Bicultural Families Meeting the Challenges of Raising Children with Two Cultures

By Sandra Whitehead

While there is no magic formula for helping bicultural children through the challenges of defining who they are, says Joel Crohn, author of Mixed Matches: How to Create Successful Interracial, Interethnic and Interfaith Relationships, there are some basic principles of success:

• Be willing to keep working at it. Make working out your differences with your partner about the cultural and religious identity of your family an ongoing process. Don Rosenberg, a psychologist who has worked as a marriage and family therapist in a community with many interfaith and intercultural families for almost 30 years, recommends that parents who have conflicting opinions about the religious training of their children should talk often in order to anticipate issues that are likely to arise – religious ceremonies, holidays, religious education, values, in-law relations and even burials. “By anticipating, you allow yourself time to explore the alternatives,” he says.

• Make communication with your children a priority. Listen to your children and try to understand their experiences.

• Don’t take rejection personally. See your children’s ambivalence about their identity as a normal developmental stage. (See “Stages of Cultural Identity.”)