Third Culture Kids | Monday,21 Dec 2009
The term Third Culture Kid (TCK) was coined by the American sociologist Ruth Hill Useem when she lived in India with her three children in the 1950s. She was working there with Americans who were posted abroad. Useem used the term because children integrate aspects of their parents' culture (first culture) and the culture of the new country (second culture) to create a unique, third culture. This often involves a common lifestyle in an expat community, for example, such as that seen among children of diplomats, military personnel, businessmen and other ‘world workers’.
These children, who grow up in different countries during a period when they are forming their identities and laying the foundations of relationship development, often have the same responses and traits. In one of Useem’s studies, TCKs indicated that they felt they were different from their peers. Eighty per cent said they got along easily with people, and quickly understood people of different cultures.
Further familiar characteristics tend to be a privileged lifestyle, with above average familiarity with their parents' jobs. TCKs (also referred to as global nomads) develop their own sense of belonging, influenced by both the guest country and their home country. The response often given to the question where they are from is: “Do you mean where my parents are from or where I now live?”
Definition
The most commonly used definition may be found in Pollock and Van Reken’s book Third Culture Kids, which states that a TCK is someone who has spent several years of his or her childhood in one or more cultures other than those of his or her parents. As a result, the child feels a connection to all of these cultures, without feeling completely at home in any one of them individually and usually feels most familiar with people who have had a similar experience. A child of American parents who grew up in Japan can have more in common with a British child who grew up in India than with peers from his or her homeland.
In summary, expat children are usually special because they have been exposed to a mix of cultures during their youth. By comparison, a child who moves often in his or her home country will have to keep making new friends, yet will not have to learn over and over again how to say thank you or how to pay for groceries!
This is a chapter of the booklet ‘Third Culture Kids’, published by Global Connection.
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