New Zealand’s PM wants to raise her newborn daughter bilingually (Source: radionz)
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, plans to raise her newborn daughter bilingually in Māori and English. Her desire for her child – and all New Zealand children – to grow up proficient in more than one language is not unusual in today’s world and echoes the desires of many Australian parents, too. A recent study of young Australian mothers found high levels of support for bilingual child rearing.
Mothers wanted to give their children “the gift of bilingualism” and spoke glowingly about the many advantages and benefits they hoped bilingualism would bestow on their children. They felt that proficiency in another language in addition to English would enrich their children’s future, that it would give them a career edge, and that it would allow them to travel overseas but also connect with diverse communities in Australia. Many also believed that bilingualism would give their children a cognitive advantage and they were aware of health benefits of bilingualism such as delayed onset of dementia.
In short, like New Zealand’s PM, the mothers in the study aspired to raise their children with English and another language for many good reasons. There was another similarity: while they knew what they wanted, they did not quite know how to achieve their goal. Like Ardern they confided that, while they were sure they wanted their children to learn English and another language, they found it difficult to figure out “how that will happen.”
The main difficulties with raising bilingual children in Australia – as in any English-dominant society – can be traced back to the overbearing role of English. The dominance of English makes bilingual parenting extra hard for a number of reasons.
To begin with, Australians often have relatively low levels of proficiency in another language and this can lead to deep insecurities. How do you do “being a competent parent” while fighting insecurities whether your pronunciation is good enough or struggling to find the right word?
Second, you may want bilingualism for your child. But you also want your child to be well adjusted, to make friends easily and to do well in school. English is the indispensable means to achieve these goals. So, you may suffer from a niggling doubt that the other language may detract from your child’s English.
By focusing on the other language in the home, do you inadvertently jeopardize your child’s academic success or their friendship groups? Research shows that this is not true but it can certainly seem that way when your child throws a tantrum in the supermarket and everyone stares at you as you try to calm her down in another language.
Third, contemporary parenting is difficult and fraught with anxieties at the best of times. Bottle or breast? Disposable or cloth nappy? Soccer or cricket? The number of decisions we have to make seems endless and each decision seems to index whether we are a good parent or a parenting fail.
Questions of language choice and language practices add a whole other dimension to the complexities of modern parenting: When should you start which language? Who should speak which language to the child? Is it ok to mix languages? The list goes on and on. Parents not only need to figure out answers to these questions, they also need to live their answers out on a daily basis.
Furthermore, parenting is not something that we do in isolation. Mums and dads may not arrive at the same answers. When one partner is deeply committed to bilingual parenting and the other is not, that can easily put a strain on the relationship. Many couples know that mundane questions like whose turn it is to do the dishes can easily escalate into a fight when everyone is tired and juggling too many responsibilities. Now imagine such daily problems amplified by debates over whose turn it is to read the bedtime story in the other language or whose fault it is that the bedtime story in the other language is always the same because there are only two books in that language in the local library.
The parents of New Zealand’s “First Baby” want to raise their daughter bilingually because they recognize that bilingualism is important in today’s world – just like Australian parents. They do not quite know how to do it and they will undoubtedly struggle turning their aspiration into a reality as their daughter grows up and starts to have her own ideas about bilingualism. Having to make language decisions part and parcel of all the mundane parenting and family decisions that we all make all the time will be a challenge – just as it is for Australian parents.
But that is where the similarity ends.
New Zealand parents do not have to face the challenges of raising their children bilingually alone – in contrast to Australian parents. We all know that it takes a village to raise a child. Parents need the support of the wider community. This holds even more so when it comes to bilingual parenting. Specifically, bilingual families need institutional support, particularly from schools, in order to thrive.
New Zealand’s te kōhanga reo or “language nests” are preschools that operate through the medium of Māori and have been highly successful in supporting bilingual proficiencies in Māori and English. Additionally, there are now plans to make bilingual education in Māori and English universally available in all public schools by 2025.
In Australia, our policy makers have so far ignored the aspirations of an ever-growing number of families for meaningful language education that fosters high levels of linguistic proficiency in English and another language. In fact, the overbearing role of English in academic achievement often means that schools actively conspire against the wishes of families. As a result, those best able to raise bilingual children in Australia are those who have the means to afford specialized private schools, extended overseas holidays or bilingual nannies.
When will our leaders end the disconnect between families’ linguistic aspirations and the education system? When will we see an all-of-society effort to help put the bilingual proficiencies needed to thrive in the 21st century within the reach of all?
Reference
Piller, I., & Gerber, L. (2018). Family language policy between the bilingual advantage and the monolingual mindset. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1-14. doi:10.1080/13670050.2018.1503227 [if you do not have institutional access, you may download an open access version here. The number of OA downloads is limited, so, institutional users, make sure to leave this link for readers without institutional access … An OA pre-publication version is available here].
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Thanks for the interesting article! I found the development of the research area, Family Language Policy, fascinating. I studied languages and language acquisition, learning and teaching in the 1990s. Much of my focus was on Michael Clyne’s work. I have also taught English as a second language and German language.
I’m raising my son using the one language/one parent method. He is nearly 2.5 and understands both English and German. He uses his own sign language and sounds to communicate with us. He now has three words, which you’d find in the dictionary.
I found your article interesting because it seems to indicate that a less rigid approach (one parent/one language) to bringing up children bilingually can work. It also seems to be more accepting of less than grammatically perfect language use.
My concerns, in contrast, to the linked article are the limitations of my German (as a non-native speaker), and accessing other German speaking resources for children. I use youtube videos and have bought children’s books in German. If you could guide me to further reading on bringing up children in a culture with a monolingual mindset, I’d appreciate it.
Further, I wasn’t able to access the reading related to relationship tensions arising from raising children bilingually. I’m finding this is the case in the relationship with my son’s Dad. He, btw, is learning German much the way our son is!
Thank you in advance, and regards,
Sarah
It was an interesting topic. My parents also chose to use Urdu for family communication instead of their mother tongue. So at home we speak in Urdu and at school we speak in Arabic and English. I think it was a wise decision of my parents to teach us Urdu because it connected us with our roots as well as helped us in learning Arabic and English which were necessary to move in the society we live as immigrants. At the same time, it gave us a larger space to express ourselves. Reading in three languages is also an experience worth enjoying.
I was raised bilingual and I couldn’t be more thankful for that.
This a great summary of some of the competing pressures or influences on parents when it comes to family language policy decisions and their implementation. I thought I might share some of my thoughts and experiences of bi/multi-lingual parenting so far.
Choosing to speak my second language (French) with my toddler has been challenging in some of the ways mentioned – particularly, worrying about whether I can meet his other needs (emotional, behavioural, social etc) as he develops, when my proficiency or fluency is not quite as high as my first language (English).
Another concern in our situation is how speaking French with him may impact the family dynamic as my husband does not speak/understand French. At the baby/toddler stage, this hasn’t been a major problem – in fact, it has mostly led him to picking up a number of basic expressions and key vocab, eating, changing nappies etc. Still, I do wonder how this may play out as our son gets older and our conversations become less one-sided and more complex in subject matter.
For my husband, who, when he’s not using his newly acquired French words, speaks Pashto with our son, a key challenge is the lack of learning materials or media that he can share with him to help his exposure. For both of us, going forward, the lack of quality language learning opportunities outside the home means that the onus remains on us to create learning and speaking opportunities for our son.
Thank you for sharing, Laura. When I met your son last, I really enjoyed using my French with him, but I was also conscious of the fact that his skills will soon surpass mine.
It’ll be interesting to see how your family negotiates these languages as he grows, particularly given your own linguistics background, and the competing language ideologies we’re surrounded by. The discourses around transmitting a LOTE by a ‘non-native’ caregiver presented this FLP decision as a positive move, informed by the belief in a bilingual advantage. Unsurprisingly, posters in the forum condemned the decisions of a non-native English-speaking caregiver passing on ‘poor’ English. It’d be worth looking into how the monolingual mindset plays out in a specialised forum on bilingual parenting.