Keeping Our Kids Connected to Their Heritages

Juneteenth is one of those holidays I am never quite sure how to honor. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and told the last remaining enslaved people that the war was over and they were free. It was a remarkable moment and also a strange one. President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation more than two years earlier. Whether intentionally or inadvertently, the news had simply not reached Galveston. Freedom had existed on paper for over two years before it existed in practice.

I found that history genuinely moving and also a little disorienting. I don’t approach this holiday through the lens that America’s story is mainly one of unrelieved oppression. My read is different: that this history shows how far we have traveled, that laws and culture can change for the better, and that those changes are worth honoring. But I still didn’t know what to do with the holiday in my own home, for the children I was raising. It felt like a story that belonged to someone else’s family.

That hesitation, I now think, was the wrong instinct. Not because I was obligated to perform a particular politics about it. But because the holiday was asking a more practical question, and I missed it.  Specifically, how do you help a child stay connected to a heritage that isn’t yours? And that question doesn’t stop at Juneteenth. It applies every time one of our children carries a history, a tradition, a cultural story that we didn’t grow up with and don’t know what to do with.

Cultural connection matters for all our children, not just the ones whose backgrounds are obviously different from ours. Foster children, adopted children, stepchildren, and children in blended families all have experienced some form of loss. Many have lost not just a parent or a home but a community, a set of traditions, and a set of stories about who their people are and where they came from. That loss is real. And the research suggests that when we help them rebuild and maintain those connections, we give them something that directly shores up their ability to heal.

What the Research We Have Shows

A 2012 study with a small sample size indicates that a stronger and more positive connection to one’s ethnic group predicts higher self-esteem, better academic achievement, stronger psychological adjustment, improved coping abilities, and lower levels of depression and loneliness. The researchers described ethnic identity as a protective factor, something that helps children withstand social adversity. If that result holds up in later studies, those are not small stakes. For children who have already been through upheaval, that kind of internal anchor matters enormously.

A more recent 2026 study in Kazahkstan with a larger sample found that ethnic identity gives children a stable framework for meaning-making. It supports psychological well-being and social adjustment. For our kids, who often have so much instability in their histories, that framework is a resource we should not discount.

I Did Not Always Get This Right

I have to be honest about my own record here. When I was a foster parent, I thought about culture the way a lot of well-meaning Plan B parents do: as something to be acknowledged occasionally, celebrated around major holidays, maybe addressed if the child brought it up. I was not neglecting it on purpose. I just did not fully understand what I was missing.

What I understand now is that culture is not a special occasion. It is an ongoing conversation about identity. Every time I let one of those conversations slide, I was not just missing a teaching moment. I was sending a message, unintentionally, that the child’s heritage was optional. That it was background noise rather than something central to who they were.

I certainly do not regret the years I spent fostering, but if I were starting now, I would do things differently. I would be more deliberate. I would look harder for community. I would ask more questions about what mattered to the children in my home, not just what they need from me emotionally and practically, but what they need in terms of knowing their own story.

What This Looks Like in Practice

The good news is that this does not require expertise.  Recommendations from the Coalition for Children, Youth and Families make this point clearly: you do not need to know everything about your child’s heritage to honor it. You only need to be consistent, curious, and willing to show up.

For some families, this means celebrating holidays that were not part of the parent’s own upbringing. Juneteenth is one example. It marks a historical anomaly, the two-year gap between legal emancipation and actual freedom.  It also marks something worth celebrating: the moment when the law finally caught up with people’s lives, and a community’s long-deferred freedom became real. For a child with Black heritage in any household, honoring Juneteenth is a way of saying our home honors their unique history. The struggle mattered. The progress matters. We are going to learn the story together.

But Juneteenth is just one illustration. The same principle applies to a child with Mexican and Indigenous heritage, to a child from Vietnam, to a child with Eastern European roots, to a stepchild whose birth family celebrated traditions the new household has never observed. Each child carries something. The question is whether we create space for them to carry it with us.

Some concrete starting points:

1. Ask and listen. Find out what holidays, foods, traditions, or practices mattered in your child’s birth family or background. Do not assume you know. Do not assume the child will volunteer it. Ask directly and be genuinely curious.

2. Participate, do not just facilitate. Children benefit most when parents are actively involved, not simply providing access. Go to the Juneteenth celebration with them. Cook the meal together. Watch the film side by side. Your presence sends a message your permission slip cannot.

3. Build community connections. No single parent can embody an entire culture. Find community organizations, religious communities, mentors, and families who share your child’s background and can offer role models and relationships you cannot replicate alone.

4. Treat complex backgrounds as both, not either/or. Many of our children have layered heritages. A child who is Black and Puerto Rican deserves connections to both communities. A child with Native American and Scottish ancestry has two stories worth knowing. Resist the urge to simplify.

5. Make it a year-round practice, not a seasonal event. Cultural connection built only around holidays is fragile. The music, the food, the stories, the community: these work best when they are woven into ordinary life, not reserved for special occasions.

There is study worth noting, with a caveat: a 2013 study of Asian international adoptees found a curvilinear relationship between ethnic identity and well-being. Children with moderate levels of ethnic identity fared best; both very low and very high levels were associated with lower self-esteem. The sample was limited, and the finding has not been widely replicated across other groups, so I would not lean on it too heavily. But it points to something that rings true from experience: our goal is not to make cultural heritage a project that weighs on a child, or a test they have to pass. It is to make heritage available, present, and positive. A child who knows where they come from and feels good about it is different from a child who feels obligated to perform an identity on someone else’s behalf.

The Message Underneath the Practice

What we are really doing when we maintain cultural connections is telling our children something about who they are. We are saying that their history did not begin when they came to live with us. We are saying that the people they come from, wherever that is and whatever that looks like, are worth knowing about. We are saying that we are not asking them to trade one identity for another.

For children who have already lost so much, that message carries weight. It says, “You do not have to leave yourself behind to belong here.”

That process is rarely easy. It requires time, humility, and a willingness to step outside your own comfort zone. Some of it will feel awkward at first. Some of it will require us to navigate spaces where you are clearly the outsider. That is fine. That is what our children navigate every day.  It is a project that we can navigate together and strengthen our relationships in the process.