My situation is similar but with very very different results. 99% of the time, it is always an asian girl + a foreign man. The child will always cling to its mother for security, and so that is why I have discovered how the expression "mother tongue" came about. We do not hear too often about "father tongue," even though it exists. It can be difficult for a child to learn the father tongue, I understand.

In my case, my son is 6 years old and was born in South Korea. You would naturally think he would be able to speak Korean because he was born here! But not the case at all. From Day 0, I spoke English to him, sang to him, played games in English, and watched A LOT OF English cartoons with American culture in it (not just regular TV). Growing up in another country lets the child "miss out on" his own other culture. He decided and declared strongly from the age of 3 his identity. He said, "I'm not Korean. I'm English." It meant in a sense, "I don't speak Korean (meaning "I refuse Korean", and I only speak English (because that is what I am comfortable with.)

We were kind of tormented by Korean society psychologically as to why he chose English as his main language. PLUS! He is a boy and boys don't work so hard like girls do when they are young. Boys are boys, if you know what I mean. This is getting long here. I feel like I could write a book on the topic of raising bilingual children! If you are interested, maybe I could write more professionally on my blog about that and HOW I had to deal and WHAT I did to overcome the trials.