If you’re the parent of an internationally adopted child, you have asked yourself this question. (And if you haven’t, you should.) I’d like to say that there is a simple answer or formula you can follow. But there isn’t. The range of possible answers is as diverse as the range of adoptive families themselves.

I have met people who fall along every point in the spectrum on this issue, from those who have almost completely subordinated their own heritage and interests to their children’s birth cultures to those who insist that their children “are American, no different from any other American,” and therefore regard their children’s birth cultures as superfluous and not worthy of their families’ attentions at all.

Our family’s approach rests somewhere in the middle. Four-year-old “Emmie” is Korean. She is also Korean-American, an adoptee and one-quarter of a New England, part-Jewish and part-not Jewish, Caucasian and Asian family. That’s a lot to pour into one person, but as a family we are committed to bringing our daughter up in a way that encourages exploration and appreciation of every part of who she is. That means we look for ways to incorporate some measure of Korean culture into our home and our lives, but we do it in a way that fits with our diverse interests, our time constraints and other values that we believe are important.

What do I mean by this? For example, I love to cook and to try new foods, and thus far Emmie shows signs of turning into just as much of a foodie as I am. So we explore Korean cuisine by preparing and consuming it together when we can. Our family enjoys observing holidays that reflect who we are together, so we celebrate Chusok and Lunar New Year at appropriate times along with Rosh Hashanah, St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween. We talk about Korea, pepper our home with books and the occasional video about Korea and rejoice when we find Korean, Korean-American and/or Asian friends and role models who can assist Emmie in cultivating a positive view of who she is. We get together with other families who have adopted from Asia and just this past weekend, we took part for the first time in a Korean Student Association Big Brother/Big Sister program at my alma mater. Just as important to us as Emmie’s pairing with a Korean or Korean-American “big sister” was our participation in the program as a family, and we all eagerly anticipate gaining unique cultural insights as well as having fun together as we take part in the program on an ongoing basis. (Kudos to the Tufts students and their advisors, who did an awesome job with the event.)

We also talk periodically to both of our children—the Asian one and the Caucasian one—in age-appropriate terms about race, racism, religion and anti-Semitism and the reality of the world in which we live. We try to make it as clear as possible to our kids that they can always approach us with questions, feelings or observations about all of the above. And we endeavor always to remain open to any desire Emmie might have to learn more about Korea and being a Korean-American.

This is the balance that feels right to us. Sometimes we wish we could do more, but our access to Korean culture is limited by virtue of where we live: in a relatively small, rather white, northern New England town. Boston is more than an hour away, the one Korean restaurant in the area just closed and became a dry cleaner, and while there is a small Korean school in the town where the restaurant used to be, we have, for now at least, rejected the three-hours-on-a-Saturday-morning course because after all of the family activities, school and preschool hours, religious school commitments and activities Emmie has begged for like ballet and gymnastics classes, we want to leave a little time for both kids to play and just “be kids.”

Adult adoptee Mei-Ling Hopgood recently wrote an insightful essay about the dangers of adoptive parents trying too hard to replicate their children’s birth culture, something that in most cases they are not capable of doing. She notes that parents who believe they are transmitting true birth culture by, for example, dressing their children in traditional native costumes are in fact ignoring the equally applicable aspect of their children’s cultures that is the American immigrant or minority experience. Hopgood is Chinese-American, and while dress and food and the like can be fun and are easily accessible cultural touch points, the reality of the Chinese-American experience is much broader and includes concepts parents are often uncomfortable addressing, like racism.

Moreover, it seems to me that shoving culture down the throat of a child who is either completely uninterested or who is trying desperately fit in with his peers risks a severe, enduring backlash against the very ideas the parent is trying to inculcate in the child. In the context of discussing one adoptive mother who annually goes into her daughter’s classroom to explain adoption and Korean culture, Hopgood recalls her own desire not to feel different from her peers and writes, “[i]f my own mother had done something like that woman did, I would’ve hidden beneath my desk.”

Equally damaging as over-embracing a child’s birth culture, however, is denying its importance altogether. A generation ago, adoptive parents were instructed to pretend that no differences existed between adoptive parents and their different-race or culture children. Many of those now-adult adoptees report feelings of rejection and worthlessness that stemmed from knowing that they were not free to explore the differences that were evident to them every time they looked in the mirror or were mocked by their peers.

Ultimately, I think the best thing we adoptive parents can do is provide our kids with exposure to their birth cultures when possible, stand as families behind their explorations of their identities and support our kids’ journeys (in most cases) wherever they may lead. We should be willing to explore their worlds in ways that take us outside of our own comfort zones. We can affirm every aspect of their identities while acknowledging our own limitations, be realistic about who they are and the world in which we live, and we can remain flexible, open and responsive to what our kids think and feel as they grow into complex adults. The incorporation of birth culture into international adoptive families is best navigated individually and with sensitivity in ways that reflect both the adoptive child and his or her family as a whole.

I don’t love Emmie because she was born in Korea. I love her because she is my daughter, and her native Koreanness is only one piece of the variegated puzzle that makes up my child.