As a mixed race family, we get some amazingly weird questions asked of us. I’ve answered the most common ones below in the hope that people can read the answers and stop asking them. I’ve been bottling up these thoughts for a long time so here goes…
How dark do you think she will be?
This is a surprisingly common one and I don’t quite understand where it’s coming from. The answer is “I don’t know”. How do any of us know what our children will look like when they are grown. Are you really asking if my baby is going to go through life passing as white or is she going to be lumbered with being a person of colour? Because that’s the only thing that I can think of that is meant by this question. Instead of crossing your fingers for me that my baby won’t be “too brown”, why don’t you try dismantling some of the societal norms that we live through so that when they grow up, it won’t matter what colour my babies are. And before you say “it already doesn’t matter what colour people are”, please don’t because it still does matter – very, very much so.
If that’s not the point of this question and it’s being asked because “dark skin is so beautiful”, then again, please don’t. We are all beautiful with our own unique features. Fetishising dark skin as something unusual simply cements blackness as “exotic”. And yes, some people do still stroke my hair without asking first. This isn’t a petting zoo. Move on.
Are you sure that’s your baby? How is that possible???
Yes. Quite sure. I pushed her out myself. And in this day and age of fertility treatments, same sex couples, adoption and egg/sperm donation, it’s an even more ridiculous question to ask. My children were all born through natural conception with my husband BUT there are so many different types of families out there and it’s no one’s business how anyone’s children became their children. Again – this isn’t a petting zoo or a museum of curiosities. This is a family. Be respectful.
As it happens my children all look very different but I can assure you they all have the same parents. That’s what it means to be mixed race. When your whole family is white or black or south asian, or whatever your family happens to be, then you of course will all look relatively similar. Members of mixed race families may all look very different. That’s not a parlour trick, it’s just how genes work. I have one daughter with afro hair like my Ghanaian mother, one with hooded eyes like my Burmese grandmother and one with blue eyes like my Scottish Great Grandfather. It’s really not a big deal. And yes they are all my babies.
What are you going to do with her hair?
Why? What are you going to to with your hair? Our hair is not a problem that needs to be solved. If you’re asking how I’m going to make our afro hair lie flat and be “calm” then I’m going to have to disappoint you. Our hair is standing tall and proud.
It must be hard to bond when you look so different…
No. Just no.
