Heritage Languages in Families

Strong families are a vital element for healthy individuals and societies. For millions of immigrant families, intergenerational tensions and cultural conflicts often pose problems between the children, who are quickly [Page 345]embracing the new linguistic and cultural ways of the host country, and their parents, who tend to retain their native ways longer. These tensions can be exacerbated by other communication barriers for dominant heritage language-speaking parents and their English-dominant children. An often overlooked resource is the home or heritage language, which can be a wonderful support and bridge between such families as they navigate acculturation in different ways and at different rates, as described in this entry.

A review of research on the characteristics of healthy families conducted by W. Robert Beavers in 1977 and Ted Bowman in 1983 reveals that strong families share the following nine important traits: caring and appreciation, time together, encouragement, commitment, communication, ability to cope with change, spirituality, community and family ties, and clear roles. Individuals from strong families also have greater family pride, supporting the development of self-identity, self-esteem, and self-confidence. Importantly, all the factors that contribute to the formation and support of a strong family are in one way or another related with the ability to communicate. According to Michal Tannenbaum and Pauline Howie, three language patterns emerge among immigrant families in the United States: (1) Both parents and children speak English, (2) the parents speak the heritage language and the children speak in English, or (3) both parents and children speak the heritage language. Although the second is the more frequently observed pattern among immigrant families, Lily Wong Fillmore has found that it leads to great limitations in the range and depth of communication between parents and their children. The third pattern is the ideal for immigrant parents and children to develop to strengthen and reinforce strong resilient families.

The use of heritage languages serves a critical role in enabling family communication and enhancing the quality of family relationships and support for children. Proficiency in the heritage language among children of immigrants sustains and enhances communication with parents and with grandparents, who may be the primary caregivers while the parents work. When children do not have the heritage language skills to adequately communicate with their parents, they often experience a sense of frustration and are less likely to seek parental advice. This frustration and emotional distance tend to increase as children reach adolescence and develop a greater need for parental guidance. Without the ability to communicate with their parents, children do not have a means to gain guidance on issues of sex and career trajectories, for example. A lack of home support can result in increased teenage pregnancies and participation in youth gangs as young people seek acceptance outside the family circle.

When family members do not talk to each other beyond routine daily matters, the parent's guiding role can be minimized and even lost. The child-parent relationship may be reversed, and the parental authority may dwindle, all leading to the widening of the generation gap and an increase in family conflict. On the other hand, when grandparents/parents and children continue to speak the heritage language together, they are likely to spend more time together. Studies by Tannenbaum and Marina Berkovich show that time together creates opportunities for sharing meaningful experiences, fashioning family relationships and forming emotional bonds between grandparents/parents and children. By communicating together in the heritage language, parents and children engage in questioning, answering, negotiation, problem solving, exchanging information, showing love and affection, coming together in times of crisis, developing trust, and lending support. These processes are central for opening channels of communication between parents and children to discuss academic, moral, and social issues.

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