If you’ve listened to our podcast for any length of time, you know both of us are fascinated by cultures outside the US, especially when it comes to raising kids and how it’s done elsewhere. How do mealtimes work, potty training, family dynamics and the meaning of home?
Today we’re lucky to have with us our special guests, Marisa Bailey and Katelyn Sproles who have some unique experience with living and raising kids in a completely foreign culture.
Marisa & her husband, Aaron, are long-time missionaries. Hailing from Texas and West Virginia, they’ve raised their own family in Tanzania (east Africa) and, most recently, Mozambique. Welcome, Marisa! (Her oldest child was born in Texas; the other three of her children were born in Africa).
ALSO we have Katelyn Sproles here, who—if you heard that last name—is Renee’s DIL. Her parents went to live in Tanzania when she was 9 months old. Her two younger sisters were born there, and her family stayed there for 15 yrs. Welcome, Kate.
You two have such a distinct experience of our topic today, and even between the two of you, one is from the parent POV and the other from a child’s perspective. We’re excited to jump in!
Let’s start with a question that we’ve been mulling over in our HOME series recently b/c I suspect you may have different answers than most of our US listeners:
What does HOME mean to you? (a location? The people, what sort of structure is familiar or “acceptable”)
What was (is) your home like there? What was a typical home for a family in the villages?
Marisa, while you and Aaron CHOSE to take this path and relocate some 8000 miles away, your kids’ experience is a little different. Like in most all families, the kiddos are along for the ride. If someone gets a job relocation or mom & dad decide to move, then they do, too.
The term for these kids is “Third Culture Kids” (or TCKs), a term coined by US sociologist Ruth Hill Useem in the 1950s. First culture meant the culture you were born into. Second culture was the culture you arrived into. And third culture was the term they used for the melding of the two cultures. Globalization has made TCKs more common.
Some of the more famous TCKs are Barak Obama, who lived in Jakarta, Seattle, Kenya and Hawaii and Kobe Bryant, who spent his childhood years in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
American sociologists David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken published a book called Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds back in 1999. Although Pollock died in 2004, Van Reken continues to research and lecture. She says TCKs are more likely to
- speak more than one language,
- have a broader worldview
- and be more culturally aware.
But she warns life as a TCK can create a sense of rootlessness and restlessness, where home is “everywhere and nowhere.”
What do you think, Marisa? Can you tell us a bit about your kids’ initial response to the move? Was the family all on board?
Kate—you were 2 at the time (??) and all your childhood memories are of a home in Africa, right? From a child’s perspective, do you remember the change as jarring or just “this is home now”?
There were times, over the period you lived there, when your family would come back to the US for a furlough or visits to family, sometimes for an extended time—a couple of months maybe. What were your experiences of those times? Were they refreshing? Did they make you homesick? Or were they more of a “place marker” until you could get back home to Africa?
Curious since for your kids (Marisa) and for you (Kate) your new normal was Africa, what were some of the adjustments/transitions you’d have to make in the back & forth? Things that were normal in Africa that were odd in the US or vice versa.
How did you explain those differences to your kids, Marisa? What’s your and Aaron’s approach to bridging the cultures? A respect of both? Or a tolerance of one and a preference for the other?
What would you say are some of the MOST different things between raising kids in east Africa and raising them here in the US?
Kate—your POV here would be BEING raised in Africa vs. the US. Were you aware of differences between your house & the homes of others when you visited? Freedoms or responsibilities?
What is the family structure like in Africa? (Kate’s observations about village life would be good here.) Where are children in the hierarchy?
When you returned and interacted with American kids, what stood out to you? Did you feel “apart”? Did you feel more African or more American?
Besides the geography and infrastructure differences there, both your families are very WHITE. In the marketplace or the villages, it was pretty obvious one of these things is not like the others. How did you address that as a family? Was it an issue there at all?
Did that feel different in the US when you returned to visit? (where the opposite may have been true—you were generally in the majority here)
How did you handle schooling/education? Kate—now that you’re back & have graduated from college here in the US, did you notice any deficits or advantages you had over fellow American students?
Do your kids pick up the language easily?
Marisa—what was your experience of childbirth like in Africa? What’s the typical experience of women there?
Now your kids are older—one in college in the US, another not far from that… are there things you see in American culture that you think your kids would benefit from? How about things you’re glad they’re missing out on?
Kate—now that you’re living in the US full time (& your family is too), are there things you miss about Africa (life rhythms, parts of the culture, perspectives)? How was your assimilation? (what age were you when your family came back permanently?) Did you WANT to move back or no?
At younger ages, as we mentioned, kids go where their parents go. As they get older, and we transition to more responsibility and the “young adult” phase, they naturally become more independent and their opinions etc. may factor in more to family decisions.
How does/did this play out in your families? Do kids get a say in where they go to school? Where they live? (Kate—parents moving to Oregon; Marisa….how much of a say do your 4 get in the family’s situation?)
When all is said and done, kids are kids all the world over. They all need the same things—safety, provision, education, belonging. They’ll all have similar developmental changes and challenges—toddlerhood, puberty.
Do you think you dodged some bullets by living in Africa that might have been heightened in America? Were you surprised that you still had to deal with many of the same developmental transitions even without the influence of what parents struggle with in the US?
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
Maya Angelou