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I don't know!

My mother's parents were English/German and Greek/German, so my mom was raised mostly German since both families spoke German.
My dad's mother was Portuguese and his father was German/Scottish.
So I guess I'm mostly German, certainly was raised with German foods and in a German church. But my Portuguese grandmother was very proud of her heritage, so I was always very aware I was Portuguese.

My husband is Indonesian, both parents but had an Irish grandmother.

Haha, my son's a whole mix of everything! I don't think he's alone in that though. I would think there are a lot of kids these days with all sorts of mixed backgrounds.

Even through my girls are only 1/8 Japanese, it's emphasized a lot because we live closest to DH's family, and his grandma is the matriarch of the family and still has strong ties to her family in Japan. DH's dad was also born there. We were in Epcot last week and it sort of hit me when touring the Norway "country" and then the Japanese one, that I need to be better about teaching them about their Scandanavian roots as well. But, the ties aren't as strong on that side anymore.

@catlady: Do you speak Canto to your LO now? I do because that's primarily what my family speaks as well. We all speak Mandarin as well, but Canto is primary. Like you, I will eventually put DS into Chinese school where he'll learn Mandarin. I'm hoping he'll retain both dialects of Chinese. Guess we'll see since he learns words in Canto first, but once he learns the English equivalent, he says the word in English. He still comprehends Canto, but verbalizes English, unless he doesn't know the English word for it yet.

Our kiddos are/will be half white American and half Sri Lankan--LO is too young to identify as anything, but my husband definitely tries to emphasize the Sri Lankan part. I have a feeling she'll grow up just feeling "American" though, because we speak pretty much 99.9% english at home, and my husband never remembers Sri Lankan holidays until it's the day of, so we never do much to celebrate them. Whereas I plan all the American holidays way in advance (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, 4th of July, etc).

@Alivoo01: That's great that your son will hear both Cantonese and Mandarin. Unfortunately, I don't speak any Chinese at all. My dad made the conscious decision not to teach me or my brother since his version (toishan) is a weird dialect anyway and few people understand it. I did Cantonese school for a few years but didn't retain any of it. If we get LO into a Mandarin school though, DH and I will both try to learn some.

@SproutBee: I agree with this idea as raising them as mixed culture. My children are 1/4 Chinese (from Thailand), 1/4 Caucasian American and 1/2 French. The tricky part is that we live in Austria, so they go to daycare here and are learning German. We always joke about which parts of them are French (the cheese and baguettes!)/American (my DS is so LOUD!)/Austrian (the sausages!). I'm really curious to see how they will identify when they are older.

@catlady: I have the same issue. I speak some Cantonese, but the Chinese schools around here are Mandarin. I'm torn on whether or not I would send her since I won't be able to help at all.

We will celebrate Chinese holidays with LO. Not sure if we will emphasize the European side of her heritage as much since that is up to DH and he doesn't really celebrate holidays himself!

They are mostly Chinese and German so we're emphasizing those. They will be learning both languages.

I think as a mixed ethnicity person, myself, I mostly identified with the two cultures that I was most exposed to- no coincidence that they were the cultures of my two grandmothers who were immigrants. The other dashes of this and that didn't feel as significant. My DH is actually less mixed but only identifies as American. He is much farther removed from the immigrants who came here.

@mrbee: Do you think you look more Japanese or more "American"?

My husband is half Filipino and half Chinese. It feels like he doesn't really identify with either side but he is the lightest skinned of all his brothers and marry a Chinese person (me). His brothers happen to be darker skinned and for some reason identify with their Filipino side more and date Filipino women.

Our kids definitely look more Chinese and my mother is helping me care for them so I think they will identify with their Chinese side more.

So I wonder if you tend to just identify with what you look more closely to?

In America, if you look black, you're black. No one would ever know that LO is 1/4 white and 1/4 Hispanic. She just looks black. So, to me, that part of her heritage dominates. But she will grow up knowing about her diverse heritage. I am very close to my family and they are white for the most part so I imagine she may identify with them on some level. Even though I am 1/2 Hispanic because I grew up with mostly white family, I identify with them quite a bit.

I'm Korean and my husband is Irish/English. His side in terms of culture is mostly just Midwestern American with a smattering of Irish pride. My family is full Korean immigrant with parents who never really learned to speak English and pretty much only hang out with other Korean Americans. Our son looks more Korean at the moment but he also has slightly lighter hair and super long lashes that every Korean pinpoints as "mixed baby."

I think my son will probably identify a good part of himself as Korean because he's around my family more. He eats mostly Korean food, my mom and I speak Korean to him most of the day, he will go to Korean school, we play Korean nursery music at home. And we are planning to take him to Korea soon. But a lot of that is because my family really wants to be able to communicate with him. I know all of that will be outweighed by living in America and speaking English so I don't really expect him to identify as Korean more than his daddy's side. But it's definitely going to be there.

I guess we are sorta laid back on culture and don't care quite as much because we are religious so it's more important to us that he identify as Christian than anything else.

I think the comments about identifying with what you look like are interesting. I'm Caucasian/Asian and while to most people I definitely look more Asian, I don't identify as Asian at all. My dad is the Asian parent and, other than visiting his home country every few years, I was never exposed to his culture and he didn't make any effort to educate us. But that was also back in the day where the few immigrants in my home town just tried to assimilate and blend in.

My kids are English and Spanish but were born in Canada. Right now Canadian is all DD knows because she has lived here her whole life, but that will change when we move back to England. She has a mixed English/Canadian accent and lots of Spanish friends, so hears the language a lot. I imagine in a few years she will identify as English mainly, but get a lot of Spanish influence from FIL. We are going to try really hard to keep their Canadian identity alive though.

Ds is 50% Korean, 25% each Polish and German. We don't really have ties to the German side, he'll hopefully be bilingual in English and Korean and most definitely exposed to a lot of Korean culture food, language, customs, Etc via me and my family. But he is definitely exposed to polish food and traditions too, albeit less so. he will likely identify as American!