I was wondering what are people’s experiences of having and raising children in a different country from your own, specially if your partner is a local. Did you find it challenging not having your family to support you? Did you manage to have them be bilingual? Do you find it’s hard for them to identify with your country, and if so, what are good ways to help with this?
I’m American and live with my Japanese husband and daughter in Japan. It’s very challenging.
I find it difficult not having my family nearby, and visiting is such a lengthy and expensive process. We are always busy and don’t ever get a break…except once every couple months we spring for a babysitter 😂
My husbands family lives nearby but because they provide no help/support and create additional time commitments/stress, I sometimes feel resentment that we need to invest so much time in keeping his family happy but not mine.
Japanese culture still has pretty ingrained gender roles, and mothers are expected to be pretty self sacrificial. That’s just not who I am or how I was raised so I feel like I’m going against the grain every single day. (For example trying to work with small kids here can be challenging due to work culture not being conducive to kids, or the ingrained expectation that there will be a wife at home doing the heavy childcare lifting).
My daughter is picking up both English and Japanese. Her Japanese is of course stronger, but that’s fine and to be expected. As long as she can communicate in English I don’t mind.
It does make me sad sometimes that she feels more distant to me than she would if I were raising her in America. My husband can understand and bond with her about things that I will never understand because I grew up differently. I sometimes feel a bit jealous about that!
So yes it absolutely has been difficult! But I know having children always is, so…I cannot say I have experience raising kids in my own country either, so maybe it isn’t much easier really…? 😂