I’m Asian and married an Asian and I think my parents wished I married a white person…

[Anonymous]

Yes, even minorities think whites are better than minorities.

My (brown) Hispanic relative used to talk about one of our whiter, more European-looking-but-still-Hispanic family members with such pride that it was clear that, to him, even proximity to whiteness was a badge of honor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think they were just making conversation. I wouldn't worry about it.

Little Chinese kids are cute, too.

This. If it bothers you, tell them.

[Anonymous]

I just wanted to say that I thoroughly connected with a lot of the mixed race, Chinese school is way too hard, comments here. Kinda want to get coffee and some pastries with y’all.

And OP: you need to tell your mom that your children understand what they are saying even if it’s in a different language. And they learn what they say and internalize it. And that as grandparents, they should protect their grandchildren from feeling that way.

They might argue otherwise- but I would not let it go. Your children deserve better and you can protect them by leading the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I married an Asian immigrant who came when he was 3, I'm a white female. 20-some-odd years later my dear mil told me that she was secretly glad he married me so that she didn't have to complain about me all the time, because that's the expected mil/dil dynamic in old school Asian culture. But I dove right in to learning the language and culture, his family jokes I'm a better Asian than him. I tell this story because the comments may have nothing to do with your shortcomings, but them grappling with having to be "Asian" after living here for so long and wanting to be more Western.

PP. Asian people always thought my kids looked white, and white people always thought my kids looked Asian. Odd thing that I have noticed over the years, biracial kids with typical American last names were treated differently than my son who had an Asian last name. It became really apparent during Covid, when his close friend got no Asian hate, but he did, despite being at the same school.

Which kid is getting the Asian hate?

Mine, with the Asian last name (Asian dad, white mom). It was if having the last name made him seem more Asian than his buddy who had the American last name (white dad, Asian mom). Both 50/50, but name swayed the haters to view him as more Asian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Chinese and if parents are anything like mine, they'd complain you should have married someone Chinese if you married white or any other Asian
And if you did the right thing by marrying someone Chinese, well, that wasn't good enough either.

The best thing I ever did was realize they'll never be satisfied with anything I do, or don't do.

However since tallness is a virtue, maybe they're just complaining because they wish your kids were taller. I do happen to have a kid with a white father and my parents love to fawn over how tall he is. Every.time.he.visits.

Whatever, live your life and not theirs.

Lol this made me laugh because it is so true. Second gen Chinese here married to a white man. If your parents are like mine, the grass is always greener on the cherry-picked path not taken.

I have a lot of thoughts on the Asians marrying whites phenomenon but I will just say that I found it hard finding and dating Asians in a non Asian dominant environment because there was so much self-hatred (is a strong word but something akin to that) in the asian community. It does seem the older I get, the more I wish I had married someone Chinese.

Can you elaborate more on your last comment about wishing you'd married someone Chinese? I'm an Asian who married an Asian and am really curious about what the Asian/non-Asian pairings are like (e.g. what are extended family dynamics like)?

PP here, sure. For me, I realized how much I wished I could share/pass down the Chinese language to my kids and to share the second gen Chinese American immigrant experience with my spouse. On the first, sometimes it really pains me that my kids won't be able to speak the language of my childhood that I used to communicate with my grandparents, now long gone. And though my English far surpasses my Chinese, Chinese was technically my first language and there is an intimate feeling I cannot quite describe when I use my pathetic Chinese. That's an intimacy I likely will never share with my husband and probably not with my kids either. Yes I could enroll them in Chinese school or tutors or speak to them and I have tried but have concluded that I simply do not have the bandwidth or ability to do this on my own.

On the second point, I am convinced that as people get older or maybe come under more stress, they kind of revert to the way they are comfortable being, and closer to their upbringing. People can change in all sorts of ways but mostly the childhood things that bring them comfort stay consistent. I just wish my spouse and I shared that.

It is interesting that another PP mentioned rarely seeing second gen Asian couples. I thought about my high school friends and they pretty much all married non Asians. And this is in an area with plentiful (but not dominant) Asians. Sometime funny happened our generation I think. Maybe too much emphasis on assimilation. Maybe most of us had such stressful home lives with our Chinese mothers that we all wanted to escape and not add another Chinese MIL.

I don't want to be mean, but do you realize this is on you? i am non-Chinese, married to Chinese who was born and raised here, he is completely American who looks Chinese, he barely speaks Chinese. But i made a huge deal about kids learning Chinese, even at a basic level. Yes, it gets hard going to Chinese school every sunday, we can't really go away for weekends during the school year, but it was and is important to me and i love it when my ILs speak Chinese to kids, though they do switch to English all the time.

I applaud you for being so supportive of learning the language. However, going to Chinese school once a week does not teach a kid Chinese. It is a HUGE effort to get any kind of proficiency in the language. You have to speak it in the home environment constantly, between kids and parents and between parents I have talked a a lot of moms in mixed marriages on this issue and it is all but impossible without two Chinese speaking parents.

Thank you! I do understand that sunday school won't make kids proficient or fluent in Chinese. My expectations are not too high. But it is still better than nothing, they are learning the basics, phonetics. My hope is the same as the other PP described that they will get more interested as they get older.

By the way, I am from Eastern Europe, and my mom lives with us, so there is one more language in the mix. I think it is good for kids to be exposed to as many languages as possible, even minimal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Chinese and if parents are anything like mine, they'd complain you should have married someone Chinese if you married white or any other Asian
And if you did the right thing by marrying someone Chinese, well, that wasn't good enough either.

The best thing I ever did was realize they'll never be satisfied with anything I do, or don't do.

However since tallness is a virtue, maybe they're just complaining because they wish your kids were taller. I do happen to have a kid with a white father and my parents love to fawn over how tall he is. Every.time.he.visits.

Whatever, live your life and not theirs.

Lol this made me laugh because it is so true. Second gen Chinese here married to a white man. If your parents are like mine, the grass is always greener on the cherry-picked path not taken.

I have a lot of thoughts on the Asians marrying whites phenomenon but I will just say that I found it hard finding and dating Asians in a non Asian dominant environment because there was so much self-hatred (is a strong word but something akin to that) in the asian community. It does seem the older I get, the more I wish I had married someone Chinese.

Can you elaborate more on your last comment about wishing you'd married someone Chinese? I'm an Asian who married an Asian and am really curious about what the Asian/non-Asian pairings are like (e.g. what are extended family dynamics like)?

PP here, sure. For me, I realized how much I wished I could share/pass down the Chinese language to my kids and to share the second gen Chinese American immigrant experience with my spouse. On the first, sometimes it really pains me that my kids won't be able to speak the language of my childhood that I used to communicate with my grandparents, now long gone. And though my English far surpasses my Chinese, Chinese was technically my first language and there is an intimate feeling I cannot quite describe when I use my pathetic Chinese. That's an intimacy I likely will never share with my husband and probably not with my kids either. Yes I could enroll them in Chinese school or tutors or speak to them and I have tried but have concluded that I simply do not have the bandwidth or ability to do this on my own.

On the second point, I am convinced that as people get older or maybe come under more stress, they kind of revert to the way they are comfortable being, and closer to their upbringing. People can change in all sorts of ways but mostly the childhood things that bring them comfort stay consistent. I just wish my spouse and I shared that.

It is interesting that another PP mentioned rarely seeing second gen Asian couples. I thought about my high school friends and they pretty much all married non Asians. And this is in an area with plentiful (but not dominant) Asians. Sometime funny happened our generation I think. Maybe too much emphasis on assimilation. Maybe most of us had such stressful home lives with our Chinese mothers that we all wanted to escape and not add another Chinese MIL.

I don't want to be mean, but do you realize this is on you? i am non-Chinese, married to Chinese who was born and raised here, he is completely American who looks Chinese, he barely speaks Chinese. But i made a huge deal about kids learning Chinese, even at a basic level. Yes, it gets hard going to Chinese school every sunday, we can't really go away for weekends during the school year, but it was and is important to me and i love it when my ILs speak Chinese to kids, though they do switch to English all the time.

I applaud you for being so supportive of learning the language. However, going to Chinese school once a week does not teach a kid Chinese. It is a HUGE effort to get any kind of proficiency in the language. You have to speak it in the home environment constantly, between kids and parents and between parents I have talked a a lot of moms in mixed marriages on this issue and it is all but impossible without two Chinese speaking parents.

Thank you! I do understand that sunday school won't make kids proficient or fluent in Chinese. My expectations are not too high. But it is still better than nothing, they are learning the basics, phonetics. My hope is the same as the other PP described that they will get more interested as they get older.

By the way, I am from Eastern Europe, and my mom lives with us, so there is one more language in the mix. I think it is good for kids to be exposed to as many languages as possible, even minimal.

Don't do this to your kid. I'm an ABC and my parents forced me to go to Chinese school from elementary all the way until high school. Even had summers spent in Taiwan and part of that was language school. What a waste. I wish I grew up doing other things instead with that time. Took a real language class once in grad school and got to an ILR level of 3+ after a year. All that househould Chinese spoken at home is just that. Now, maybe you/your kid(s) are going to a hardcore Chinese school. I'd still offer the same advice.

Please take back your afternoons/weekends/summers and do something fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Chinese and if parents are anything like mine, they'd complain you should have married someone Chinese if you married white or any other Asian
And if you did the right thing by marrying someone Chinese, well, that wasn't good enough either.

The best thing I ever did was realize they'll never be satisfied with anything I do, or don't do.

However since tallness is a virtue, maybe they're just complaining because they wish your kids were taller. I do happen to have a kid with a white father and my parents love to fawn over how tall he is. Every.time.he.visits.

Whatever, live your life and not theirs.

Lol this made me laugh because it is so true. Second gen Chinese here married to a white man. If your parents are like mine, the grass is always greener on the cherry-picked path not taken.

I have a lot of thoughts on the Asians marrying whites phenomenon but I will just say that I found it hard finding and dating Asians in a non Asian dominant environment because there was so much self-hatred (is a strong word but something akin to that) in the asian community. It does seem the older I get, the more I wish I had married someone Chinese.

Can you elaborate more on your last comment about wishing you'd married someone Chinese? I'm an Asian who married an Asian and am really curious about what the Asian/non-Asian pairings are like (e.g. what are extended family dynamics like)?

PP here, sure. For me, I realized how much I wished I could share/pass down the Chinese language to my kids and to share the second gen Chinese American immigrant experience with my spouse. On the first, sometimes it really pains me that my kids won't be able to speak the language of my childhood that I used to communicate with my grandparents, now long gone. And though my English far surpasses my Chinese, Chinese was technically my first language and there is an intimate feeling I cannot quite describe when I use my pathetic Chinese. That's an intimacy I likely will never share with my husband and probably not with my kids either. Yes I could enroll them in Chinese school or tutors or speak to them and I have tried but have concluded that I simply do not have the bandwidth or ability to do this on my own.

On the second point, I am convinced that as people get older or maybe come under more stress, they kind of revert to the way they are comfortable being, and closer to their upbringing. People can change in all sorts of ways but mostly the childhood things that bring them comfort stay consistent. I just wish my spouse and I shared that.

It is interesting that another PP mentioned rarely seeing second gen Asian couples. I thought about my high school friends and they pretty much all married non Asians. And this is in an area with plentiful (but not dominant) Asians. Sometime funny happened our generation I think. Maybe too much emphasis on assimilation. Maybe most of us had such stressful home lives with our Chinese mothers that we all wanted to escape and not add another Chinese MIL.

I don't want to be mean, but do you realize this is on you? i am non-Chinese, married to Chinese who was born and raised here, he is completely American who looks Chinese, he barely speaks Chinese. But i made a huge deal about kids learning Chinese, even at a basic level. Yes, it gets hard going to Chinese school every sunday, we can't really go away for weekends during the school year, but it was and is important to me and i love it when my ILs speak Chinese to kids, though they do switch to English all the time.

I applaud you for being so supportive of learning the language. However, going to Chinese school once a week does not teach a kid Chinese. It is a HUGE effort to get any kind of proficiency in the language. You have to speak it in the home environment constantly, between kids and parents and between parents I have talked a a lot of moms in mixed marriages on this issue and it is all but impossible without two Chinese speaking parents.

Thank you! I do understand that sunday school won't make kids proficient or fluent in Chinese. My expectations are not too high. But it is still better than nothing, they are learning the basics, phonetics. My hope is the same as the other PP described that they will get more interested as they get older.

By the way, I am from Eastern Europe, and my mom lives with us, so there is one more language in the mix. I think it is good for kids to be exposed to as many languages as possible, even minimal.

Don't do this to your kid. I'm an ABC and my parents forced me to go to Chinese school from elementary all the way until high school. Even had summers spent in Taiwan and part of that was language school. What a waste. I wish I grew up doing other things instead with that time. Took a real language class once in grad school and got to an ILR level of 3+ after a year. All that househould Chinese spoken at home is just that. Now, maybe you/your kid(s) are going to a hardcore Chinese school. I'd still offer the same advice.

Please take back your afternoons/weekends/summers and do something fun.

Thank you, i appreciate the advice. We might consider that in a few years at some point. But I do want them to try it out for a few years, not giving up just yet. Kids are elementary school age, we have some time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm Chinese and if parents are anything like mine, they'd complain you should have married someone Chinese if you married white or any other Asian
And if you did the right thing by marrying someone Chinese, well, that wasn't good enough either.

The best thing I ever did was realize they'll never be satisfied with anything I do, or don't do.

However since tallness is a virtue, maybe they're just complaining because they wish your kids were taller. I do happen to have a kid with a white father and my parents love to fawn over how tall he is. Every.time.he.visits.

Whatever, live your life and not theirs.

Lol this made me laugh because it is so true. Second gen Chinese here married to a white man. If your parents are like mine, the grass is always greener on the cherry-picked path not taken.

I have a lot of thoughts on the Asians marrying whites phenomenon but I will just say that I found it hard finding and dating Asians in a non Asian dominant environment because there was so much self-hatred (is a strong word but something akin to that) in the asian community. It does seem the older I get, the more I wish I had married someone Chinese.

Can you elaborate more on your last comment about wishing you'd married someone Chinese? I'm an Asian who married an Asian and am really curious about what the Asian/non-Asian pairings are like (e.g. what are extended family dynamics like)?

PP here, sure. For me, I realized how much I wished I could share/pass down the Chinese language to my kids and to share the second gen Chinese American immigrant experience with my spouse. On the first, sometimes it really pains me that my kids won't be able to speak the language of my childhood that I used to communicate with my grandparents, now long gone. And though my English far surpasses my Chinese, Chinese was technically my first language and there is an intimate feeling I cannot quite describe when I use my pathetic Chinese. That's an intimacy I likely will never share with my husband and probably not with my kids either. Yes I could enroll them in Chinese school or tutors or speak to them and I have tried but have concluded that I simply do not have the bandwidth or ability to do this on my own.

On the second point, I am convinced that as people get older or maybe come under more stress, they kind of revert to the way they are comfortable being, and closer to their upbringing. People can change in all sorts of ways but mostly the childhood things that bring them comfort stay consistent. I just wish my spouse and I shared that.

It is interesting that another PP mentioned rarely seeing second gen Asian couples. I thought about my high school friends and they pretty much all married non Asians. And this is in an area with plentiful (but not dominant) Asians. Sometime funny happened our generation I think. Maybe too much emphasis on assimilation. Maybe most of us had such stressful home lives with our Chinese mothers that we all wanted to escape and not add another Chinese MIL.

I don't want to be mean, but do you realize this is on you? i am non-Chinese, married to Chinese who was born and raised here, he is completely American who looks Chinese, he barely speaks Chinese. But i made a huge deal about kids learning Chinese, even at a basic level. Yes, it gets hard going to Chinese school every sunday, we can't really go away for weekends during the school year, but it was and is important to me and i love it when my ILs speak Chinese to kids, though they do switch to English all the time.

I applaud you for being so supportive of learning the language. However, going to Chinese school once a week does not teach a kid Chinese. It is a HUGE effort to get any kind of proficiency in the language. You have to speak it in the home environment constantly, between kids and parents and between parents I have talked a a lot of moms in mixed marriages on this issue and it is all but impossible without two Chinese speaking parents.

Thank you! I do understand that sunday school won't make kids proficient or fluent in Chinese. My expectations are not too high. But it is still better than nothing, they are learning the basics, phonetics. My hope is the same as the other PP described that they will get more interested as they get older.

By the way, I am from Eastern Europe, and my mom lives with us, so there is one more language in the mix. I think it is good for kids to be exposed to as many languages as possible, even minimal.

Don't do this to your kid. I'm an ABC and my parents forced me to go to Chinese school from elementary all the way until high school. Even had summers spent in Taiwan and part of that was language school. What a waste. I wish I grew up doing other things instead with that time. Took a real language class once in grad school and got to an ILR level of 3+ after a year. All that househould Chinese spoken at home is just that. Now, maybe you/your kid(s) are going to a hardcore Chinese school. I'd still offer the same advice.

Please take back your afternoons/weekends/summers and do something fun.

Thank you, i appreciate the advice. We might consider that in a few years at some point. But I do want them to try it out for a few years, not giving up just yet. Kids are elementary school age, we have some time.

Another ABC here. Chinese school was useless in regards to language. It did expose me to other ABCs and some Chinese culture.

I became fluent in Chinese by spending 1 year abroad in high school.

Took a class in college to get the grammar rules down.