Japanese raising

[jpdrag0n]

honestly the OP is starting to piss me off. ill tell you honestly what i think. i think the biggest hurdle you will face is that youre black. youre already at a disadvantage trying to adopt an asian child.

please adopt an american child who is in need. youre american anyway...

[Nyororin]

I was out there living life, and taking care of my own child, so I didn`t get a chance to reply as things progressed. I think most of the issues have been covered, but I feel a need to reply to this. Probably because I`m most likely one of the only, if not only, posters in this topic who REALLY has children.
There were several points which irritated the crap out of me, and I am going to give my opinion on them. As a MOTHER, and as an actual developmental specialist, not just a random someone.

Anyways Im already finacially stable, so why not have kids?

But for the other things. Im almost done with college, I have a great paying job, and numerous other income. Im into the stock market, I own property, I take pictures, Im joint-ownership with a club and Im a landlord. I think it do not get any better then this. I gross about $50, 000 a year of that alone and that's with an A.S degree.

Congratulations! You win at life!

Seriously - great for you... But if you consider this a central prerequisite for having a child, you really have your values mixed up. You say you`re financially stable, making $50,000/year - but are not yet out of college. Wow... But not really. Let`s think this out. Financially stable? At 19? Before graduating? Making money from one of the most unstable careers? (Club owner, landlord)

You`re 19. How many years has that life been going on? One? Two? If that. I doubt you were making $50,000/year before you were 18. You can`t say "stable" without it lasting 5 years. At least. Unless you were magically making $50,000/year at 14, you failed. That`s not stability. That`s "making a lot of money in a short time" and nothing more. Having the ability to pay for a child doesn`t mean a THING. Sure, it`s nice. Sure, it simplifies things. But it isn`t going to make you into mother of the year. Life doesn`t work that way. Even if that income is stable, and guaranteed for the rest of your productive life - you show so little stability in other areas that you simply SHOULD NOT HAVE A CHILD until you fix that.
You do not appear to have the emotional stability to care for a child. You may think you do, but if you did - do you really think everyone here would be pointing out problems?

And now to move on;

First time I ever heard I need counselling because I dont think my culture all that great.

I actually wasn`t saying you needed counseling because you didn`t like your culture. You know what? I really don`t like American culture in general. I certainly don`t think disliking your home culture is a reason to get counseling.
The reason I think you need counseling is your response to that. Thinking that having a child, preferably born in a different culture, is going to provide a solution to that. That the genetic make up of a child is going to change YOUR life. That`s not a child. That`s a proxy, and making one out of a child is a recognized mental illness. Do I think you`re at that stage? No, but you`re setting yourself up to make some really unfortunate choices.

I just think they have better priorties, then most races. I dont think you can infuse something into you that your not apart of, yes you can learn, but never become apart of.

Priorities come from personal experience - the culture you were raised in, the style you were raised in, and your own independent experiences. Priorities are NOT genetic. You`re right in saying they`re learned. They ARE. This means that ALL the priorities are learned. No one is naturally "a part" of something. It`s ALL learned behavior. All of it.

I think if a child feels that it's apart of another culture that has good values, maybe it will become different and a well respected person and want to know more about it.

Or that can backfire. You`ll be expecting something from your child that they never learned. It`s not in their blood. What they WILL learn from you is that you think you are inferior. You think your blood is inferior. That you think those around you are inferior. That is NOT the way to raise a well adjusted child. If you`re their mother, they will think that way too. Not only does their mother - who to a child is equivalent to god - think she comes from "bad blood".... The child doesn`t even have that. Mother trumps child, so the child is even LOWER than the mother.

Peer pressure was never an issuse for me, I dont follow the crowd.

But we`re not talking about you. A child will not be a little clone with genetically instilled values. What`s to say they won`t put peers before their insecure, self-loathing mother?

But to me having a baby is self fullfilling and I believe it's time to take that next step.

You`re wrong. This sentence makes me shake my head, in real life. What are you fulfilling? A child never makes things simpler. A child never makes life easier. A child never reduces problems. Never. You want something that will never be, and the one who will suffer the most is the unsuspecting child.

But lets put the nationlity of the baby aside, we all do respect, all I want to know now is how can I infuse the good values of the Japanese culture into my own? One response was I'll have to live in Japan, any others if there are, any other way's I would like to hear them.

What are these "Japanese values" that you find so appealing? If you find them so important, and so incredibly valuable, then I would assume that you yourself would want to follow them. If you are not, then there is the problem. A child learns from their parents first. If YOU are following those values, and they are the values which you run your home around, they will be passed on to your child. If you can`t even follow the values you think are so great, then NO amount of effort in other directions are going to make them stick with your child.

So your parents instilled good values into you, what about my parents? They installed good ones into us, but out of the three, Im the only one succeeding.

Then they messed up somewhere along the line. Maybe it wasn`t something they did, but something they didn`t do. Maybe it was the way they responded to something. But in the end, it comes down to there being some kind of problem. You say you don`t even want to be around them. That doesn`t make them sound like the greatest parents. They obviously did something that you feel is bad enough to space yourself away from them. But yet, as you like to tell everyone, you overcame all of this and succeeded.

I rose above what everyone thought I would be, which is pretty much nothing.

If this "everyone" includes your parents and relatives, then there is the answer to what they did wrong.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

And now, to move on to the most important thing I have to say. Even if you read nothing else that I have written, read this part.

What do you plan to do if your child doesn`t turn out the way you expected? I don`t mean in it`s teen years, or as an adult. I mean this in a much more short term sort of way. What are you going to do if the child you adopt turns out to have been given up for a *reason*... Such as the mother doing drugs during pregnancy, or the child having had an accident at birth... Something which leaves the child with some sort of damage. What are you going to do if the perfect little half-Japanese baby you make with donated sperm ends up being born with a major birth defect? Or ends up having a genetic disorder from the *father`s* side?

What are you going to do then? What if all of this puts your child at a more obvious genetic disadvantage?

My son is half Japanese. That didn`t stop him from having a stroke while I was pregnant. A stroke which prompted the doctors to extract him from me before he even weighed a pound... It didn`t stop him from having countless medical problems, an expected adult height of 4'6", an expected adult intelligence in the vicinity of a normal 12 year old.

Nope. Being half Japanese didn`t help a bit. Still, I sit here, living in Japan, with a Japanese husband, enveloped in the values you seem to think are just great.... and my child is likely incapable of ever being "a part" of them. I sit here with a genetically half-Japanese child who can`t even so much as say "mama" at 3.

Can you honestly say that you wouldn`t care? That you would be able to cope with not only having a child that wasn`t within your expectations - but that was completely incapable of ever fitting within them?

You want a child to fulfill your dreams and your wishes. What if the child you have is completely incapable of fulfilling any of them? And don`t think it can`t happen to you. Don`t think you`re somehow exempt. I was 23 when I got pregnant, in perfect health, never did drugs, never smoked, never drank, did everything PERFECTLY - plus I had the thing you see as a great bonus - Japanese genetics on my side! Whole lot of good it did.
Even if you manage to adopt, particularly from Japan... Good parents with great values don`t give their kids up. If they die, their great families take the kids in based on their strong values. The kids up for adoption are there because their parents couldn`t take care of them. Because their parents were too immature, too selfish, abusive, or felt they couldn`t provide the specialized care the child needed if a disability was involved. You`re not looking at the pick of the crop when it comes to genetic background.

You honestly have no idea how selfish you are. If your baby turns out to be "defective" you can`t just give it back.

[Retrogamer77]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I was out there living life, and taking care of my own child, so I didn`t get a chance to reply as things progressed. I think most of the issues have been covered, but I feel a need to reply to this. Probably because I`m most likely one of the only, if not only, posters in this topic who REALLY has children.
There were several points which irritated the crap out of me, and I am going to give my opinion on them. As a MOTHER, and as an actual developmental specialist, not just a random someone.




Congratulations! You win at life!

Seriously - great for you... But if you consider this a central prerequisite for having a child, you really have your values mixed up. You say you`re financially stable, making $50,000/year - but are not yet out of college. Wow... But not really. Let`s think this out. Financially stable? At 19? Before graduating? Making money from one of the most unstable careers? (Club owner, landlord)

You`re 19. How many years has that life been going on? One? Two? If that. I doubt you were making $50,000/year before you were 18. You can`t say "stable" without it lasting 5 years. At least. Unless you were magically making $50,000/year at 14, you failed. That`s not stability. That`s "making a lot of money in a short time" and nothing more. Having the ability to pay for a child doesn`t mean a THING. Sure, it`s nice. Sure, it simplifies things. But it isn`t going to make you into mother of the year. Life doesn`t work that way. Even if that income is stable, and guaranteed for the rest of your productive life - you show so little stability in other areas that you simply SHOULD NOT HAVE A CHILD until you fix that.
You do not appear to have the emotional stability to care for a child. You may think you do, but if you did - do you really think everyone here would be pointing out problems?

And now to move on;



I actually wasn`t saying you needed counseling because you didn`t like your culture. You know what? I really don`t like American culture in general. I certainly don`t think disliking your home culture is a reason to get counseling.
The reason I think you need counseling is your response to that. Thinking that having a child, preferably born in a different culture, is going to provide a solution to that. That the genetic make up of a child is going to change YOUR life. That`s not a child. That`s a proxy, and making one out of a child is a recognized mental illness. Do I think you`re at that stage? No, but you`re setting yourself up to make some really unfortunate choices.



Priorities come from personal experience - the culture you were raised in, the style you were raised in, and your own independent experiences. Priorities are NOT genetic. You`re right in saying they`re learned. They ARE. This means that ALL the priorities are learned. No one is naturally "a part" of something. It`s ALL learned behavior. All of it.



Or that can backfire. You`ll be expecting something from your child that they never learned. It`s not in their blood. What they WILL learn from you is that you think you are inferior. You think your blood is inferior. That you think those around you are inferior. That is NOT the way to raise a well adjusted child. If you`re their mother, they will think that way too. Not only does their mother - who to a child is equivalent to god - think she comes from "bad blood".... The child doesn`t even have that. Mother trumps child, so the child is even LOWER than the mother.



But we`re not talking about you. A child will not be a little clone with genetically instilled values. What`s to say they won`t put peers before their insecure, self-loathing mother?



You`re wrong. This sentence makes me shake my head, in real life. What are you fulfilling? A child never makes things simpler. A child never makes life easier. A child never reduces problems. Never. You want something that will never be, and the one who will suffer the most is the unsuspecting child.



What are these "Japanese values" that you find so appealing? If you find them so important, and so incredibly valuable, then I would assume that you yourself would want to follow them. If you are not, then there is the problem. A child learns from their parents first. If YOU are following those values, and they are the values which you run your home around, they will be passed on to your child. If you can`t even follow the values you think are so great, then NO amount of effort in other directions are going to make them stick with your child.



Then they messed up somewhere along the line. Maybe it wasn`t something they did, but something they didn`t do. Maybe it was the way they responded to something. But in the end, it comes down to there being some kind of problem. You say you don`t even want to be around them. That doesn`t make them sound like the greatest parents. They obviously did something that you feel is bad enough to space yourself away from them. But yet, as you like to tell everyone, you overcame all of this and succeeded.



If this "everyone" includes your parents and relatives, then there is the answer to what they did wrong.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

And now, to move on to the most important thing I have to say. Even if you read nothing else that I have written, read this part.

What do you plan to do if your child doesn`t turn out the way you expected? I don`t mean in it`s teen years, or as an adult. I mean this in a much more short term sort of way. What are you going to do if the child you adopt turns out to have been given up for a *reason*... Such as the mother doing drugs during pregnancy, or the child having had an accident at birth... Something which leaves the child with some sort of damage. What are you going to do if the perfect little half-Japanese baby you make with donated sperm ends up being born with a major birth defect? Or ends up having a genetic disorder from the *father`s* side?

What are you going to do then? What if all of this puts your child at a more obvious genetic disadvantage?

My son is half Japanese. That didn`t stop him from having a stroke while I was pregnant. A stroke which prompted the doctors to extract him from me before he even weighed a pound... It didn`t stop him from having countless medical problems, an expected adult height of 4'6", an expected adult intelligence in the vicinity of a normal 12 year old.

Nope. Being half Japanese didn`t help a bit. Still, I sit here, living in Japan, with a Japanese husband, enveloped in the values you seem to think are just great.... and my child is likely incapable of ever being "a part" of them. I sit here with a genetically half-Japanese child who can`t even so much as say "mama" at 3.

Can you honestly say that you wouldn`t care? That you would be able to cope with not only having a child that wasn`t within your expectations - but that was completely incapable of ever fitting within them?

You want a child to fulfill your dreams and your wishes. What if the child you have is completely incapable of fulfilling any of them? And don`t think it can`t happen to you. Don`t think you`re somehow exempt. I was 23 when I got pregnant, in perfect health, never did drugs, never smoked, never drank, did everything PERFECTLY - plus I had the thing you see as a great bonus - Japanese genetics on my side! Whole lot of good it did.
Even if you manage to adopt, particularly from Japan... Good parents with great values don`t give their kids up. If they die, their great families take the kids in based on their strong values. The kids up for adoption are there because their parents couldn`t take care of them. Because their parents were too immature, too selfish, abusive, or felt they couldn`t provide the specialized care the child needed if a disability was involved. You`re not looking at the pick of the crop when it comes to genetic background.

You honestly have no idea how selfish you are. If your baby turns out to be "defective" you can`t just give it back.

[Eveilaje]

Exotism...

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by Retrogamer77

*takes a bow*

[SSJup81]

If the OP doesn't read the other posts here, I really do hope she reads Nyororin's post. She pretty much hit the nail on the head, and summed up what most of us has been saying for the past few pages quite nicely.

That aside, I'm sorry about your child having to go through such a tough time, Nyororin, but at least this child will grow up in a nice home, since you're showing so much love and such with him. What surprised me was when you said the baby had a stroke while being carried. What exactly caused that, if it's okay to ask. I've never heard of anything like that happening before.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by SSJup81

If the OP doesn't read the other posts here, I really do hope she reads Nyororin's post. She pretty much hit the nail on the head, and summed up what most of us has been saying for the past few pages quite nicely.

Thank you.

That aside, I'm sorry about your child having to go through such a tough time, Nyororin, but at least this child will grow up in a nice home, since you're showing so much love and such with him. What surprised me was when you said the baby had a stroke while being carried. What exactly caused that, if it's okay to ask. I've never heard of anything like that happening before.

I`d love to know. It was a completely random event. It seems that my placenta failed, cutting off most of the circulation to the baby. Oxygen was apparently given priority, but waste was carried out and nutrition wasn`t carried in. The waste built up in the blood, and eventually caused clots which reached the brain. Without nutrition, the baby grew weak and stopped growing. We know what happened in the end, but have no idea why. We also don`t know if it will happen again. There was no warning, and no health issues to trigger it. It just happened. Life is unpredictable...

But my son is alive, and happy.

[Retrogamer77]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

*takes a bow*

I wish I could have summed it up the way you did. Unfortunately I do not have your experience to have been able to explain it to her.

[jpdrag0n]

I hope the OP takes Nyororin's advice. But having such flawed logic, I'm very doubtful.

Also to Nyororin, I also hope your son succeeds in whatever he sets his mind to.

[NightChilde25]

I honestly don't see your reasoning here. O.0 When people talk about breeding out undesirable traits, they usually mean things like illnesses or genetic defects not personality traits like laziness or dishonesty. This is a child you are talking about, not some designer breed dog. *shakes head* I have to agree with MMM. No matter what race child you adopt, that child is still going to be American and absorb not only the American culture but your African American culture as well. The baby won't magically have the Japanese culture. You aren't born with culture, it's taught. The only way that baby is going to have the Japanese culture is if you were to raise him/her in Japan.

I'm not trying to be mean. I just feel you will be robbing this child of it's culture, even if you try not too as well as short-changing not only your own race, but all others. Why not just adopt the child in the most need, be it Japanese, Black, White, what-ever? You can't just snatch a child away from it's country then expect them to go back and live a couple of years away from you, just because you want them to learn about their culture. It should be the child's decision, when he/she gets old enough to make that decision, not yours. Being alone in an unfamillar country when you don't know the language is hard on an adult. Imagine how terrified a child would be? I know you have a friend there, but the child won't know anyone else. When children are frightened they want their mother and you won't even be in the same country. How fair is that to a child? Trying to live through your children never turns out well. That child will be his/her own person and have his/her own goals and dreams. If you try to force them into something just because you can't do it...it's just wrong.

I know you say you are not ashamed of being African American, but it sure comes across that way. Everyone has issues with their race. You have problems in all races, Japanese included. You seem to have such a low opinion of your race. I think you need to come to terms with this before you consider raising a child. You can't say that 80% of the African Americans in NYC have bad values. I'm not even African American and I'm offended. I know it may seem that way in your area but the majority of the African Americans I know are very successful and pillars of their communities. I agree with Retrogamer77. The parent instills the values in a child, not the race, not the blood (which I'm sorry, I've never heard of that before), or the culture of the country of birth. Even then, you can do your best, be the best role model there is, the strictest parent, and shelter your kid from all media and they can still turn out to be, as you put it, "stumps." That's true for any race or nationality. If your child limits themselves to what they see on tv then that's your fault as a parent. The city or environment shouldn't matter as far as values go. The days of a village raising a child are over. Everyone has to take responsibility for their own children.

You have to set up values for your children and be a big enough influence on their life to counteract any negative media images. I know you say that this child isn't an accessory for you, yet you admit that the Japanese culture is a draw. If it's such a draw for you, why don't you go live there for a while before you try to adopt or better yet, just live there period after the adoption? If you're dead set on this, that would be the best way to ensure the child absorbed the culture. You can always study the culture and introduce a new aspect of the culture every week, if you have too, but personally I still think you need to rethink this.