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Our next featured guest is Tiffany Morrison, owner of Mix It Up, a new line of greeting cards for interracial couples and multiracial consumers (www.Mix-It-Up.net).

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Tiffany Morrison

Previous Interviews

Monica McGoldrick
Director of the Multicultural Family Institute

Jaiya John
Author, Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib

Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Author, Somebody‘s Daughter

Matt Kelley
Founder and President, MAVIN Foundation

Mardie Caldwell
Founder, Lifetime Adoption

Arun Narayan Toke’
Publisher and Editor, Skipping Stones

Laura Gannarelli
President, Paper Lantern

Cheri Register
Author, Beyond Good Intentions

Nancy Kim Parsons
Documentary Filmmaker

Five Questions with Monica McGoldrick

(View Biography)

We would like to thank Monica for her family advice. We all know that all families, regardless of how they are formed or what they look like, encounter struggles everyday. But with people like Monica to help guide us, we are able to make a leap forward to connect with our families better and to move towards a world where respect for and celebrations of cultures, choices and abilities is the universal rule.

1. I am in love with a man who is a widower and has four children (twin 14 year old girls, a 17 year old boy, and an 18 year old girl). What steps can I take to become a loved and loving member of this family?

First of all, I urge you to keep your expectations very low and not try to become the children’s mother, just a friendly auntie or so. Do not take steps to be loved by anyone except your husband. The phase of adolescence is an especially difficult life cycle phase to be entering a family as a remarried couple, so keep a low profile and over time, assuming the children love their father, he will teach them to love you as well. This will not happen for at least several years, and with the older two may it take much longer, since they may not really connect with you until later as they are at the point of “breaking away” from the family just as you are coming in. It will make a difference how long ago their mother died, what their relationship was like with her before that, how she died, and what your husband’s relationship with her was like. Most of all, do not think that the difficulties you encounter are your fault- they are not. They result from the difficult structure of a remarried family, which is always built on loss and must allow time for family members to cope with the loss and move toward new relationships.

2. What are some strategies for incorporating all of the family‘s cultures into everyday life?

I don’t know any strategies really. It depends on the access family members have to the customs and traditions of their cultural background- if there are family members that know the history and still follow the traditions it is easier to learn from them when visiting them. Otherwise, family members will have to make a conscious effort to study the cultures of their heritage and teach each other. I would think of it as an everyday matter of incorporating learning about cultural traditions in ordinary ways – books, films, food, and visits to the culture of origin can make all the difference.

3. How do parents help kids get connected to a culture (or race) that is different from theirs?

Offering the child opportunities to interact with people from their heritage, learning the language and traditions of the child’s culture and making visits to the cultural context are the easiest ways for children to connect with a specific culture or race. When it comes to race, there are special problems for Caucasian parents of, say, African American children. I recommend Jane Lazarre’s On the Whiteness of Whiteness- an excellent book about the difficulties a Caucasian parent will have appreciating what race means for children of color. The more a Caucasian parent understands the dynamics of Caucasian privilege and racism in our society, the better he or she will be able to help his or her child of a different ethnic background to negotiate these pervasive structural factors throughout their lives.

4. What are the long-term consequences for kids who are not connected to their culture?

I think they are likely to have great difficulty finding a comfortable sense of their identity if they are not connected to their culture. It leaves children mystified about who they are.

5. I am wondering about the dynamics of family relationships when an adult parent remarries after the death of a spouse, and becomes enmeshed with the new spouse. Where does that leave the emotionally cut-off adult children when they attempt to differentiate from the original family, and are faced with a completely different and disinterested parent to the one they knew?

I think the best thing the children in such a situation can do is to attempt to make a relationship with their parent’s new spouse and to appreciate that their parent must have experienced a very painful loss to have become so involved with the new spouse. The child will want to try to understand this as a preliminary to attempt to reconnect with the distant parent. As family theorist Murray Bowen recommends, if someone is blocking your way to a family member with whom you want contact with, first try to build a relationship with the person blocking the connection, and you will probably have a much easier time reconnecting. If you try to get around that person, you don’t have much chance of success.

Our next featured guest is Tiffany Morrison, owner of Mix It Up, a new line of greeting cards for interracial couples and multiracial consumers (www.Mix-It-Up.net).