will learn to do it on her own and, eventually, enjoy the fruits of being good at whatever she decides to do.(3)  There is much to be said about this.  But where to draw the line between raising a lazy, unmotivated daughter who is unequipped for adult life or raising a hyper-prepared daughter who is utterly miserable?

I want my daughter to be happy but I want her to be successful.  How can I teach her to achieve this happy state?

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(1) Madeline Levin. The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids.  New York: Harper Collins, 2006

(2) Patty Cogen.  Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child: From Your First Hours Together Through the Teen Years.  Boston: The Harvard Common Press, 2008.  Cogen notes that there is another pressure that internationally adopted children must bear, one that comes from inside themselves: they often feel that their abandonment is somehow their own fault and they spend the rest of their lives trying to prove that they really aren't such bad or failed people to deserve such a fate.

(3) Amy Chua. The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.  New York: Penguin, 2011