Exploring Boarding School Challenges for Women and Third Culture Kids: Worlds Away from Home
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : March 2025
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 208
- Category :
Forthcoming - Category 2 :
Individual Psychotherapy - Catalogue No : 98007
- ISBN 13 : 9781032876313
- ISBN 10 : 103287631X
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Through personal testimonies, this book offers insights into the boarding school experiences of women and Third Culture Kids (TCKs), examining the particular challenges for those who are sent away from their families and all that is familiar to board in a country that feels worlds away from home.
The stereotype of expatriate families is of glamorous lives lived in exotic locations with access to wealth and privilege. However, many of these families feel pressure to send their children ‘home’ to boarding school in their passport country without understanding the long-term implications of this choice. This book explores such long term effects, starting with laying an accessible theoretical framework for the reader by drawing on scholarship from the fields of psychology, the study of TCKs, and the growing understanding of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The text then moves into the personal testimonies of 16 individuals, most of whom are TCKs or cross-cultural boarders, shedding light on the particular challenges they’ve faced. The book ends by offering hope and help with chapters providing insights and practical strategies for supporting those affected by boarding school.
This user-friendly, accessible volume will appeal to professionals working with transcultural boarders, ex-boarders, or those who are considering sending their own children to boarding school.
Reviews and Endorsements
This well-researched book forms a welcome addition to the growing literature on the psychological fall-out from the British boarding habit. It focusses on those sent away from the warmth of overseas childhoods to abide in schools in an unknown country called ‘home’. At an incomprehensible distance from their families, their losses are equally incomprehensible.
Nick Duffell, psychohistorian and author of The Making of Them
In a rich combination of theory and moving personal testimony Moxey and Devereux have assembled narrative accounts by women sent to British boarding schools as very young children. The plight of Third Culture Kids, whose parents were employed in military, mercantile and missionary occupations is central. This important contribution to the literature on Boarding School Syndrome conveys yet another psychological tragedy of the British Empire and the multiple losses, cruelty and abuse endured. A compelling read it will be of interest to therapists, historians and those who have suffered a similar childhood.
Joy Schaverien (PhD), Jungian analyst, psychotherapist and author of Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the ‘Privileged’ Child
This book offers a departure from the literature to date about Boarding School Survivors. The latest phase of boarding school populations increasingly includes students from overseas and with this, brings its own set of challenges. It is a very welcome addition to the Boarding School literature to hear from these Third Culture survivors and to have their narratives assessed by qualified professionals.
Allison Paech-Ujejski, Chair and Director of Boarding School Survivors – Support
This is a substantial book, combining lived experience accounts with a research-based approach in examining both the cultural and psychological impact of boarding school. The focus on girls and women is very welcome. Highly recommended.
Thurstine Basset, Mental Health Training Consultant, Author, Social Worker, Formerly Director at Boarding Concern
What a brave, heart-felt and groundbreaking book. I love that light is being shone on the experiences of female boarding school survivors who lived in another country (Third Culture Kids (TCK)). In this new collection of personal testimonies interlinked with psychology, Nicky Moxey and Linda Devereux share a compelling look at the impacts of being a TCK. Thank you.
Piers Cross, author of “How To Survive & Thrive in Challenging Times”, film producer of Boarding On Insanity, and podcast host of An Evolving Man
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Linda Devereux and Nicky Moxey
2. Stepping from denial into curiosity: Boarding school through an attachment-trauma lens
Suzanne Zeedyk
3. Transcultural Childhoods, Third Culture Kids and Boarding School
Linda Devereux
4. Personal Stories
5. Insights from the personal testimonies – Gendered experiences of childhood boarding
Linda Devereux
6. Insights from personal testimonies: Third Culture Kids and boarding school
Linda Devereux
7. Coming Home (a therapist’s view)
Roe Woodroffe
8. A safe haven
Ulrika Ernvik
About the Editor(s)
Nicky Moxey, an ex-boarder, originally spent 33 years as a project manager and Agile coach. She is retraining as an integrative counsellor and intends to work with boarding school survivors after she qualifies.
Linda Devereux is a third culture kid with more than 40 years of teaching experience in schools and universities. Linda is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University, Australia, where she researches and publishes in the fields of transcultural childhoods, life narrative, boarding school and the transition to university.
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