I’ve been thinking a lot about family lately. I’ve been thinking about how I expose my daughter to family and about how I present the idea of family to her. A family is so many things. A family is formed in so many ways.
A family can contain people of only the same race or culture. A family can contain people of different races and different cultures. A family can be biologically related. A famly can come together via adoption. A family can be a couple of people, or many people. A family can have a single mother. A family can have a single father. A family can be a couple in a heterosexual relationship. A family can be a couple in a same-sex relationship. A family can have many children. A family can have no children. A family can have one child. A family can be formed by friendships.
There are some things that I want my children to grow up with a sense of.
Family is responsibility. There are obligations we have as members of a family. We take care of each other. We are kind to each other. We spend holidays with each other. We do things for each other. We do things together.
No two families are the same. I want my children to know that all families are formed in different ways, by different people. I want them to know that there are families that are like us, and there are families that are not like us, and that the important thing is that a family is healthy and loving.
I was 5 was when I began to notice the racial differences between my family and the families of my peers. I was 5 is when we moved to Alabama to a neighborhood that was predominantly white and African American. Prior to this we lived in Germany, but I know that my parents hung out with many interracial couples who had children my age while we lived in Germany, and those things do have a part that played in how I viewed things when I turned 5.
My daughter is four now and I’m beginning to question how I am exposing family to her since I feel that she will soon begin to notice our family in comparison to other families around her. Right now, with family and friends that my daughter is exposed to on a regular basis, myself and my husband and my parents are the only interracial married couples. I don’t give her much exposure to families that are not same-race heterosexual married couples with biological children. And because of that I worry. I worry about how she’ll eventually view our family.
Luckily, there are several interracial families whose children attend her preschool. Unfortunately, I am horrible at making new friends or even wanting to make new friends. Of course, we don’t have much opportunity to talk to the other parents much more than “Hi” as we’re dropping off and picking up the kids. There might be a good opportunity at the summer concert that our children are part of to try to get to know them.
I’ve been trying to look at tv that both she and we watch and the books we read her to gauge some of the family diversity she may see from home.
While I haven’t figured out exactly how I’m going to go about this, stepping outside of my comfort zone and beginning to include in our circles families like our own and families that are formed in other ways is something that I think should be first, as well as adjusting her library to reflect this. I wish I could just walk into a book store and do this instead of searching all over the web for family friendly (as in, not mainstream family) books for children.
I view this the same way as I do needing to have peers that are adoptive families so that my children (current and future) can see other families like their own and also have peers that will fully understand what they may go through. This is another priority of my own.
Let me pause for a moment to explain that while I may think about this quite a bit (race, culture, family, and religion and how we relate to mainstream ideas of all of those), I don’t mention it to my daughter every second of the day. I feel like because I mention it often on my blog it may seem like that. My husband and I do talk about these things to each other and in front of her. I also look for opportunities to mention and discuss as she notices things or things are in front of her. I look for ways to incorporate into her life. I think that that is the key. As she grows, her needs will grow, which is why I have been recently thinking about how we expose her to family and the idea of family.
My intention is to always give my children a foundation to face and be a thinking member of a society that still has a fundamental fear and dislike of what isn’t mainstream. I want her to understand what it is and what it is about. Confidence in herself, in who she is, in her family and in who we are is part of that.



















