People who decide to become lifelong, career missionaries or to spend long periods of time in a new culture because of their business often have children who accompany them. As those children grow up, many times in a variety of cultures they often become global citizens whose view of the world is shaped by their experiences. While there is a real danger to stereotype third culture kids since they grow up in vastly differing circumstances and since they are unique persons, one of the common traits of many people who grow up in a variety of contexts is a feeling of connection to the world, but a struggle to find a sense of belonging. The following is an interesting video clip which gives this perspective of adult third culture kids.
2 comments:
I by no means am a TCK, however, as someone who moved 7 times in the first 7 years of her life within the same town and additionally was a participant in 2of her mom's weddings - I actually identify very much with the TCK sentiment without having traveled much out of the US. I'm currently a missionary in Peru, but I can identify with many of their feelings as a n. american of european decent having grown up as part of the majority. The instability of environment, friends and family has caused some of the same feelings for me.
From birth to around the age of five years old, my family lived as a minority-majority within the town of Arvin, California. In the early 1980’s--which is during the time when my parents and I lived there, Arvin consisted of somewhere between 70 and 80 percent hispanic persons. My first friends were from hispanic households, and so were my school classmates and children’s church cohorts. I have few doubts in my mind that I was influenced heavily, if not socialized just as much by the hispanic world around me as I was by my own parents. As a junior-higher and high-schooler I attended church mission trips regularly and studied the Spanish language as much as I could. Today, I attend a Spanish speaking church, where I am just as comfortable, if not more comfortable, than if I were to attend a church composed mostly of persons of european dissent.
This situation growing up has lead me to see myself as an outsider in my own culture. I theorize that because I was influenced so heavily by Hispanic culture, albeit, I came from parents of European dissent and that I am of European dissent myself, I am what certain Christian sociologists call a third culture person. A third culture person historically is known to come from a missionary household. Interestingly, my mother was the daughter of the Nazarene pastor in Arvin. Furthermore, my father was a teacher in a school that consisted of mostly migrant children who needed a bilingual education due to language barriers. Therefore, may I be able to call myself a missionary kid in one sense because the cross-cultural interaction of my parents resulted in my own unique cross-cultural interaction at a very young age?
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