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My oldest girls are aged nine. Meg is actually going to be ten in a few short months. When I think of puberty, I think I get the normal heavy gut feeling that most parents have. This post could actually be written in for many different categories. In fact I may expand on the effects of puberty with older child adoptions, international adoptions and Ethiopian adoptions in the future.
Right now, though, I have been thinking a lot lately on how to raise two black children through puberty as a white mom. There is a small part of me that says just go with the flow, another part that screams at me to research everything I can and prepare, prepare, prepare. It is my parental nature to prepare so that is the part of me currently winning this inner turmoil.
How does one prepare in normal circumstances for a child hitting those pre-teen years. With Meg we used a book to help talk about body changes, I use frank terminology (see ignores me and pretends I didn’t say anything!) and try and be honest without being to sappy, embarrassing or sentimental. For example, I just bought her deodorant one day and explained she was getting older and sweating in different places.
My circumstances with Mita are not the usual. She has only been my daughter for a year. She is doing very well with English, but we still are working on vocabulary. She was brought up with very different bathroom habits than what we are used to at home. To be blunt here, how can I deal with menstruation when I still am trying to get her to wash regularly? The “relax” part of me tells me I still have another year or so before this occurs and by then we will be doing so much better on the hygiene habits. My “research” part of me is already looking for resources to help us through this time of life.
It was during one of my research missions (okay, I was reading the June edition of Essence magizine.) and saw an article entitled “The Body Shop” by Demetria L. Lucas. This article’s content covers how black women are looking for ways to be more sexy for their men. Now, I’m dealing with this puberty thing and sexual health is not on the top of my list, I do know that the two topics go hand in hand though and learned a lot from this article.
The demand for women to be beautiful and all-around-perfect is in every culture. The definition of beauty is different though. The white American culture leans towards skinny, toned and big breasted woman as the standard beauty. The African-American culture favors curves with small waists and large buttocks. (There were actually 9,112 buttock enhancements in 2007 in the U.S.)
I mentioned the previous butt enhancements numbers to my Hubby the other day, noting that our brown girls will not need this surgery. His reply hit me hard though. He said, that while for the AA culture they fit this definition of beauty, for our environment, they may feel self-conscious of the curves. Ouch. He is right, we are not in a “black culture” environment.
Earlier this week I was worried about menstruation and hygiene for teens. Now the issue is layered with self-esteem issues, body image and what is beauty. More than ever I need to find strong role models for my children. Hands on role models, not ones in the magizines or in the White House (I do adore Mrs. Obama though!).
I know that I have used some sweeping generalizations here, please don’t flame me! For the sake of time and word space it had to be done. I really feel I have hit a nerve that needs more exploring though and hope to talk more about self-esteem, body image issuees and teenage issues for the transracial adoptive family.
If you have raised transracial kids through the pre-teen and teen years I would love to hear from you! What worked well, what didn’t work so well?
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Healthy fit children in any culture are attractive. My girls are teens, and they eat healthy, stay active, and have good hygiene. As a result they have nice skin and hair, teeth, and fit bodies. This makes them eye catching and appealing across the board. They don’t seem to have many issues with their appearance at all.