What connects the tennis superstar Emma Raducanu with the tragic story of the little boy orphaned in the Italian cable car crash? Not a lot, you might think. As Emma took New York by storm last week, little Eitan Biran was spirited away from Italy to Israel by his maternal grandparents, the centre of a bitter custody battle after the death of his parents and brother in a horrendous accident.
But they are connected, because both are what is known as “third culture”kids — growing up in a country that is not the same as their parents’ original nationality. And as their stories show, there can be enormous pluses and huge problems attached to this status.
When it works out, everyone is enhanced by the mingling of cultures, the global citizenship on display. We celebrate Emma’s ability to speak Mandarin — her mother’s language — almost as much as her amazing tennis skills.
But when it doesn’t work, when a family fractures and fights over matters of identity and geography, as little Eitan’s has, the result is awful. Eitan isn’t the first child to be pulled between continents in a custody battle. His circumstances are just even more difficult and emotionally charged than usual.
As an expat, bringing up my children in Amsterdam, I came across stories a little bit like his all the time. The boy who was brought to the Netherlands to live with his father’s family — without his stepmother being consulted in advance. The little boy who howled all day, every day in class because his mother was stuck in Bulgaria, waiting for her visa. The mother at the playgroup sandpit, whom I’d never met before, who announced that she was thinking of leaving her husband and taking their only child thousands of miles away, back to Australia, “because we left home 13 years ago, and I don’t think he ever wants to go back”.
It takes time and effort to nurture a child’s mixture of identities. I realised this when I was asked to help my five-year-old prepare a presentation to her class on a national celebrations from her country. What did we do that was British? Absolutely nothing I could think of. Instead, we talked about Chanukah, only to be accosted by a furious Israeli classmate afterwards: “That’s my festival!”
After that, we made a point of attending the British Society’s Guy Fawkes Night celebrations, and we invested in Union Jack clothing galore for the school’s “global village day”, where I joined with other British mums to give the children the typically English experiences of eating scones and making peg dolls. Dutch culture was all around, from the lantern parade of St Martin’s Eve to the songs and parades for Sinterklaas (St Nicholas). But we also took them to shul, and organised Hebrew classes, and celebrated the chagim at home. And this time of year — the High Holydays — was when I felt the most homesick, and questioned whether we had the balance right.
For all that Emma Raducanu is such an amazing success story , I’m sure there were times when her parents struggled with being far from their own cultures and families, and questioned how to imbue her with a mixed identity in a British setting. And I am sure that little Eitan’s parents would have faced these questions as their family grew, and found their own way to blend Israel and Italy, his family and hers, home and away.
Their right to make those decisions was taken away from them in a horrible accident. The custody battle that has ensued splits down the fault lines of identity. Should Eitan — as his mother’s family says — be raised in Israel? Or — as his father’s sister argues, backed by the Italian courts — should he stay in Italy with her, in familiar surroundings, a continuity of the life he had with his parents?
It all goes to underline the importance of appointing guardians for one’s children, just in case, and talking to them about your values, hopes and dreams. We found it a difficult choice, one that brought up all kinds of questions about religion, education and culture. In the end we appointed four guardians – two couples – and asked them if they would share our children. We’d give the kids four new parents to replace the two they might lose. And they’d have two homes to move between, and four adults whom we trusted to work together and co-operate in bringing them up.
They weren’t needed in the end, thank God, and my kids are now adults. They have lived in England for 14 years, and they are unlikely to win any sporting contests.
But the advantages and maybe some of the disadvantages too of being “third culture kids” will be with them for the rest of their lives.
