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Language and Parenting: Minority Languages in North America

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Handbook on Positive Development of Minority Children and Youth

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Abstract

Numerous children in North America speak a dialect and/or languages other than those in which they are schooled and can acquire new languages without jeopardizing their heritage languages. Current research questions regarding the impact of bilingualism have documented many positive results, countering the negative findings of older studies that confounded socioeconomic status with bilingualism. Accurate assessment of bilingual children with typical and atypical language development remains challenging despite a great deal of work on this subject and some progress. Early and frequent exposure to high-quality diverse and responsive input from speakers of multiple languages, along with continued support for those languages, results in optimal academic success for bilingual children regardless of whether they are typically or atypically developing. Universal versus culture-specific mechanisms, future directions for research, and policy implications are discussed. Parents should be encouraged to speak frequently and positively with their children using whatever language(s) and/or dialect(s) they are comfortable speaking.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to express her appreciation to Erika Hoff and Marc Bornstein for comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

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  1. University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA

    Allyssa McCabe

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  1. Allyssa McCabe
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Correspondence to Allyssa McCabe .

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  1. Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

    Natasha J. Cabrera

  2. Fakultät für Psychologie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Birgit Leyendecker

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McCabe, A. (2017). Language and Parenting: Minority Languages in North America. In: Cabrera, N., Leyendecker, B. (eds) Handbook on Positive Development of Minority Children and Youth. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43645-6_13

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