bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1994) — Spring 1994 // Printemps 1994, pp. 23–26
Nothing adds veracity to writing like first-hand experience. Robin Pascoe’s second book on family life in the foreign service proves that she is writing about a subject she knows intimately. Culture Shock – Successful Living Abroad: A Parent’s Guide (Times Editions Pte Ltd., 1993, 271 pp., $15.00) is an in-depth, step-by-step look at the trite and the traumatic situations parents face when they and their children move from a familiar culture to a foreign one. Full of astute observations and practical advice, the book is written in ordinary language but delivers a professional punch. Although aimed at parents, the author’s insight into the impact of culture shock applies to everyone.
This excerpt from the chapter “Third Culture Kids” (TCKs), looks at the long-term influence of rotationality on foreign service children and explores some of the characteristics these children share.
My daughter finds it almost bewildering when our conversations turn to comparisons between my own childhood and hers as a foreign service child. One particular point never ceases to amaze her: the fact that I actually grew up living in only one house, in one neighborhood, in one country — indeed in one culture — until I was 16 years old.
“You never moved, not even once?” she always asks, even though she knows the answer.
“No, not even once.”
“And you actually could play on the street in front of your house? With the same neighborhood kids, year after year?”
“That’s right.”
“And you really went to the same school all those years?”
“I did switch after eighth grade to a high school.”
“And grandpa’s job truly never forced him to move?”
“Honey, when you’re a dentist, like your grandfather, the drills don’t move around too well. And if you think I haven’t budged,”
I couldn’t resist adding, “Grandpa has been drilling people’s teeth on the same Toronto street for almost 50 years!”
Too mind-boggling — and if she could express it politely, too provincial — for her to absorb. After all, she is the product of an international upbringing. Born in one foreign country, she experienced four different cultures before the age of 9. My daughter is a classic example of a Third Culture Kid (TCK).
Sociologists, psychologists, educators, and experts from other related disciplines have been investigating the common experience of internationally mobile children. That research, into the lives of children labeled Third Culture Kids, is gaining recognition and popularity through workshops and conferences held by the authorities on this subject. Chances are you have heard the phrase but have never known exactly what it meant.
What is a TCK?
A Third Culture Kid — or a ’trans-cultural kid’ as the term is now also being defined — is a child who spends a significant part of his life in a country or countries which are not the same as the one stamped on his passport. The child is not, as the term might lead you to believe, the product of parents of mixed cultures.
TCKs are the children of parents who often share the same cultural background and are now mobile professionals such as diplomats, military types, businessmen, teachers, or missionaries among others, who move in and out of other cultures for several years at a time. TCKs are also the prototype, according to some experts, for the world citizen of the next century. Generally speaking, they are adaptable, globally oriented, multicultural in outlook, and in many cases, multilingual. They are also good observers, less judgmental and less prejudicial than their non-mobile counterparts.
What is the “third culture’? I’ll use my own daughter Lilly as an example to explain the concept. Her first culture is Canadian. Her parents are Canadian and she carries a Canadian passport. That’s her ’home’ or ’birth’ culture — even though she was born in Bangkok.
The second culture, in Lilly’s case, is a blend of the cultures of Thailand, Taiwan, and China, where we have lived. From these places, she has gained things which have contributed to the development of her values. These may be intangibles, even just cultural images, but she will nonetheless carry them with her for the rest of her life.
It is from the combination of these first two cultures that the third culture — the universal, global identity — surfaces. It is a unique third culture which she shares only with children who have also international, mobile experiences as she does. I often think of it as the jumbo-jet culture, where pint-sized travelers flash their passports in exotic airports, or smoothly exit in chauffeur-driven airport limousines or embassy cars. It is overnight or week-long stays at five-star hotels or international resorts while on vacation from international schools and diplomatic housing compounds. It is life in a rustic village, with one well for water and no indoor plumbing, or a South American mining village where natives and foreigners share local produce and customs. It might even be some Arabian oil outpost.
Regardless, it is a ’global nomadic’ existence which even at my daughter’s relatively young age, has already affected her learning experiences, her friendships, her ability to understand and relate to other cultures and the world at large, and of course, her interest in travel. Eventually, say the experts, it will even affect her choice of career, her relationships, and probably her choice of a spouse.
The Third ‘Expat’ Culture
With its isolated foreign communities, jet-set travel to exotic places for Christmas vacation, duty-free shopping, international schools, expatriate health clubs and so on, the expatriate style of life provides not only the reference points for everyday life overseas which many TCKs share, but also greatly affects the child’s system of values, in good and bad ways. A child whose parents treat local people, and especially servants, badly, for instance, will also likely grow up not respecting indigenous cultures. By the same token, a child who watches his parents enjoy and respect a foreign culture will be influenced in a positive way. An expatriate lifestyle which provides overseas benefits in the form of money, cars, or lavish housing, will likewise lead a child to believe his family is rich. That may be true compared to the host culture, but the true family fiscal reality may be quite different.
Moreover, I can’t help but think by our isolation in foreign ghettos and an expatriate lifestyle abroad, my daughter has in some ways been cheated out of a greater appreciation for the cultures we have lived in.
(I take full responsibility; my husband at least speaks local languages.) While it is certainly true that living in China or Thailand has heightened her sense of the poverty and despair in parts of the developing world, it is equally true that living an expatriate lifestyle in those same countries has exposed her to the Westerner’s code of values and style of living in developing countries.
Often, unfortunately, chances to learn about the local culture are missed because of the parents’ reluctance to investigate and participate. Festivals are an easy way for children to jump in and enjoy their new culture. Older children may participate on their own, but younger ones will need their parents to take them or to explain the significance of the celebrations. When parents can’t get into the swing of things, they often spoil what could be a lot of fun for their children.
Where is Home?
What is ’home’ for the parents is not home for the children. This means that when the adults are excited about home leave, the children may not have the same enthusiasm for a home they don’t know. Just as your childhood was different from your child’s, so too is your concept of home.
I have talked with many parents who get themselves all twisted up in knots trying to provide a home for their children like the one they had, even though they are living overseas. There’s a contradiction at work here. Parents can’t have it both ways. But with a little insight and a lot of communicating, not all is lost.
For TCKs, home is where they feel at home, according to Dr. Pollock of Interaction Inc., a retreat in upstate New York where families go for briefings before and after their experiences abroad. Other experts agree. Home is less a geographical location, and more an emotional one based on important relationships. For that reason, home is more often than not where the parents are posted, even if the child has never lived there herself because TCKs tend to be a lot closer to their mother and father. Home can also be a grandmother’s house enjoyed every summer during home leave; still others have claimed Holiday Inns as homes because during extended home leaves that’s where they stayed.
Home vs. Nationality
From personal experience, I have come up with a workable solution which I can share. For my children, I have separated the notion of ’home’ from the idea of ’nationality’. In other words, to my daughter and son, home is where we are living together as a family at the moment; our nationality is Canadian.
We have taken important steps to ensure a strong sense of nationality by buying a Canadian home for our children. When the time came to buy a house near the Canadian capital of Ottawa, where we live between foreign assignments, my husband and I chose to select a house not on the basis of future market value, but for our children. We bought a home that could be rented out while we were away and to which we can return after each assignment. It is our permanent Canadian home. The children — while away for years at a time — return to the same peer group who live near this home.
As our home is in the countryside, during home leave we are able to rent a cottage less than a kilometer from our own house, so that during the summers the children can rejoin that peer group. Friendships can be renewed over the summers as well as some sense of permanence established. We can also enjoy the fullest potential of a Canadian summer in the country. It was the smartest thing we ever did. That, and renting our dog along with the house so that he too could be there for the children’s return to Canada. If there is one thing all TCKs I’ve interviewed are agreed on, it’s the absence of real pets overseas that makes them long for ’home’
What Are the Characteristics of a TCK?
TCKs share a number of common character traits which distinguish them from what Dr. Pollock facetiously calls the OKs (one-culture kids). These characteristics spring from their unique childhood experiences and the many cultural influences at work.
1. Used to Change
With a move to a different country every few years, an ever-changing landscape cannot help but become ingrained into the TCKs’ subconscious. They don’t necessarily like all the change, but they become used to it because it is their way of life and possibly the only way they know. Uprootedness is the norm. As a result of all the moving around, these children and young adults become extraordinarily flexible and adaptable which can be seen as positive. In fact, the experts believe that TCKs are a lot more flexible than their parents whose ideas and ways of doing things are much more ingrained. A mobile child develops coping mechanisms to handle the constant moving so that when he arrives at a new location, an unconscious process of coping takes place. It is not unlike an adult who travels a lot on business and in each hotel room puts a framed picture on the bedside table to make himself feel more at home and the unfamiliar surroundings more comfortable. Strangely enough, to the TCK, the unfamiliar is entirely predictable, for change is part of his identity. But he too will develop certain routines or rituals to ’familiarize’ a new place. I have watched my own daughter set up her bedroom — and especially her desk — in exactly the same style wherever we go.
Some of these rituals will be emotional rather than physical, for even a young child will set up barriers to protect himself from being hurt too early on in the game. That may be one reason why, contrary to what one might believe, TCKs are not overly friendly to new children at school from day one. Everyone plays a bit of a waiting game before taking any plunges into new friendships.
Some researchers have also made the distinction between the adult who ’adjusts to’ his new environment and the child who ’adopts’ his new environment. The term ’adjusts’ implies that you are still an outsider. Adults, with their strong sense of national identity, prefer to remain outsiders even if they finally cope with a new environment. TCKs, on the other hand, ’adopt’ — yet remain both ’part of and ’apart from’ – their new environment. TCKs, raised in other cultures, feel ’ownership in none.’
As a group, they complain less than their parents about their environment and ’bad’ living conditions, like traffic, lack of hot water, or dirty streets. They can deal with the bad, because it may have been bad before.
2. Highly Motivated and High Academic Achievers
As a group, TCKs spring from a subculture. Their parents are high academic achievers — typically from the same higher socio-economic strata of society. As a result, TCKs collectively score well on any testing of general knowledge and intelligence. All the travel doesn’t hurt their scores either. They are more articulate and well-read than their counterparts at home. They usually speak or have a working knowledge of several languages. TCKs will probably not do well at games like Trivial Pursuit, for according to the experts, they don’t accumulate much trivial knowledge, especially information that might relate to popular culture like television or movies, which tend to be limited in overseas communities. So while they gather up special knowledge as a result of their international lives, their store of useless knowledge will be small. TCKs are more self-sufficient and independent. Researchers have found them to have a high degree of self-awareness — they know exactly who they are and where they are going. While their parents challenge their own values later in life, TCKs challenge them at a much earlier age.
Along with self-motivation comes a higher degree of discipline and better control of themselves. That’s one reason why international school teachers seldom complain about discipline problems.
3. Greater View and Understanding of the World
Having seen large chunks of it, TCKs have a much broader world view, with a much sharper perspective on international issues, which are likely discussed more in their international classrooms than they might be back home. With classmates from the four corners of the globe, TCKs also often have more racial tolerance and cultural awareness than their parents. They are certainly less judgmental than their elders. Experts like Dr. Pollock also believe that TCKs have a three-dimensional view of the world, along with good cross-cultural skills. For that reason, he believes they hold great potential for building ’cultural bridges’ in a society that is becoming increasingly international. TCKs easily become world-weary. Upon re-entry to their own cultures their vast view of the world can alienate them from the ’kids next door’ whom they are now trying to befriend. Those new friends have not been out in the world and many could care less about it since it is not part of their experience. Researchers studying the re-entry process of TCKs say the ethnocentricity of ’home’ cultures bothers even a child of 10 or I who has a global view not shared at home. Unfortunately this can lead to a feeling of detachment from their peer group. Being multicultural can be lonely, and feelings of alienation are not uncommon among TCKs, especially teenagers.
4. Little Ambassadors
TCKs are generally better-behaved and certainly far more comfortable around adults with whom they spend proportionately more time than their counterparts back home. They also get along better with their siblings, whom they may rely on in the early days of a new assignment before friends have been found. Also fueling their best behavior are the limits which most TCKs know are out there: they will be shipped home or shipped out of a school if their behavior does not measure up, especially if they do something illegal or questionable in a country whose government won’t stand for it.
5. Extensive Relationship Bank
Depending on how much their parents move around and how good they are about keeping in touch, TCKs may end up having friends in every world capital. Friendships are numerous and briefly intense for TCKs. There will be some loneliness until a new network of friends and companions has been established.
Along with this loneliness will come the sense of rootlessness and of belonging everywhere yet nowhere. There has been no stable peer group for the TCK because it has changed every few years. Peer groups — and measuring yourself against them — are very important for children, especially teenagers. When that measuring stick keeps moving, the child’s emotions may be equally unstable. Some of these issues will be particularly exaggerated when the time comes for re-entry into their own home culture. The many issues of re-entry – and how parents can help their children through that often difficult process — will be examined in Chapter Ten.
6. Delayed Adolescence and Rebellion
Work opportunities for teenagers overseas may be limited if not impossible to find. The lack of jobs, plus the narrow social network (which may be limited to a small international school) means there is a sharp reduction in the number of chances a teenager has to break away from his family. In fact, in some overseas settings, there is an over-dependence on family from the beginning to the end of the posting cycle. The lack of work drastically curtails the chance for teenagers to start that process of becoming responsible, independent adults, handling responsibilities or a bank account. It also delays — and often prolongs — their adolescence. Likewise, with parents around too much of the time, there are no opportunities to get into trouble during the teen years. But when these same TCKs go to college, there suddenly appears the chance of a lifetime to finally rebel and get into trouble.
7. Migratory Instinct
It has been said that children raised on Sesame Street and then MTV have short attention spans. Magnify that one step further for the TCK, who likely moved every two to three years during childhood, and you have created a child with a distinct migratory instinct which carries over into adulthood This instinct is usually felt first in college. According to the experts, TCKs are apt to go to at least two colleges to obtain their degree. Later they may change jobs a lot. TCKs turned adult tend to feel – because of their experiences — that things will change anyway so why deal with problems if you can simply leave them behind? takes them a while to settle down. Once supposedly settled, they then feel the urge to get up and move again.
8. TCKs Are Told They Are Special
When re-entering their home culture TCKs tend to feel they are weird since they can’t relate to their own culture. Parents must work hard at convincing their children that they are not necessarily weird, perhaps just different. A problem can arise when these children are continually being told they are “special’. Problems arise when they re-enter, feeling they are special, and discover that perhaps they are not. One grown-up TCK, the daughter of a Canadian ambassador, told me the greatest disillusionment she had as an adult was the discovery that she was not special, after a lifetime of hearing from her mother that she was.
Other Important TCK Issues
1. Unresolved Grief
Of all the issues related to the study of TCKs, the subject of their unresolved grief is always highlighted by experts on the subject. It stands out as a major issue because it is a level of grief which in quantity and quality is higher than that which others may ever experience, even in a lifetime. There is so much grief for the TCK because someone is always leaving his life. Such leave-takings may be multiple and simultaneous. There is even grief which is experienced after leaving a place a child may have hated because he is nonetheless leaving a place or people that had become comfortable and familiar. In most cases, the grief is denied or delayed. TCKs and their parents can be very cavalier about leaving yet another posting and in the process deny themselves the right to grieve because that doesn’t measure up to the image of courage everyone is supposed to put forward. There is great pressure for everyone to ’adjust’ and the sooner the better. Worse still for the child or teenager is the feeling that nobody else really understands what they are going through. They feel isolated, alone. This unresolved grief, says Dr. Pollock, can be particularly destructive for the younger child because it can have life-long results. In the olden days, when families would move around by ship rather than by 747, the long sea voyage provided a suitable grief period between one post and another. Now, too short a time elapses before a grandmother or sibling waits at an airport terminal on the other side of the world, representing the new life that lies ahead. When that grief stays inside long enough — enough postings go by without expressing grief — resentment and anger can grow, especially a child’s resentment and anger towards the parents who have created the situation. There will be a delayed expression when the dam eventually bursts, as it must.
2. Friendships and Relationships
Deep, long-lasting friendships can be problematic for TCKs given their time restraints and the traditional waiting period of evaluating potential friends at the start of a new school year. It may be a few months before a newly arrived TCK feels confident enough to even start making friends and then the school year is ending — and possibly the person they have targeted for friendship is leaving for another post. In some cases, knowing their time is short, some children prefer not to make any friends at all, if it means leaving them too soon. Parents need to help out with their TCK’s efforts at friendships by facilitating visits, sleepovers, picnics, play dates, or whatever works. With the moving cycle associated with life as a TCK, some children also never learn some of the life skills necessary for satisfying interpersonal relationships. In so many instances, they can leave a post without dealing with or settling a problem they may have had with a friend. They can just leave, which is hardly a good method of dealing with a bad situation. Once again, parents need to help out and force their children to deal with problems in friendship head-on rather than just fleeing the scene.
Long-term relationships will also be problematic for TCKs, especially if they cross over into what Dr. Pollock calls a ’mixed marriage’ ’, that is, a TCK marries an OK (one-culture kid) who plans to never move around. The partner can’t understand many of the ingrained instincts and feelings of the TCK and this can cause problems in the marriage.
TCKs, say the experts, tend to seek out one another, especially on university campuses where they may also befriend the local population of foreign students, with whom they feel a lot more comfortable. It has been said, in fact, that TCKs are really foreign students in disguise.
3. Career Issues and Role Models
I have already noted that TCKs tend to delay decisions about careers and likely switch jobs a lot. It should be plain how some of these feelings arise; after viewing the world, the career choices for the TCK may seem unlimited. Also, with a closer attachment to parents, who may still be living somewhere overseas, the TCK may further delay career decisions and choose to stay for a while with their parents in still another foreign country.
Another important issue which influences career decisions, indeed influences the road to adult career issues, is the absence of role models from their own culture in the TCKs’ life. Educators and medical people alike have noted this unique situation which exists for TCKs. Growing up in international communities, TCKs are exposed to very few types of people outside of middle-class professionals who are likely above average in both education and intelligence.
It Can’t Be Too Bad a Life
The experts say that 10 percent of TCKs, when adults, look for some small town and choose to hug a tree — in other words, put down roots. The other 90 percent of TCKs choose to return to international life.
So parents of TCKs agonizing over the childhood they are providing should stop to consider: international life must be a great life if so many children choose it for themselves when they grow up.
Copies of Robin Pascoe’s book are available by writing to Robin c/o PAFSO, Suite 600, 45 Rideau Street, Ottawa, Canada K1N 5W8.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1994) — Spring 1994 // Printemps 1994, pp. 23–26. Read the rest of this issue →
