Lowri Turner talks about mixed Indian/White babies (well, hers actually) in todays Guardian, what do you all think?

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Full article here

She says things like

But we dont live in an ideal world and the way we all look matters. My daughters appearance is an issue to others as well as myself. A (white) friend visited yesterday and having examined the baby, she announced: Shes getting quite dark, isnt she? And I am ashamed to admit that in a reversal of what happens on holiday when you study your skin in the mirror every day hoping for a deepening tan, I too now find myself examining my daughter for signs that her skin is becoming a deeper shade of brown and being perturbed if I find them.

I am at this. My ds is half Indian.

And:

While I genuinely dont think that my not being Indian was a factor that counted against me with my husband or his family, I did underestimate the difference between our cultural backgrounds when we were first together. Our daughter will have to cope with being the product of two very different cultures. She will have to negotiate her own cultural identity, and I know too little to really help her.

I am intending to leave the Indian side of my daughters upbringing to my in-laws. This may seem a cop out, but, frankly, Im too knackered to do otherwise. If I had adopted her, social services would probably whip her away. However, working and bringing up three children, I havent the energy to learn Hindi or make my own lassi

BTW Ive taken apostrophes and quotation marks out as they come out strangely in preview but you get the gist.

Oooh, I just knew when I read this on Saturday that there would be a thread about it.

I thought that the oddest thing was the photo: check it out if you still have a copy. She is looking very sorry for herself in a "look what I have got ahead of me" type way.

And, TBH, I did feel sorry for her, but not for the reasons she probably meant...

Xenia - the (poor) man that Lowri married is Glaswegian. India is a developing country but a fast-developing one. In developing countries rural and subsistence communities carry-out ancient practices for a couple of generations longer than those in developed countries. There are millions of women in India and in Indian families in Britain who are very high achievers and pushed by their families to be docyors and lawyer. As recent as Victorian times here, you could have found yourself subject to a clitoridecomy as a cure for hysteria and barred from your current profession. For a generation, Indian women (of a fast growing class and wealth) have been educated and achieveing in public life. I very much doubt that Lowri's dd would have been at risk of infanticide. I bring this up because you mentioned it on another thread about a MN-ers Indian international WORK colleagues - also highly uhnlikely to be practicing infanticide.

I thought the article was disarmingly honest and she makes it clear that she loves her daughter - though I do think perhaps she is too honest. I don't see the problem with her in-laws making sure her duaghter in in touch with her fathers heritage. Not saying Lowri should ignore it, as it is in effect now part of her heritage too, but aren't her in-laws (and presumably ex-partner) the best people to ensure she has a positive view of that side of her heritage?

I'm obviously in the minority here. Even hesitated about posting.

I think she just sounds very depressed.

The article was a confession of all the unpleasant feelings that are swirling round her mind at the moment. The overall tone is one of self hatred and fear.

I thought it was an honest article, though not a particularly sensitive one.

I agree with mslucy. I can't help it, I feel sorry for her. She only had the baby 10 wks ago.
imho new mothers should not be allowed to write about thir babies in the national press until said babies are at least 6 months old. if you want to write, do so on MN.
Lowri, start a thread. You'll get a warmer response.

My general opinions on Lowri Turner: a wooly thinker, not a terrific journalist by any means, usually to be found spouting predictable and uninspired opinons from the 'I'm a Guardianista' Opinion Factory, rather than saying anything truly intelligent and original.

However, as a parent of a mixed race child (dad - black British, of Jamaican-Guyanese descent; me - white British, of Irish descent) I didn't find any of what she said offensive at all - and certainly not surprising. I'd even go as far as to say I related with some of it - and certainly recognised much of what she described in the experiences of some other white parents of mixed children I know. (I never felt that shock or discomfort at having a child who 'didn't look like me', though - he does look a lot like me, actually).

I think she was reacting in the way many (not all, but many) white parents of mixed children (particularly liberal middle class whites) react when they realise for the first time that it is no longer good enough to 'have black friends', to claim to be 'colour blind', to talk about racism in terms of something that happens to othe people. Your membership to that exclusive club in society (to which you may never have realised you were a member) has been revoked, and you are now pretty much thrown head-first into another section of society, who know full well that just because middle class whites want society to be equal and people to be 'colour blind' doesn't mean that's actually reality (and your precious little baby is the glaring proof of that). For someone like Lowri Turner - liberal, yes, but somebody who has probably mixed in predominantly white social circles, perhaps peppered with a few black colleagues and friends - this understandably comes as a big fat SHOCK.

I think the worst she is guilty of is self-indugent writing, bordering on navel-gazing (in the Weekend Guardian? Surely not!). Just like every Guardian writer who becomes a mother is 'The First Woman Ever to Suffer from PND/Find Motherhood Hard Work / Fall in Love with Her Baby / Wish She Hadn't Left it So Late...' etc etc, so Lowri Turner is the First White Woman Ever to reflect on the fact that parenting mixed race children might involve some different issues from parenting white children. Not exactly a huge revelation.

I think Lowri is a TV presenter though not a journalist hence the "self-indulgent" writing.

I have got used to the slight double-take that people do in leafy Kew when they realsie DS is a different colour to me. Presumably she wasn't with her DH longer enough to get used to the visibleness of mixed race families?

I think this article was brutally honest and possibly misguided but im afraid those of you who like to convice yourself we live in a society where race issues are irrelevant are sorely misguided.

She was acknowleding her mixed feelings and the fact that her new child may face problems which as a white person she has not experienced. she did say " I don't love her less because she's darker"

My friend child minds and one of the local chaps always likes to look into the pram to coo over the babies, a while back his wife looked into the pram and she said "oh youve got a black one this time he doesnt like black babies" Yes this makes him a f*wit but I dont think this attitude is that rare, especially amongst the older generation.

I had another friend who dated a black man for years and she said "its so wrong because I still look at other white girls with black men and think they are common"

Contentiouscat - I absolutely agree with you that race and racism remains an issue. My probvlem with Ms Turners article is that she doesn't talk about the wider world, but is talking about her own confusion and the way in which she has reacted to race, which belies her adopted guise of 'liberal' - and that she has not really politicised it, or even been consistent in challenging what she has found.

I think she should have given it a couple more months, a bit more objective research and a bit more sustained thought.

"Do I call her black or Asian or mixed race, or dual heritage? Is it necessary to call her anything at all? I didn't have any such considerations when I had my sons. They were just mine. They didn't need classification. When I registered my daughter at the local GP, I had to put a tick in a quite unfamiliar box - the one marked "mixed race, white/Asian" - on the "racial monitoring" form. It felt weird and oddly public. She was being labelled at seven weeks old." ?????? So does she not descrive her sons as 'white'? or 'Caucasion'? is ticking the box marked 'white British' not a 'label'?

When you have a mixed race baby, you know that your baby will be mixed race. There are so many other ways in which you have no knowledge as to what your child will be. I do not feel 'alienated' from my little boy because he is
male
has wavy hair (mine is straight)
likes Dr Who
has one short leg (mine are the same length)
is darker skinned than me.

And thankfully DP does not feel alienated from a child who is lighter skinned than him - or indeed has any hair at all.

Honesty does not a front page article make. Those of you who speak in favour of it are saying the things she could usefully have said, rather than what she did say, perhaps.

I agree it was misguided but I suspect it was her hormones talking

9/11 happened just after I had my DC and in my hormonal state I was convinced a plane was going to land on my house or muslims were going to kill us in our beds - both far less likely than being run over crossing the road Thank goodness im not Lowry Turner or god knows what crap I would have written.

Well, exactly, few of us would stand by articles we wrote 10 weeks post-partum...especially with a marriage separation thrown in...the question is, was the Editor of Guardian Family similiarly hormonal?

And why did she separate from her DH? My DP said he'd divorce me if i described ds as 'alien' because he is dark!! So, makes you wonder!

I'm not sure whether I have "spoken in favour of it" but I was really reacting to the very negative comments in the first half of the thread. I do agree with NKF that she will probably come to regret writing it though.

The article has an edge (e.g. the Pollard reference)
but I did not find it particularly offensive.

What is offensive is her ex-partner's behaviour -
leaving the mother of his child 10 weeks after
she has given birth. Tosser.
Certainly a contributing factor to the tone of the article.

My dw is white/English, I am the black-haired, olive-skinned one.
Our dd is the same colour as me (i.e. 'tanned') and has black hair.
Will that (and, say, her non-English surname) have an impact
as she grows up? Of course, it will.

The article might be slightly too frank or not balanced enough
for some people but it has certainly managed to spark debate.
And writing it was probably quite therapeutic for LT.

Probably it wouldnt have been such an issue for her if she was still with the baby's father.

I dont think I have ever or would ever choose to read the Guardian, in fact I only ever read any newspaper if its given to me by someone else

I am so pleased to see that people have thought the same thing I did when reading this on Saturday.

As another mother of three mixed race children I have only ever felt pride and delight and joy in their different skin tones.

I find it odd that she is analysing it at all, rather than just enjoying her beautiful baby.

"I thought the article was disarmingly honest and she makes it clear that she loves her daughter - though I do think perhaps she is too honest. I don't see the problem with her in-laws making sure her duaghter in in touch with her fathers heritage. Not saying Lowri should ignore it, as it is in effect now part of her heritage too, but aren't her in-laws (and presumably ex-partner) the best people to ensure she has a positive view of that side of her heritage?

I'm obviously in the minority here. Even hesitated about posting."

Hi KewCumber: Please never hesitate to post!

I've got two DDs, one a very light brown, almost honey-coloured, the other a much darker brown. DH and I are white (actually olive in DH's case and a rather unattractive pink in mine). It did take me a little time to get used to DD2's darker colour but now I love it as an intrinsic part of her. I don't think however that I would have expressed that uneasiness in a national newspaper. I actually experience a sort of reverse racism about the DDs, in that I've loved their little brown skinny bodies so much, I can't quite get my head round the otherwise undeniable gorgeousness of pink, plump white babies.

I do agree with KewCumber about the cultural heritage. I would love to dump all of that on Vietnamese/Cambodian grandparents as whatever we've tried to do feels like an absurd Disneyfication of the real thing. We're compensating by planning trips back to Vietnam and Cambodia.

hello Issy - I'm planning a trip to the Festival of Falconry near Reading as a guest of the Kazakh camp later in July, decided DS needed to meet some Kazakhs older than 2yrs!

Know what you mean about the colour thing though - DS is such a beautiful colour that I look at caucasian babies and think how pale and unhealthy they look! I think it is an extension of how you are convinced that your DC's are so wonderful. (though in my case obviously tis true).

Am a bit nervous as our story should be in a national magazine this year although far less contentious content than LT's. Keep getting cold feet about it, but too late now...

Will her daughter really resent her for this article?
I very much doubt it.

Because it is clear what the driving force behind
the article is: the pain of being abandoned by
the father of her new baby.

The guy has not just abandoned LT,
he has turned his back on his daughter, too.

That fact will be infinitely more important to the daugther
than any PC rules that her mother might have broken.

how do you know he has abandoned her?
they've split but she doesn't go into details of the circs

I wondered the same thing MyEye

I don't know for certain but this article would suggest she certainly did
not decide to leave him.

"How do I feel? Embarrassed, humiliated, hurt, angry, sad, guilty, confused.

"You can take your pick on any given day. Mostly, I just feel sad. I worry about my children.

you can't be sure though can you.

Well I hope this isn't a terribly un-PC thing to say, but looking at that photo I think she was very disingenuous in her Guardian article to say that her hubby didn't look Indian when she met him. He totally does!

I wonder if she's been living in a bit of a delusion caused by her deeply embedded racism. She met this guy and convinced herself - contrary to all the evidence - that he wasn't really non-white, and now she's got a non-white baby she's genuinely quite surprised...

Erm, from the picture attached to the linked article I can't quite work out how she didn't notice her husband was Indian...