Maternal Perceptions of Agency in Intergenerational Transmission of Spanish: The case of Latinos in the U.S. Midwest

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which a group of first-generation Latino immigrants to the U.S. Midwest conceptualized their role in their children’s bilingual development. Respondents were asked to identify the individuals or institutions on which their children’s language and academic development depended, as well as household practices perceived as conducive to Spanish maintenance, and perceived obstacles to their children’s use of Spanish in the domains of home, school, and community. Discussion centers on maternal perceptions of agency because of the centrality of the mother in intergenerational minority language transmission. It is argued here that immigrant mothers’ perceptions of agency are impacted by several factors. Among them: the experience of migration, the power imbalance created when their children are more fluent than the parents are in the majority language and culture, and finally, by the negotiation of ideological tensions between members of intra-community Latino networks of solidarity and the community at large.

Key words:

• Spanish
• intergenerational transmission
• bilingualism
• speaker perceptions
• Midwest
• gender

Notes

1. ¹In his study of intergenerational transmission of Spanish within a group of 4 Vancouver families, Guardado (2006) discusses the situation of a family of Salvadoran origin in which the father attempts to transmit the family language to his son, while the mother, who lives in the same household, does not. Although the author describes this situation as an attempt to transmit the Father tongue (p. 58), his own observations support previous findings regarding the mother’s role in minority-language transmission, because in this household intergenerational transmission of Spanish was unsuccessful.

2. ²For ease of comparison, participation was limited to 2-parent households in which both parents were native speakers of Spanish. Although language dynamics in 1-parent households and households in which only 1 parent speaks Spanish are in and of themselves quite interesting, they constitute a different language environment in which children’s everyday exposure to Spanish is reduced.

3. ³This item was presented using the construction “¿De quién depende que … ?” (literally, On whom does it depend that … ?) and not, “¿Quién es responsable de … ? (literally, Who is responsible for … ?) because in Mexican Spanish (and perhaps in other dialects as well) the construction “¿De quién depende que … ?” entails not only individual responsibility but a volition and capacity to act, thereby inferring a sense of agency.

4. ⁴Because children and parents interacted with several teachers, paraprofessionals, and other members of the staff throughout the school year, this item was presented using the collective reference “school” instead of the individual “teacher.”

5. ⁵The other of these 2 mothers responded that her children’s acquisition of English could not depend on her because she did not speak the language.

6. ⁶The item was presented from the perspective of the mother (e.g., making children brush their teeth, complete their homework).