How Gigi Hadid And Zayn Malik Are Raising Baby Khai To Embrace Mixed Ethnicities
15 June 2021, 13:36
Gigi Hadid has opened up about the importance of teaching her and Zayn Malik’s daughter Khai about her multiethnic heritage.
Gigi Hadid has candidly reflected on her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter, Khai, who she shares with boyfriend Zayn Malik, in a new interview with i-D.
The couple welcomed their baby girl in September last year and the supermodel has now opened up about motherhood and how she and her beau plan to raise Khai with a focus on embracing her mixed-race identity.
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Gigi, whose mother is Dutch and father is Palestinian, was asked about how she’s approaching parenthood while raising a mixed-race child with Zayn, who is of British-Pakistani heritage.
She opened up about her own personal experience, as well as Zayn’s, and how this will impact their approach to raising Khai, saying: “[Zayn and I] think about it and talk about it a lot as partners and it’s something that’s really important to us, but it’s also something that we first experienced ourselves.”
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Gigi continued: “We are that first generation of those mixed races, and then that comes with that first generational experience of being like, ‘Oh damn, I’m the bridge!’
“That’s not something that my parents experienced or that they can really help me through. It’s something I’ve always thought about my whole life.
“In certain situations, I feel—or I’m made to feel—that I’m too white to stand up for part of my Arab heritage. You go through life trying to figure out where you fit in racially. Is what I am, or what I have, enough to do what I feel is right?
“But then, also, is that taking advantage of the privilege of having the whiteness within me, right? Am I allowed to speak for this side of me, or is that speaking on something that I don’t experience enough to know?”
While Gigi highlighted the importance of Khai embracing her multiethnic heritage, she feels she and Zayn will allow their daughter to feel proud of her ethnicities and create a space where she’s free to ask questions to learn about them herself.
She added: “I think that Khai will grow up feeling out the way that she can or wants to be a bridge for her different ethnicities.
“I think that it will be nice to be able to have those conversations, and see where she comes from [with] it, without us putting that onto her.
“What comes from her is what I’m most excited about, and being able to add to that or answer her questions, you know?”
The 26-year-old also went on to discuss her motherhood journey during the pandemic and how she got to experience family time “the way I wanted to”.
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