A little rant to do with "heritage"

[Tess321]

For those children who were adopted from birth or under 5yrs is the trendy notion of encouraging them to explore their 'heritage' a healthy thing?

I ask because I was adopted at birth and all was sunshine and roses until my adoptive mum died and my adoptive father married again. Then suddenly my stepmum decided that it would be 'helpful' to 'support' me in discovering my heritage at aged 12. WTF???? Now consider that my biological mother is Irish and I was raised in an adoptive family in Wales I knew fuck all about Ireland nor did I care. Instead I was forced to take a trip to Ireland. Worse still constant conversation starters were broached about Irish culture/dancing/fucking leprechans etc etc!!!!!! All this was and still is entirely foreign to me and the only effect it had was to make a formally secure child-insecure.

Why on earth do people assume that a child would have some sort of connnection to a place he/she has never been or would be too young to remember? It's just stupid. On top of that every teenage issue I ever had was seen to be as a result of me being adopted and every row ended with the suggestion from SM that I "fuck off back to Ireland"....erm,-where???

Like I said on another thread adoption wasnt even an issue until other people decided to make it so.

I'd be interested whether people have any other views on this. Do you think that it's different if a white family adopt a child from a different racial background? I'm not convinced but i'd be interested in views

OK rant over

My DS is only 1 (mixed race, we;re white) so no idea yet. It's a subject I've been thinking about so I hope you get lots of replies.

A friend who fosters says that children who have been brought up knowing about their parentage and heritage have less curiosity and conflict regarding who they are so its probably a constructive thing to do from the outset but like you say confusing if introduced at an older age.

Your SM sounds a charmer.

I think there are two differnt but connected isseus - raace and heritage. I think you have a duty to your children to somehow connect them to their race but I ersonally think that heritage is a more diffiuclt issue.

DS is central asian/Eurasian and I firmly beleive that he needs as many positive roles models of people who look like him as I can find, however what culture do I connect him to - Russian? Kzakh? Both?

The advice I was given on my preparation course was good I think - you as an adoptive parent need to stay connected to the country/culture of your child birth so that should they be interested you have a route into it for them.

The idea is (ideally) that you should be well equipped to help your child make sense of their life before coming to you. Some children really aren't much interested or alternatively have very simple questions - certainly the idea isnt to torment your child with every difference you can think of. Can I say your SM doesn;t sound very nice!

A cousin of my partner adopted a little girl from Ekaterinaburg in Russia. The little girl is half Ukrainian and half something else (but not Russian). The orphanage she was adopted from was Russian speaking and Russian was the first language she learnt.

Ever since she was adopted here to France she has had a Russian nounou (nanny) and has done extra curricular Russian language and culture classes at the Russian embassy (which her mother had to fight hard for her to get accepted onto). Her mother has learnt Russian quite well herself and is determined that her daughter grow up fully able to explore her original culture, if she so wants to do so, when she is old enough.

This sort of bilingual/bilcultural upbringing for children who have been adopted is quite a popular thing to do now here in France.

but if she is Ukrainian/other then the russian nanny is a nice idea but she's not
really exploring her "original" culture is she? That was my point about what culture - it oftne isn;t that simple.

I think it's a question of what is possible rather than what is ideal ie better for her to continue to speak Russian (as she did when adopted) and at least be able to return to where she was adopted from and research her origins rather than just bring her up in French. And it's great to be bilingual French-Russian in any case, so there's no loss there.

Would agree that it's important to be able to give a child a route into at least some of their heritage and to promote an atmosphere where they feel comfortable about discussing their country of origin. They will be asked about it by others if they are visibly different from parents and I think it helps their self esteem if they can discuss some aspects of their culture from a knowledgeable standpoint rather than feeling embarrassed because they don't know anything. I do think to an extent you do adopt the country as well as the child and that is one of the big differences between domestic and ica adoption - one it's good to embrace if you can. Our own children have gone through phases of being very interested and others of being less so in their heritage. We have taken them back to the country of their birth and to the children's home where they spent their early months they had a brilliant time and were made to feel very welcome and included in activities and even attended school there. It did give them a sense of feeling they belonged to another culture and country and this seemed to have been a positive thing or them. Having some knowledge of the language certainly helped and they were au fait with some of the customs and traditions which made it all a little less strange. We are all grateful that this has been possible for us all as a family but appreciate that it wouldn't be possible in all ICA families but yes as a general rule if doing so from a young age I think it can be done with sensitivity and have many benefits.

I have no idea but your SM sounds like a horrible person do you still have contact with her?

Yes I still have contact with my SM DWP. It's just easier on my father that way plus we get along reasonably these days. I just think she married my Dad but hadn't fully emotionally realised the imposition having a stepchild would bring. She also suffers from mental health issues which wouldnt have helped matters at the time.

C'est la vie.