Talk:Third culture kid/Archives/2013

Stereotypes About Military Brats

This article incorrectly stated (until recently corrected) that a majority of military brats tend to be very insulated from the overseas cultures in which they live. In fact, a slight majority of overseas American military kids have historically lived off-base in local villages or cities and were consequently very immersed in their host cultures. Lack of sufficent base housing, especially for familes, has always been an issue, forcing many married personel with children to live off base.

Reasons for this stereotype are tied to host culture hosility (and at times, reactions to American foreign policy)--

Cultural disinheritance as a repudiation of occupation. Military kids are often punished by host cultures. This 'disinheritance stereotype' tends to come from host cultures themselves (Germany Japan and the Philippines for example) where there is decades old anti-military (and at times anti-American foreign policy) resentment and even anger. In countries like Germany Japan and the Philippines, where a majority of American military kids live or lived off-base and immersed in the host culture and not insulated from the host nation by the U.S. military, there can often be resentful, and even occasionally hostile, reactions against these kids by the native populations. A common expression of this resentment is a tendency to negatively and aggressively stereotype American military children as outsiders (partly true, but not completely true): Part of this anger at occupation is often directed at current or former military children and the message is: "You never belonged here, your parents were occupiers, therefore we will reject or downplay your experience of assimilation into our culture."

So knowledge about the true extent of the military brat TCK experience becomes a casualty of international tensions-- and to a lesser degree, a handful of very agenda-driven academics who have their own reasons for wanting to stereotype military personel and their children.

(Not all academics who look at these issues do this, but some do, which proliferates even more military brat stereotypes). The fact ramains-- a majority of overseas military kids have lived off-base (immersed in the host culture).

This hidden fact about majority off-base-living is unfortunate because many former military children posess a facility for international and intercultural understanding (including multi-lingual facility) that is quite rich and of value to a nation learning how to relate more effectively to the outside world.

One last note-- I personally was a military brat and lived the majority of my childhood in Europe and the majority of that time was spent living off-base. The majority of military kids whose parents were working at say, Ramstein Air Base lived off-base, for example.

Our true experiences as overseas military kids have been invisible for too long.

Sean7phil (talk) 14:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Another misrepresentation in the article-- the fact stated that 41% of military brats live overseas 5 years or less (used in the article to support the assumption that military brats have little overseas assimilation experience) fails to make this point for the following reasons--

A) That leaves 59% of military brats (if these statistics are accurate) who have lived overseas longer than 5 years.

B) Childhood years are the most formative years-- so if a military brat even lives off-base and only 3 (three) years overseas after say, age three -- that is during the most profoundly formative time of their lives.

C) Children are extremely rapid assimilators. Children learn languages much faster than adults do-- For example, studies show that children learn two languages almost as quickly as they learn a single language. So downplaying the significance of living even a few years overseas as a child is very innacurate. Children are actually like sponges and they absorb new cultures and words very quickly.

Sean7phil (talk) 18:09, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Another source of confusion about this is the fact that while a majority of military families lived off-base overseas, a majority of single (unmarried) soldiers without children lived on base.

Sean7phil (talk) 01:13, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed to all of the above, plus this article erroneously attributes on base residence to the age of the child. This is categorically false. There is no mandate that children of a certain age should live on base, and not even a cultural expectation. There is a housing list which is first come, first serve, with the exception of rank having its priviledges. Where military families are permitted to live off base, if a family so chooses they may regardless of how old or young their children are. Some of the other generalizations about TWK may not be absolute truths about the military experience either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.137.150.35 (talk) 19:19, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Third culture kid vs. third-culture kid

I have noticed an inconsistency in reference to the term, at times using a dash, at other times capitalizing. I would propose being consistent with the title of the article. Unless there are any objections, I'd like to use "third culture kid" consistently. GlobalFamilies 18:07, 27 March 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Globalfamilies (talk • contribs)

This is correct. References to TCKs from the writings of the Useems in the 1950's through current writings and research use separate words, not a hyphenation. Ajungle (talk) 20:49, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Assignment Edit

I think the subsections under the section "Sponsorship" have potential to be elaborated on further. Also, there is potential for adding more specific examples of experiences that third culture kids and/or missionary kids have had. Rodmer Lomboy (talk) 09:17, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia assignment edit

Hi, I am James Min, a student at Azusa Pacific University. I have reviewed your article, and I have some suggestions for you to improve your article to be more credible article to people. Your current article has many information that are useful for us to understand about TCK. However, some parts of it are required to cite the sources that you have referred from outside sources that could be a book, journal, or other articles other people already publicized. For example, the bullets that you listed are required for you to give credits to the authors. However, it only has one citation at the last bullet. So, if you used all information from one source, please cite or give the reference to the rest too. Overall, I liked that you provide some links that are relevant to your topic. It helped me to understand better. If you have any question, please leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jamesmin89 (talk • contribs) 08:21, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Third culture kid

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Third culture kid's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "pollock":

• From School Choice International: Pollock DC and Van Reken R (2001). Third Culture Kids. Nicholas Brealey Publishing/Intercultural Press. Yarmouth, Maine. ISBN 1-85788-295-4.
• From Boarding school: Pollock DC and Van Reken R (2001). Third Culture Kids. Nicholas Brealey Publishing/Intercultural Press. Yarmouth, Maine. ISBN 1-85788-295-4.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 15:59, 4 July 2013 (UTC)