Maternally Speaking

Many parents want their children to speak multiple languages. They devise plans to raise their kids in a bilingual setting, for example, one parent may speak only in Spanish to them while the other only uses English.

However, a new study has challenged that traditional approach.

New research shows that mothers have twice the impact on language exposure as fathers, the study showed, with bilingual families living in Montreal adopting an alternate approach in which both parents speak both languages to their children.

“This made sense to us, because there are a lot of adults in Montreal who are actively bilingual,” Andrea Sander-Montant, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “It’s also telling us that families are using approaches that they feel comfortable with, despite traditional advice given to parents about raising bilingual children.”

The study was conducted with researchers analyzing data from questionnaires filled out by hundreds of families between 2013 and 2020. The researchers identified four main strategies employed by the parents: one-parent-one-language, both-parents-bilingual, one-parent-bilingual, and one-language-at-home.

Despite the parents detailing these strategies, the researchers found that what was reported may not have been actually going on at home.

“We found that none of these strategies told us much about what the children actually heard at home,” explained Krista Byers-Heinlein, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Concordia and the study’s supervising author, in a statement. “There was very little association between the strategies used and how much they were hearing of either language.”

When looking at the individual parent’s language use rather than the family’s overall strategy, the study authors found that mothers had up to twice the impact on language exposure compared with fathers.

“In the average family, if the mother is speaking only French, for example, the child will hear a lot of French,” said Byers-Heilein. “If the father is the only one speaking French, the child will hear a lot less.”

The influence of mothers was especially clear in heritage-language families. Among the 300 families studied, there was a subgroup of 6o families who were using a community language (either English or French) and a third heritage language at home. The study found that mothers were typically the parent transmitting the heritage language to the children, even if both parents spoke that third language.

“We think this may be the case because mothers still spend more time at home than fathers,” said Sander-Montant. “There may also be cultural factors at play, where mothers feel it is their responsibility to transmit the language.”

The researchers believe that this study has real-world implications for policymakers, healthcare workers, and professionals who give advice to bilingual families. They added that the research shows the need for flexible, case-by-case, and family-centered recommendations to support bilingual development.

“We estimate that young children need 20 to 30 waking hours weekly hearing each of the languages they are acquiring,” said Byers-Heinlein. “Rather than stressing about using this or that strategy, families can make a calculation of who is spending time with the child and then work backward to figure out how the child can receive enough experience in each language from fluent speakers.”