What Is a Third Culture Kid?
“Where are you from?”
For most people, that’s an easy question with a one-word answer. For me, it’s a small decision every time. Do I say India, where I was born? Turkey, where I grew up? Or Germany, where I’ve been living for almost ten years now?
The truth is, I’m a bit of all three, but not fully any of them. It took me a while to find out there’s a name for people like me: third culture kid.
Where the term comes from
In the 1950s, Ruth Hill Useem and her husband studied American families who were living in India for work. And yes, India of all places. She noticed that their children didn’t fully belong to American culture or to Indian culture. Later, she gave these kids a name: third culture kids.
Many years later, David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken wrote about it, and that’s how more and more people got to know the term. They defined a third culture kid as someone who spent a big part of their childhood outside their parents’ culture.
What are the “three cultures”?
- The first culture is your parents’ culture, the one you “officially” belong to.
- The second culture is the place (or places) where you actually grow up.
- The third culture isn’t a country. It’s what you build when you mix the first two.
So it’s not about your passport. It’s about how you grew up and what feels normal to you: the food that tastes like home, the way you greet people, the little things that make you feel comfortable.
Why this matters to me
I was born in India, grew up in Turkey, and have been living in Germany since 2016. For a long time, I couldn’t really describe who that made me. Then I heard about third culture kids, and suddenly it all made sense. It explained things about me I could never put into words.
What’s next?
Growing up as a third culture kid shapes many parts of your life: the languages you speak, the question of where home is, what all the moving does to you, and how you connect with people. In my next articles, I will explore these one at a time, with research, my own experience and my honest opinion.
If you’ve never heard the term before: welcome, I hope my articles help you understand people like me a little better. And if you read this and thought “wait, that’s me,” I’d love to hear your story.