Raising a child of a different race
This topic was brought up about 6 weeks ago. Sorry its taken me so long to reply but here are my thoughts. For starters- I'm black and my husband is white. We have two daughters which means they were brought up in a multicultural family. They have white family members they are very close to, as well as black. When I had my first daughter, I wanted to make sure she knew her culture. So I tended to buy her a lot of black dolls, toys, etc. One day, a neighbor of mine, who is a psychologist, told me that they need a balance in both cultures. For me that was a shock because as with any mother, you always tend to raise a child as you were. For example, a mother will always raise a child in her faith. So the only thing I knew was the black culture. It took me a while to change this frame of mind. IT was hard but I started slowly. I started introducing my children to white dolls and started picking up multicultural books. For a long time I thought I was doing all the right things. One day I got a call from a friend (Jewish), that she just adopted a baby. Her and her husband had been trying for a number of years. I was very excited for her. Then she dropped the bomb on me- she adopted a black baby boy. I nearly hit the ceiling. I was so upset about this. I couldn't believe they would let her have a black baby. That monday I went to the daycare and told the teachers about it. One of my teachers realized I was really upset about it and said "Are you upset that she adopted a black baby or are you upset that she adopted a boy?" At the time all I could think about was his culture. It took me a while to realize I was jealous that she adopted a boy and not because he was a black baby. By the way, her and her husband turned out to be great parents. He is about 18 now. The point of all this is if you really love a child, the race doesn't matter. Yes, it is important to introduce a child to their culture. I always suggest to people (if the family is one race and the child is another) to find someone- a friend- of the child's race. Our holidays are very important to us. The bottom line is no child has prejudice. All they want is a mom and dad. As a parent there are no guildlines to raising a child. Its trial and error. Find things that you can do to make the child proud of his other half. Make the child know he is the most important thing and that he is special. When you adopt, become a step-parent or a secondary parent- its all about that love.