OK, here is yet another fabulous article from Adoptive Families magazine. It is written by Jerri Ann Jenista, M.D who is the adoptive mother of five and says she is raising her children in an” Italian-Indian-American Catholic single-parent, medically-oriented, cat-dominated culture.” Got to love that! She also reviews adoption referrals, so maybe some of you have had the pleasure of working with her.

The name of the article is “Culture, Heritage, and Stereotypes - If we don't help our children understand stereotypes who will?”

Dr. Jenista does a great job in this article looking at stereotypes and how they affect our own lives and those of our children.

She discusses culture and heritage, and how at the point of adoption, most children will change their culture, but will always have their heritage as a part of them.

Here is how Jenista defines culture (I love this by the way). “Culture is what tells you how to live your life. Culture defines what you expect to eat for breakfast, how you address your boss or your teacher, how close to stand to your friends, how to sit in a chair. Culture involves values. Culture tells you whether your family or your job is more important, who would be a good choice for a marriage partner, and how much skin you can decently expose at the swimming pool. You learn culture by living it. Depending on the values of your culture, you may lose your job because of your dyed purple hair or you may be considered a valued eccentric who brings a fresh whiff of creativity. You can change your culture (with effort) by living in another culture. The older you are, the harder it is to live successfully in a new culture just because you have so many years of cultural education to unlearn.”

And here is how she defines heritage; “Heritage is what belongs to you by virtue of your birth. Heritage includes your genetic background, physical features, and ethnic origin; it includes the history of the people who share those features with you. Heritage consists only of facts, but one's culture may place more or less value on those facts. Whether or not you know or care anything about your heritage, it belongs to you. “

Then she goes on to say that stereotyping is when you judge someone based solely on his or her heritage. “Classifying a person solely by heritage is what we call stereotyping. For example, when meeting a Japanese person, there is an almost irresistible urge to assign to that person the characteristics we perceive as "Japanese," such as obedience, industry, interest in computers, and lack of humor. However, if that Japanese person was born and raised in Iowa, he or she might be a lot more interested in corn farming and Saturday Night Live than in electronics or raw fish. Stereotyping unfairly assigns a person a culture based on his or her heritage alone. It's the same as considering a young woman air-headed (culture) based on her genetic heritage (blonde hair).”

Jenista continues that as parents, it is our responsibility to teach them the great and wonderful things about their heritage, so they can see past the stereotypes. She says, “As adoptive parents, we are obligated to help our children discover their heritage. If you wait for the media, the kid down the block, the admissions counselor at college, or your child's prospective employer to "educate" your child, your son or daughter is in for a lot of unhappiness.”

The article ends with an interesting exercise to talk a look at our own heritage and how our thoughts have been shaped. I am going to try it.

Happy reading.