Third culture kids - Keep Your Life, Family and Career Intact While Living Abroad - page 32

I NTERNATIONAL CHILDREN
T HE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF business has added to the ranks—once the domain of dip-
lomats, missionaries and the military—of a special caste: the international family. This in-
cludes families stationed for long periods in a single foreign country and those who relocate
every so often to various points around the globe.
These families are producing a new breed of children—Third Culture Kids—who grow
up outside their own (or at least their parents') native country. The place their parents refer
to as “home” is something thousands of kilometers away, which they may only see for two
weeks out of the year. Naturally, a child who grows up in a single country, though it may be
“foreign” to his or her parents, will usually think of the place as their real home. But tens
of thousands of children around the world experience from Day One that “home” is a place
they occupy for two or three years before going on to the next location.
This sort of upbringing is an extraordinary experience for a human being: to grow up
as a true “person of the world”, familiar with a broad spectrum of languages and cultures,
someone who is likely to be open-minded and knowledgeable about our planet and its
people. Most international parents can be rightly proud to have given their children such a
precious opportunity.
But as with so many good things in life, it comes with sacrifices. Many international
children grow up feeling rootless. Add to this that most such children are raised in the rar-
efied atmosphere of expatriate societies, which are usually very affluent (compared to the
surrounding society), elite (top businessmen and diplomats), and insular, socializing mostly
among their own small, cliquish group. They attend international schools, enjoy the amen-
ities at their parents' exclusive social and country clubs, take holidays abroad, and receive
large weekly allowances.
Thus, international children are usually raised in a country they're told is not their own,
within a tiny subset of society comprised of people who are racially, linguistically and cul-
turally different from the surrounding population.
Many complain later that they felt isolated and lonely as children, without long-term
friends, and consider themselves to be socially awkward. As adults, they may feel unable to
settle down in a single place. Often they feel like social outcasts back in the country their
parents call “home”. Such people can grow up feeling they don't belong anywhere.
P OOR LITTLE RICH KIDS