Many parents want to raise their children multilingually, yet this can be challenging. The challenge can be especially great for those parents wanting to transmit a heritage language, a language not spoken widely in the community. Prior research finds that family language policy — caregivers’ beliefs, practices, and planning with respect to their family’s languages — are related to important outcomes of multilingual development, such as children’s identity, family relationships, and eventual language fluency.

In December of 2021, in a webinar hosted by the TESOL Bi-/Multilingualism Special Interest Group, we presented two connected studies of family language policy (FLP) involving parents raising children under 4 years of age with multiple languages in Quebec, Canada. In Quebec, French is the sole official language, but there is a sizable English-speaking minority. Thus, English and French serve as societal languages. Adding to this linguistic diversity, the province is home to a large number of heritage language speakers, including Indigenous and immigrant languages.

In the first project, we analyzed FLP data from focus groups and interviews with parents raising young multilingual children in Montreal, Quebec’s urban center (Ballinger et al., 2020). There were 27 participants, including parents raising children with societal languages only (i.e. English and French) and parents raising children with a heritage language in addition to one or both societal languages. As a whole, these parents showed tempered optimism for their children’s multilingual development. Many talked about the benefits of multilingualism for their children, such as increased employability, cognitive advantages, and ease of communication. Many also said that their own use of the languages was guided by what felt “natural” to them. However, families of children acquiring a heritage language showed less optimism and expressed some concern for their ability to support their children’s development in the heritage language.

The second project included a collection of studies based on responses to an online questionnaire from approximately 850 Quebec-based parents raising a child, under four years of age, with multiple languages. The questionnaire targeted different aspects of FLP, including beliefs (attitudes and concerns) related to their children’s multilingual development, parents’ engagement with resources as a form of language management, and families’ language practices. In the webinar, we presented the main findings from four studies, each targeting one of these aspects of FLP. Here we will only briefly summarize the findings, with a focus on one common theme that emerged across studies: differences in families transmitting a heritage language from those transmitting only societal languages.

Overall, parents held positive attitudes towards their children’s multilingualism with respect to its utilitarian value (i.e. status), its importance for in-group communication (i.e. solidarity), and its effect on children’s cognitive development (Kircher et al., 2022). They expressed only low levels of concern, in particular with respect to children experiencing confusion or delay due to their multilingualism (Quirk et al., under review). Differences, however, emerged when we compared those families raising children with societal languages only and those raising their children with at least one heritage language. Among parents transmitting a heritage language, attitudes were less positive than those of other parents with respect to the status dimension (i.e. the utilitarian value of multilingualism), and more positive with respect to the solidarity dimension (i.e. the benefits of multilingualism for in-group communication). The same dichotomy emerged in our analysis of parents’ concerns: parents transmitting a heritage language expressed higher levels of concern regarding their children’s exposure to and attainment of fluency in their languages, and regarding the possibility of children experiencing cognitive difficulties as a result of their multilingualism.

Another study from the second project, which is ongoing, examines how families use their languages in and outside of the home, and what predicts which languages are used (Quirk et al., in prep.). In this study, we examined how language practices are related to the extent to which the language is commonly used among household members, parents' attitudes towards childhood multilingualism, caregivers’ proficiency in the language, and its status outside of the home (i.e. whether it is a heritage or societal language).

Finally, with respect to how parents engage with resources to support their children’s multilingual development, we found that parents had a stronger desire for child-directed resources (e.g. storybooks) than parent-directed resources (e.g. informational websites), and that the most desired resources were material resources such as books (Ahooja et al., 2022). This study also found that parents raising children with a heritage language expressed a stronger desire for all kinds of resources supporting their children’s multilingual development.

In sum, our findings from both projects suggest that parents value multilingualism and are optimistic about their children’s multilingual development. This may be linked to the context of Quebec, where multilingualism is the norm, or it may be true across diverse contexts. Future studies might use similar methods to ours to test this. However, within that larger picture, we also found that FLP differs depending on the social status of the languages being transmitted, i.e. whether it is a heritage or societal language, with heritage language families reporting less optimism and a stronger need for support.

Our research has several implications. First, while all multilingual families need support in their efforts to transmit their languages, these needs may differ based on the characteristics of the family, especially the languages being transmitted. Also, given that parents generally express positive attitudes and little concern regarding their children’s developing multilingualism, efforts to support children and families can concentrate on families’ practical needs. For example, parents need support in accessing material resources in a range of languages and having sufficient time with their children to foster their children’s language development.

We believe that our findings can be informative for researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners who support multilingual families all over the world. We also hope that our findings can form the basis for developing a framework of thinking about multilingualism in infancy and toddlerhood more generally.

Finally, we would like to thank the TESOL Bi-/Multilingualism Special Interest Group for the opportunity to participate in the webinar. We greatly enjoyed and benefited from engaging with your community of teachers, learners, and researchers.

References

Ahooja, A., Brouillard, M., Quirk, E., Ballinger, S., Polka, L., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Kircher, R. (2022). Family language policy among Québec-based parents raising multilingual infants and toddlers: A study of resources as a form of language management. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2022.2050918

Ballinger, S., Brouillard, M., Ahooja, A., Kircher, R., Polka, L., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2022). Intersections of official and family language policy in Quebec. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 43(7), 614-628.https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1752699

Kircher, R., Quirk, E., Brouillard, M., Ahooja, A., Ballinger, S., Polka, L., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2022). Quebec-based Parents’ Attitudes Towards Childhood Multilingualism: Evaluative Dimensions and Potential Predictors. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 41(5), 527-552. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X221078853

Quirk, E., Brouillard, M., Ahooja, A., Ballinger, S., Polka, L., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Kircher, R. (Under review). Quebec-based parents’ concerns regarding their children’s multilingual development. Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/583ge

Quirk, E., Phillips, N. , Brouillard, M., Ahooja, A., Polka, L., Ballinger, S., Byers-Heinlein, K., & Kircher, R. (In preparation). A study of the language practices of Quebec-based parents raising multilingual infants and toddlers.

Alexa Ahooja is a PhD candidate in the Language Acquisition Program at McGill University. Her research interests include the inclusion and experiences of bi/multilingual students in Québec schools. Her doctoral project will examine these students’ L2 socialization, their linguistic identity positionings, as well as official and unofficial language policies.

Susan Ballinger is an Associate Professor of Second Language Education at McGill University. Her research focuses on bilingual education contexts. Specific interests include cross-linguistic and plurilingual pedagogies, content and language integration, classroom interaction, peer collaboration, and the impact of societal and classroom environments on students’ engagement, identity, and holistic achievement.

Melanie Brouillard is a Doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Concordia University, where she holds a prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her research investigates how to best support bilinguals’ language development across the lifespan.

Krista Byers-Heinlein is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University, where she holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Bilingualism and Open Science, and directs the Concordia Infant Research Lab. Her research focuses on language acquisition and cognitive development, with a focus on bilingual infants and toddlers.

Ruth Kircher is a researcher at the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, which is part of the Fryske Akademy in Leeuwarden (Netherlands). Her research focuses on societal multilingualism, with a particular interest in language attitudes and ideologies, language practices, and language policy and planning – especially in relation to minority language communities.

Nicola Phillips is a PhD Student in Communication Sciences and Disorders at McGill University. She is interested in the qualitative aspects of adult-infant interactions in multilingual families. Her doctoral thesis will make use of naturalistic daylong audio recordings to examine the diversity of early bilingual language environments.

Linda Polka is a Professor in the School of Communication Sciences & Disorders at McGill University where she trains clinical and research students. Her research focuses on development of speech perception and production during infancy with a special interest in infants growing up in bilingual families.