Are you a Third Culture Kid?

by **HitRed** on Wed Jan 01, 2020 3:07 pm

Found this interesting. Common to have kids living on/off base in the military. Just never heard the term. A Third Culture Kid are kids raised in a culture other than their parents' culture for a significant part of their early development years.

So, if your parents where from different countries that didn't recognize the spouse, living in another country then you would be a Forth Culture Kid I guess.

by **mrswdk** on Thu Jan 02, 2020 10:23 am

HitRed wrote:Found this interesting. Common to have kids living on/off base in the military. Just never heard the term. A Third Culture Kid are kids raised in a culture other than their parents' culture for a significant part of their early development years.

I knew a guy whose parents were British, but he was born in and grew up in Hong Kong until he was 18. When he went to the UK for university, people saw a white guy who spoke English with an English accent and just couldn't understand why he didn't get cultural references to UK things. 'Herp, how can you not have heard of this TV show, you're British?'. Their attitude was always 'oh so you're a British guy who lived in Hong Kong', even though he saw himself as a Hong Konger and had never known anything other than Hong Kong.

It's pretty common for people from well-off families to get sent abroad for secondary school, so they end up with this blend of attitudes and cultural frames of reference/behaviours that reflect both the country they were born in and whichever country they were educated in. Then often, for a mixture of different reasons (e.g. they don't feel as if they are 'from' any one single country, there's no one culture they feel 'at home' in, a lot of people they meet insist on defining them by their nationality/ethnicity and overlook the time they spent in the country where they were schooled etc.) they just end up rejecting any sort of cultural identity and see themselves as being 'from' nowhere in particular.

So, if your parents where from different countries that didn't recognize the spouse, living in another country then you would be a Forth Culture Kid I guess.

And if your spouse was in a country that didn't recongise the kids but the kids were in a different country with you, and that country recognises the kids but the kids don't recognise the country but they do recognise your spouse, then they would be fifth culture.

by **nietzsche** on Thu Jan 02, 2020 10:33 am

what if you f*ck this girl right, she's hot and all but not exactly who you would want to marry.. you know what i mean. well, you wore a condom and the condom broke, but you're not sure if the broke before or after.

anyway then you know this guy, because he used to date a cousin of yours, well, he was at the party, and towards the end they start dancing and fall and all that, and you leave the place and don't know what happens next.

well, this girl was born in the US, but on and off has lived in mexico, she says she likes mexico more but she keeps going to the US for long periods, who knows. anyway her kids is like 4 yo, and has spent the majority of his life in the US: 3 years.

so when she left, this guy that used to date me cousin was in an accident, well, sort of, he was hit with a baseball bat. the guy who hit him was from panama actually, they were in fight over another woman, actually the panama guy's wife.

so, to make the story short, this kid, you know, the 4yo, recently got a chihuahua, funny enough his mommy got it for him in the US, but just a couple months had passed when they came to mexico, and the dog has now lived 2/3 of his life in tijuana.

by **mrswdk** on Thu Jan 02, 2020 10:46 am

Good point, nietzsche. What if you grow up in a country that neither of your parents are from, then aged 18 you discover you were actually conceived when your mother fucked a delivery driver from the country you grew up in?

by **nietzsche** on Thu Jan 02, 2020 10:51 am

then you're a son of a whore

by **2dimes** on Thu Jan 02, 2020 11:08 am

That chihuahua is going to need therapy.

by **mrswdk** on Thu Jan 02, 2020 11:35 am

nietzsche wrote:then you're a son of a whore

I knew you would be able to shed light on the scenario, given it was about both of your specialist subjects (infidelity and delivery men).

by **Dukasaur** on Thu Jan 02, 2020 6:13 pm

mrswdk wrote:
nietzsche wrote:then you're a son of a whore

I knew you would be able to shed light on the scenario, given it was about both of your specialist subjects (infidelity and delivery men).

touche!

by **betiko** on Fri Jan 03, 2020 2:24 pm

Well, I spent like 70% of my child/teenagehood in countries that had nothing to do with both of my parent’s nationality, and maybe 40% of my adult life in foreign countries as well.
I think it must be boring as hell to live in just your country of birth/genetical origin all your life. Well actually... if you live all your life in the same city. At least you get very different vibes from a city to the next