This journalist wrote an article about having a mixed race child here. She talks of how difficult it is to look at her and relate to her because she "looks different". I see why her husband and her have since split per another article. Being that I want children and in an IR relationship, I have expected my children to be biracial. I have never once thought they would feel different, or I would not be able to relate to them at all. If I am their mother, and my husband is their father that is all we need to make the family. I relate to my husband being that he is of a different race just fine. He doesn't feel "alien" at all. I wouldn't expect my child, my own flesh and blood to be either. Why would she write such drivel? Is she not concerned her child might one day find this article and read it as she learns her mother feels distant from her?
She's getting very dark, isn't she?" This is what one of my friends recently said about my much adored - 12-week-old daughter.
She didn't mean to be rude. But it was a comment that struck me with the force of a jab to the stomach.
Immediately, I was overwhelmed by a confusion of emotions. I felt protective, insulted, worried, ashamed, guilty, all at once. The reason? My lovely, wriggly, smiley baby is mixed race.
Why is it an insult to say a child is getting darker? Why are you guilty or ashamed of your own child? Are you guilty or ashamed of your spouse who you laid down with to make this child? How dare you have shame because your baby is dark skinned, I am sure by virtue of the father she looks ten times better than you. Dark does not equal ugly, why would this woman think this way?
Into this positively Scandinavian next generation, I have now injected a tiny, dark-skinned, dark-haired girl. To say she stands out is an understatement.
So what she looks different from your lily white Scandinavian looking family, she is probably the most beautiful person in your family, and it seems her skin tone and hair color is an inconvenience.
One reason for my fear is my own mixed reactions to my daughter. Don't get me wrong, I love her. She is the child I didn't think I'd have after my first marriage broke up. She is the only granddaughter in our family and we all dote on her.
But when I turn to the mirror in my bedroom to admire us together, I am shocked. She seems so alien. With her long, dark eyelashes and shiny, dark brown hair, she doesn't look anything like me.
I know that concentrating on how my daughter looks is shallow. She is a person in her own right, not an accessory to me. But still, I can't shake off the feeling of unease.
I didn't realise how much her looking different would matter and, on a rational level, I know it shouldn't. But it does.
Evolution demands that we have children to pass on our genes, hence the sense of pride and validation we get when we see our features reappearing in the next generation.
With my daughter, I don't have that. Do black fathers who marry white women and then have paler-skinned children feel my sense of loss? Or maybe Chinese mothers or Middle-Eastern grandparents grieve when they see a child they know to be their own, but whose features don't reflect that?
You have an aversion to mixed race children, but yet you made one. Of course the child looks like you, she is just a darker version, and I am sure she also looks like a lighter version of her father. Unless all his genes took over and now she is super duper Indian child. You still feel alien to a child that came out of your body. That is a completely crazy concept to me.
Even if I don't fit this profile, my daughter's difference definitely points out the fact that my children come from two different fathers.
If I wanted to pass us off as a nice, neat nuclear family, she would blow my cover at once.
Oh no your kids have different fathers. This has nothing to do with race, and rather you poor decision to procreate multiple times. If you wanted them to have the same father, get knocked up by the same man. It is so easy.....why couldn't this woman have thought of that?
9 comments:
Yeah, my wife and I were pretty appalled by that article. We made a post about it on our site a while back.
It's appalling that a woman with a dark skinned man would reject her child simply because the kid's skin is darker than hers. I would like to see a picture of them together to compare. I mean, she makes it out like her daughter is some kind of freak! But it's ok because she "still loves her."
If that's love, I'll take spite and hatred any day. That's no love I've ever known, screw that.
You can find a picture of her and her now ex-husband
Here
or here
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/07_01/lowrnicolDM0607_228x593.jpg
This lady has so much issues. Obviously she shouldn't of laid up with a dark man and had a child. She can't deal with it. The one who is going to suffer here is her child, who will grow up thinking because she's darker it is wrong.
what an angry lady she is!
It just irks me when ppl try to be "intellectual' but you can sense that what the real driving force is anger.
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Having biracial children of my own I can say it is a mixture of emotions. I remember when I was preg. First I wondered the gender. Then, I wonderd would my husband STILL love me if the child came out dark? My own insecurities came up again. Then I prayed it should be healthy!!! lol
Well, one of my children has my husband's features and again I ws weary that his side of the family might give her preferential treatment.
Well, thank the High Heavens, all is well. Everyone is loved.
she's lucky that her baby is pretty, because her ex husband is very ugly.--and she's no queen herself. i think girlF oughts to be grateful that she has a healthy, gorgeous child in the first damn place.
She never said she rejected her baby. She seems confused to me. There is nothing wrong with being confused. Identification can be hard for some people. I never got the impression that she thought her daughter was a freak, I got the impression that she is afraid her daughter won't identify with her, or vice versa. There is also nothing wrong with her being afraid. I feel that her even writing this article is a way for her to try and figure it all out. Perhaps not many people on here have a "mixed" baby. It isn't alway easy, especially in the world we live in today. It's unfortuate that her article is seen as spiteful. She seems sad and confused to men and her thinking about it is a way to deal with it. you just cna't please some readers who probably have no idea what it could feel like.
My Daughter is mixed race, I'm mixed Russian and Spanish, she is Carribean regardless of her skin tone she is beautiful I cannot believe that your so hung up about her colour. you say you love her, but love is supposed to be unconditional and without judgement. you are ucky to have her no matter how her skin came out it made me fee sorry for the child reading your post. your nothing short of an undercover racist, a person who isnt directy racist, but one who also wouldent stand up for black people if you were in a room full of white people who were insulting them.
mixed race children in my opinion are the most beautifull of all, they get good qualities from both sides and roots combined together in a ovely unpredictable package.
LOL Ugly people write the most horrible things...
I find the majority of people who replied to horrible narrow minded and un-able to appreciate the complexities of emotions. Not sure if they're being self-righteous or if they are just simple. Some mothers with several kids prefer one child over another -- is that 'horrible' -- well, maybe its not fair but if you undertand an iota about evolution you know its natural for some temperments. This is the same with looks and with genetics -- that's why there is a significanly higher mortality rate among adopted children. And for some, these biases only become appartent after the fact. So to with mixed kids. Yes, its unfortunate. Its also unfortunate when parents value one kid over others, because he follows the family bussiness. But parents are people. People often want to pass on their own -- I found it neat that she wrote about a taboo and troubling issue. Imaging how many parents cover up preferences they have to one child as opposed to another. Better just to acknowledge and go from there.
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