I am deep in doing interviews with mothers from around the world for my PhD research on the emotions and negotiation of identities of mothers raising multilingual children.
This is slightly tangential, but I’ve been pondering this: a family member went to Ecuador to teach English, learned Spanish, and then raised her child to be fluent in Spanish (while living here in the States). It seems to me that this is a slightly unusual situation, to raise a bilingual child without any substantial amount of the culture that comes with it. I wonder if it matters? I think the ability to speak more than one language is a great skill to have. I am not bilingual, to my immigrant mother’s eternal shame (how much I would love to unpack that with her, but she died so long ago), but we always had Japanese culture surrounding us, though not in the way we would have had we lived in Japan. Anyway, morning musings.
I LOVE this morning musing and definitely something I should write about in more length! I have a draft of a newsletter in the works more in the context of names and what happens when someone has for example, a very X sounding name but does not speak the language associated with that name but that is closely linked to culture for sure. Absolutely, someone who is bilingual is not always bicultural and someone who is bicultural may not be bilingual and there is so much in between those two spaces for both situations. I think for some people, it does matter, for others it doesn't. Even in my family, I grew up speaking Polish at home (in an anglophone part of Canada) with a very strong cultural connection to Poland and the Polish culture, but my parents also put me in a French immersion school because they believe languages are so important. I recently read something interesting about a mother being quite offended by children's Spanish classes being led by someone who had no cultural connection to the language. I think it's complicated and very personal. That cultural connecting might make someone want to learn/pass on a language more but just the idea of bilingualism for someone else might be just as important and not even necessarily caring what language. There is a lot of fascinating research on language as a commodity and an investment by parents - this can be with or without the cultural connection. Thank you for sharing. Has the cultural connection made you want to learn Japanese? If you haven't already of course.
I actually majored in Japanese language and literature, and got much better at Japanese, but never truly fluent. My mom, I think, was mortified by my American accent and didn’t have a way to process that except to be pretty rude about commenting about my poor Japanese to her friends (in front of me), enough so that I stopped speaking it around her. Sigh. I think we’d have both liked to have gone back in time and had a restart, you know?
That is so hard and I am sorry you can't have the restart. In the research, there is a lot about how mothers consider the language of their children as a reflection of their parenting. (I think this is the case for mothering in general.) It is not an excuse or right but in the sense that this comes up a lot and "accents" or sounding a certain way is a part of that for sure. And of course that has to do with how society criticizes/blames mothers for so much in general.
I really appreciate how you called out your initial usage of “mothering got in the way” instead of just editing it out off screen. That’s such an important reframe and I know I often find myself thinking that way when I’m frustrated by the like of time in a day.
I've been thinking a lot about this one. I wouldn't be doing the work I do without my children but logistics (mainly lack of time) always makes it complicated.
This is slightly tangential, but I’ve been pondering this: a family member went to Ecuador to teach English, learned Spanish, and then raised her child to be fluent in Spanish (while living here in the States). It seems to me that this is a slightly unusual situation, to raise a bilingual child without any substantial amount of the culture that comes with it. I wonder if it matters? I think the ability to speak more than one language is a great skill to have. I am not bilingual, to my immigrant mother’s eternal shame (how much I would love to unpack that with her, but she died so long ago), but we always had Japanese culture surrounding us, though not in the way we would have had we lived in Japan. Anyway, morning musings.
I LOVE this morning musing and definitely something I should write about in more length! I have a draft of a newsletter in the works more in the context of names and what happens when someone has for example, a very X sounding name but does not speak the language associated with that name but that is closely linked to culture for sure. Absolutely, someone who is bilingual is not always bicultural and someone who is bicultural may not be bilingual and there is so much in between those two spaces for both situations. I think for some people, it does matter, for others it doesn't. Even in my family, I grew up speaking Polish at home (in an anglophone part of Canada) with a very strong cultural connection to Poland and the Polish culture, but my parents also put me in a French immersion school because they believe languages are so important. I recently read something interesting about a mother being quite offended by children's Spanish classes being led by someone who had no cultural connection to the language. I think it's complicated and very personal. That cultural connecting might make someone want to learn/pass on a language more but just the idea of bilingualism for someone else might be just as important and not even necessarily caring what language. There is a lot of fascinating research on language as a commodity and an investment by parents - this can be with or without the cultural connection. Thank you for sharing. Has the cultural connection made you want to learn Japanese? If you haven't already of course.
I actually majored in Japanese language and literature, and got much better at Japanese, but never truly fluent. My mom, I think, was mortified by my American accent and didn’t have a way to process that except to be pretty rude about commenting about my poor Japanese to her friends (in front of me), enough so that I stopped speaking it around her. Sigh. I think we’d have both liked to have gone back in time and had a restart, you know?
That is so hard and I am sorry you can't have the restart. In the research, there is a lot about how mothers consider the language of their children as a reflection of their parenting. (I think this is the case for mothering in general.) It is not an excuse or right but in the sense that this comes up a lot and "accents" or sounding a certain way is a part of that for sure. And of course that has to do with how society criticizes/blames mothers for so much in general.
Thank you. I definitely agree.
I really appreciate how you called out your initial usage of “mothering got in the way” instead of just editing it out off screen. That’s such an important reframe and I know I often find myself thinking that way when I’m frustrated by the like of time in a day.
I've been thinking a lot about this one. I wouldn't be doing the work I do without my children but logistics (mainly lack of time) always makes it complicated.