Dear Uncle Dan

If we’re TCKs, what are the children of TCKs? Would THAT be fourth-culture? I have a friend who’s Egyptian, but grew up in the US and Canada, and has kids born in Canada, grew up in Canada, then lived for about 7 years in Egypt, then are back in Canada… They keep telling her that they are fourth-culture, but I’m not sure about that… Is there any research on this?

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Dear Marwa,

Third culture was originally defined as the culture that is shared among people who are separate from both their home cultures and host cultures. It’s the one they create for themselves. It’s not about the number of anything, whether it be cultures or generations. Consider it the way you define perspectives: First person is through your eyes, second person is the eyes of the person you’re interacting with… and Third is the observer. We’re the observers, insofar as cultures collide. There is no fourth person perspective, and so there isn’t a fourth culture in this sense.

As far as I know, there’s no research on it, because both Ruth van Reken and Ruth Hill Useem have/had 3rd generation TCKs themselves: their grandchildren. And in the books, they refer to them as 3rd generation as an immigrant would regarding how long their family has lived in their new culture.

I find that usually when people come up with this, they either think it’s cute, which it can be, or that they want to be more special than TCKs already are. This is kind of a misunderstanding, because TCKs are just TCKs. It’s not like they’re ranked compared to other people. It’s a concept and way to interpret people’s lives, and those people have both benefits AND challenges.

So dismiss it as if you were an English teacher, and one of your students asked “What about the fourth person perspective?” While that’s fine for physicists for talk about, as far as culture is concerned it’s probably just silly.

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