In this episode, I chat with sisters Kim Serena and Mareike Matthies. Raised in Munich, they now navigate the challenges of intercultural family life, with partners from Venezuela and Italy, bringing a rich mix of languages and cultures into their homes. Through their project, "A Couple of Cultures," Kim and Mareike help other intercultural couples by sharing personal stories and professional tips on raising bilingual kids and blending different cultural backgrounds.
Kim and Mareike stress the importance of communication and tolerance in maintaining harmony in multicultural families. They also offer practical tips for nurturing strong dual cultural identities in children, providing valuable lessons for anyone living in a multicultural world.
Show notes:
- Introduction to Mareike and Kim
- 3 Fun facts about Mareike and Kim
- How the German sisters met their husbands from Italy and Spain and the moves they made to make the intercultural relationship work.
- Taking change and potentially transient lifestyle in multicultural families.
- Being aware of the roles that each partner plays if you happen to be living in the home Country of one of the partners and making a conscious effort to perhaps switch up those roles and move to another country for a chapter.
- Growth and balance in a relationship.
- The culture that you create as a couple.
- Working together to make sure that the needs of each partner are met.
- Local vs global community and how both are important. People that will understand your multi cultural lifestyle demands and needs as well as local friends.
- Long-distance travel with young children
- The importance of preemptively discussing big questions such as language, religion, and the involvement of grandparents. Avoiding judgment and valuation in everyday parenting, particularly when it comes to advice from grandmothers with their own cultural biases
- The intricacies and challenges of raising children in a multicultural household.
- Making the most of an intercultural partner in the sense of challenging why you do things the way you do. Asking yourself if doing things a certain way is a conscious choice or just an automatic thing your culture does. Doing this gives you the option to choose how you want to do things and being exposed to your partner's culture can give you more options.
- Communication - Debriefing after the event - What happened? Why did you react that way? And that way learning to decipher where the behavior is coming from - Personality, parents, environment, culture etc..
- The sisters share funny anecdotes from their multicultural family life
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Mareike and Kim:
https://www.acoupleofcultures.com
Instagram: @acoupleofcultures
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Contact:
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Music by Mathias Kunzli www.mathiaskunzli.com
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