Photo Credit: lepiaf.geo (better off slipping into blur)
This is the first post from my ten question series on questions and discussion that are particularly important for intercultural or interracial couples to have. All of the posts from this series can be found on the series index, The Ten Questions Every Intercultural Couple Should Discuss.
My husband and I grew up in two different worlds. To some extent, all individuals do – all families are unique, after all, and everyone’s childhood has its own rhythm and rhyme. But intercultural couples, like Aditya and I, face particular difficulties in understanding – or even imagining – the experiences that have shaped each other’s lives. The differences between our childhood experiences are both in the bold, key features of our families – education, home language, family structure – and in the small details that make up everyday life – how we traveled to school, the chores we had as children, the games we played when homework was done.
As an intercultural couple, discussing these aspects of your childhoods with each other is incredibly important – not just so that you learn more about each other (every couple should do that!), but also because storytelling is such an effective way to communicate deeply ingrained cultural assumptions.
- His family didn’t have a car while he was growing up. Mine always had at least two.
- His father traveled for work sometimes, but his mother was always at home. My parents divorced when I was six and I became a latchkey kid fairly early on.
- My public school had no dress code at all, while his private high school required uniforms.
- His family rarely lived in homes with much space, while I almost always had a room of my own.
- I cannot remember not having a computer in our house – my dad’s in the industry so we were early adopters – while Aditya didn’t have much experience with computers until his teens.
- His family sometimes had a maid to do many of the chores. I was responsible for doing my own laundry and figuring out most of my meals by the time I hit high school (lots of dinner of cold cereal!).
“But, wait,” you may be thinking, “these sort of differences can occur among families in the same nation! Why all the emphasis on intercultural couples?” My answer to that, is, well, if you and your partner’s backgrounds differ so much from each other, then I’d probably classify you as an intercultural couple anyways. The point is that this conversation should be had for any couple who are unlikely to innately “get” the other person’s history like you would with someone who was raised in a similar manner and culture to you.
The question is simple: “what was your childhood like?”, but the answer should not be. Instead, you should see this question as a jumping off point in a conversation about what attitudes, beliefs, and experiences you were exposed to as a child. For Aditya and I, these conversations about our childhoods have branched out into religion (“What holidays did you celebrate? What did you do?”), our conceptions of marriage and divorce and family (Aditya was shocked to learn that my mother’s parents and my father’s parents are great friends still, despite Mom & Dad’s divorce), and what sort of parents we’d like to be someday (“My best memories from when I was six & seven are of biking around town with friends, with only an order to avoid the big streets and be home by sunset”).
Besides filling you in on numerous details of the culture of your spouse or significant other, telling stories from childhood can also prepare you to meet with family members & friends, or to travel to his or her homeland. I felt better prepared for visiting India from Aditya’s stories of bargaining in the market as a 2nd grader for the day’s groceries then I did from reading any guidebook. After hearing how sail boating and playing at the neighborhood swimming pool was such an important part of the time I spent with my father’s family, Aditya knew to expect some ribbing at his non-swimmer status when he (bravely) agreed to join our family reunion on a houseboat on Lake Shasta about a year into dating me.
The Bottom Line
Telling stories from your childhood – and then allowing the discussion to expand from there as points of difference arise – is possibly the best way for intercultural couples to learn about the nitty-gritty details of each other’s cultures and families. These are often the details you’d never think to discuss with each other – because they’re so basic to each one of you – but they’re key to fully understanding and getting each others’ cultures.
Related posts:
- Intercultural Couple Question #2: What’s Your Opinion of Our Two Cultures?
- The Ten Questions Every Intercultural Couple Should Discuss
- Intercultural Couple Question #3: Do You Fit Parts of Your Culture’s Stereotypes?
- A Couple of Great Resources
- Indian Parental Problems: When Your Intercultural or Interracial Relationship Is Suddenly an Issue
December 7th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
This is awesome! P and I were just talking about this exact concept last night. I had told him that it was difficult for me to even picture him as a kid…I really feel like I have very little to no concept of his childhood sometimes. I agree that sharing stories and discussing differences is a really wonderful and fun way to learn more about each other.
December 8th, 2009 at 5:32 am
When we went to India, my mother-in-law dug out some old family photos and seeing my husband as a little kid really helped me comprehend his childhood, even more than when we had discussed it. He seems so “American” now, it was really eye-opening to see all these old photos of him dressed up like Krishna for some holiday or other, him going through all these rituals and celebrations, him with all his friends at a birthday party, sitting on the floor all eating rice and curd with their hands (I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of doing that), even the photos of his parents as a young couple – it was really neat. I don’t know if he was as intrigued by my old photos from ballet recitals, etc., but who knows?
December 8th, 2009 at 9:12 am
GG – Aditya tried very hard to learn to swim for you — Megan and I spent some time teaching him one summer at Darius’ house. He tried very hard, despite the non-help his ‘brothers’ provided. It was very sweet
December 8th, 2009 at 11:44 am
GG, I like your advice, but it works best if your significant other knows how to tell a story. I’ve never met someone in my life with a worse memory for non-academic oriented detail than P. Actually half the stories that I’ve been telling at “American-Nepali Household” he only murkily remembers and most of the details he relies on me to know. It’s pretty incredible and I don’t know how he does it… I’m really interested in details, I absolutely love listening to stories, so I will ask about 10 million questions to learn more about the background of something from P, but usually I have to rely on other people to fill in the missing pieces. P’s cousin Madhu-di is amazing, she is like a walking family encyclopedia… she can tell me the back story on any member of the family, or their childhoods, or anything. P’s high school friends are good at filling in the details too. Or P’s other family members, but P is a little hopeless. He does have little glimmers now and then, if looking at pictures, but anything long and involved, forget it. Same goes with a lot of details on festivals and rituals or cultural things. I’ve learn more of these from friends rather than P. It’s not that he isn’t interested, he just doesn’t see the importance in detail and doesn’t commit it to memory. He seems equally surprised at my ability to remember so much.
Actually, the more I think about it, a lot of P’s family are pretty good with stories. Over the summer we interviewed P’s grandfather on video and recorded over an hour of a long involved story from when he worked in Royal Chitwan National Park. Even P’s dad can tell a good story if you ask him enough questions. I guess the apple fell far from the tree with this one…
January 13th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Hi GG, I am just beginning to read your blog. I have to go back to the beginning. I too have many stories to tell I and he me. There are so many things that are different. I want to sit on the rooftop — (not play cricket like he did), but stories make you wish that you were there. But, even the slaughter of goats/lambs, story of circumcision, rooftop playing, beggars at the door, gates in front of every house and what to eat when you are sick are different, yet interesting. He still can’t understand how “prom” was so important or can’t imagine himself doing many of the things that I have done as a child. I have written about these subjects many times: as I journal, but never put them on the internet. 1 reason is because of blog accessibility and the other is because I did not think that many ppl would be interested. I’ll try but applaud you for being the pioneer in this arena! Now, it is off to read the beginning of your blog and work my way up to the present. Jan
January 21st, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Well, if you’re ever interested in putting the information up on a blog, let me know – I bet it’d be pretty interesting! We have a thread in the forum on blogging where you could ask any questions on the topic that you might have.