Raising mixed race kids |
Special Broadcasting Service Corporation
Melbourne, Australia
2016-04-27
The prospect of a family holiday has Ian Rose reflecting on the pleasures of bringing up mixed-race children, and the responsibility to keep them in touch with both cultures.
Let’s get this out there straight away. I am a pom. An unreconstructed, unapologetic, dyed-in-the-wool Englishman. I take tea in the morning, consider any code of football using a non-round ball to be knuckle-headed frippery, and I will automatically apologise if you stand on my foot.
Eight years and counting down-under has not made the slightest dent in my pomminess.
I was brought here by the love of an endlessly patient Vietnamese-Australian woman, a love that has borne hybrid fruit in the form of two children, now aged an exhausting five and six. They’re Aussie. But they’re English, too. And Vietnamese.
So this year, to connect them with that side of their heritage, we’ve decided to take a family holiday to Vietnam.
“Hey, kids,” I announce at the dinner table, partly to distract the boy from his greens.
“Guess where we’re going on holiday? To Vietnam! Yaaaaay!”
My daughter’s face falls into a gurn of displeasure.
“Awww,” she laments, “why can’t we go to England?”…
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Tags: Australia, Ian Rose, SBS, Special Broadcasting Service Corporation, Vietnam