Paternal agency in heritage language maintenance in Australia: Polish fathers in action

ABSTRACT

By adopting a tripartite FLP framework, this study aims to explore the agentive role of Polish-speaking fathers in heritage language maintenance. At the outset, it should be noted that as the theme of paternal agency has not been given much prominence in research, this paper delves into how Polish fathers of heteronormative families endeavour to maintain the minority language. More significantly, with the perspective of a new father–child relationship characterised by acknowledged paternity, presence and active involvement in a child’s life, the present article gives voice to fathers who want to engage in everyday language practices that seem to transgress the codes of hegemonic masculinity. Thus, the analysis of transcripts from semi-structured interviews disclose the informants’ ample opportunities for childcare, and most importantly, their struggle for children’s bilingual development. Fathers, as the primary agents, can have profound influence on their offspring’s beliefs, values, attitudes and behavioural patterns concerning the heritage language. The investigation underlines the fact that the gender of the minority-language speaking parent is less important in bilingual childrearing than the actual access to resources, time, and motivation. The study suggests that paternal agency exerts a significant influence on children’s linguistic orientation.

KEYWORDS:

• Fathers
• paternal agency
• childhood bilingualism
• heritage languages
• Polish

Introduction

According to the 2016 Census, there are over 300 languages spoken in Australian homes. More than 21% of Australians report speaking a LOTE, of which 48,000 people use Polish. Melbourne and the state of Victoria have the largest Polish population in Australia (33%). While there are eight Polish Saturday schools in Greater Melbourne, language-minority children’ exposure to Polish among primary school children is rather limited. Consequently, they shift towards English monolingualism after beginning mainstream schooling. As much as language input and usage are known to be central to acquisition and maintenance, parental support in children’s bilingual development also affects their proficiency in the heritage language considerably (Surrain 2018).

Little is known about how supportive minority-language fathers are with regard to heritage language maintenance, what their perceptions of bilingualism are and how these perceptions translate into the strategies facilitating heritage language transmission. It may be assumed that the aspect of gender affects the upbringing dynamics in families and their language policy. As a consequence, one would expect a gender-based distribution of power in family language decision-making. However, strange as it may seem, the role of fathers increases in caregiving duties, language maintenance and transmission. Fathers were reported to have a dual role in both affecting language use and proficiency of their children (Jackson 2006; Kim and Starks 2010; Doyle 2018).

Maintaining the currency of heritage languages in diasporic communities

Many studies, pertaining to heritage language maintenance and intergenerational transmission, had the same foci of a relatively restricted number of languages (e.g. German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese), most of which were comparatively high-status languages internationally (Borland 2008). In contrast to these, a number of smaller national languages face more complicated pressures and challenges related to transmission through diasporic communities, e.g. Polish. Research into language maintenance has flourished in Australia over the past few decades, particularly after Clyne and Kipp (2006) conducted highly important studies on immigrant languages through a systematic analysis of the Australian Censuses. The obtained findings suggest that language shift is apparent on the Australian-born generation who are abandoning their parents’ or grandparents’ mother tongue and becoming monolingual English speakers. In consequence, immigrants have a strong desire to teach the children their native language in order to transmit their culture and promote positive familial bonds and interaction (King and Fogle 2006; Guardado 2018). Also, language practices at home as well as support from ethnic institutions and networks are among the strongest predictors that are perceived to help preserve the native language (Chumak-Horbatsch 1999; Alba et al. 2002). In Australia, Polish Saturday schools have flourished in recent years, offering second-generation Polish Australians ample opportunities to receive systematic instruction in the linguistic and cultural knowledge (Romanowski 2021a). These institutions serve the pivotal role of expanding the children’s heritage language learning experiences beyond the home environment and developing a positive sense of belonging to the community (Quiñones and FitzGerald 2019; Shen and Jiang 2021).

Language ideologies and heritage language education

Language ideologies are beliefs and opinions about language, as well as beliefs about speakers, including who speaks what (kind of) language, and who should speak in which ways (Duff 2019). They are connected to the processes of social interaction as well as referring to people’s understandings, beliefs and assumptions regarding the relationship between language and social life. In the context of the present study, these ideologies may also allude to people’s opinions about the relationship between heritage language development and cultural affiliations. The attitudes and beliefs shared by community members are not only critical to their heritage language development success (Woolard 1998; Guardado 2018), but also to the processes of identity construction, as identities are defined by the language(s) we speak and the ideas we hold about them (Fought 2011).

An essential role in the identity construction of a heritage language speaker is played by heritage language education, which contributes to the development of bilingual and multilingual skills for the individual, as well as for the society as a whole. It ensures cultural continuity within heritage communities and affects the strengthening of a cultural identity among members of the diaspora. It also impacts community cohesiveness by linking language, nation and identity (Leeman 2015). Heritage language educational settings provide a space where learners can be empowered and can further affirm their own multilingual and multicultural identities by learning more about their heritage languages and cultures in a supportive environment (Seals 2017). As there are multiple selves, which are situated and contextually negotiated, contested, shaped and reshaped, increasing importance is placed on education that helps students feel valued as heritage language speakers within their communities and schools resulting in the likelihood that they will be able to maintain an identity as speakers of their heritage language (Hornberger and Wang 2008). Borowczyk (2020) underlines fact that the Polish community-based schools provide a key source of heritage language instruction for the Polish diaspora scattered across the world. As of 2020, there were 1136 Polish language programmes abroad, some funded by the Polish Ministry of Education, while others run primarily by local community members.

Parents as agents in family language policy

In his FLP model, Spolsky (2004, 2012) suggested an analysis of three interrelated components: language ideology, practice and management. Determining what languages to practise, encourage, avoid or abandon is dictated by the values that families ascribe to certain languages and perceptions they have towards them (Schwartz 2018). Curdt-Christiansen (2012) rightly notices that this decision-making process is largely dependent on parental beliefs and goals for their children’s linguistic development. The social nature of families, which structure FLP, moves beyond home parenting affecting education, religion, identity and cultural and political allegiances (King, Fogle, and Logan-Terry 2008).

While these factors are perceived as driving forces for FLP, Curdt-Christiansen and Wang (2018) indicate that parents normally assume their roles as agents who ‘have or claim authority’ over their children at home so that they can influence or shape their beliefs or practices. As a result, recent research pertaining to bilingual settings (homes or schooling), has focused on children’s and parents’ agency in interaction. For instance, Almér (2017) critically analysed bilingual children’s voices and beliefs about languages as aspects of their agentive behaviour, which he termed as interactive agency resulting from a dialogue with an adult. Also, Bergroth and Palviainen (2017) explored how children’s communicative actions with their peers and teachers might affect preschool language policy. In a similar vein, Romanowski (2021b) analysed Polish-Australian children situated in a diasporic community to gain insight in their perceptions of family language policy. He concluded that primary school children are already fully fledged members of society and are able to judge their parents’ decisions and take their own. This resonates with Lanza’s (2007) prior observations, who inferred that children are active agents in the language learning process.

In this study, I define parental and/or paternal agency as the capacity allowing to make decisions about what measures should be implemented to promote or suppress the use and practice of particular languages. In line with Ahearn (2001) and Curdt-Christiansen and Wang (2018), I consider the capacity to act to be conditioned by sociocultural factors, e.g. macro-level policies, social realities and broader educational systems.

Conceptualising one family model: fathers and their social role

In the Polish culture, the term family is understood and projected as the traditional family, i.e. a heterosexual, monogamous married couple with children. Thus, alternative forms of marital-family life have always been regarded as nonfunctional, worthless and unnatural (Mizielińska and Stasińska 2017). The notion of the family is thus constructed on assumed heterosexuality of all citizens and based on the invisibility of other family models. The constant concealment and erasing of non-heterosexual families in effect enforce heteronormativity as the only possible and correct option. This attitude resonates with the conservative worldview exemplifying a traditional and patriarchal vision of family introduced in its form due to pressures from the Catholic Church. It is the father, who takes care of his family because of his masculine qualities of being strong, capable, reliable, and in control, while at the same time fulfilling caring roles if needed (Connel 2005). Being a responsible father is a signifier of the possession of ‘a masculine self’ (Enderstein and Boonzaier 2015).

Since the researched fathers are situated in the transnational families in Melbourne, it is crucial to note that more conservative and orthodox masculinities have been reproduced and softened in Australia. This has led to the improvement of their social relations and establishing closer familial links with the children (McCormack 2012). Australian men move away from the hegemonic ideals of masculinity, which assume men to be breadwinners, involved in the public sphere, and ‘in control’, thereby unravelling the fluid, multiple and contested nature of masculinities. As a consequence, they aspire to more equal gender relations, with greater involvement in their families (Smith and Winchester 1998). Sport is one of Australian society’s cultural institutions and a predominant leisure context for fathering, thus, it is a very frequent means for bonding and showing interest in their children. Not surprisingly, masculine identities and fatherhood in Australia are bound up with an interest in and practice of sport (Harrington 2006).

Despite a wealth of groundbreaking studies on fathers’ increased involvement with children (Pleck 2010; Futris, Nielsen, and Olmstead 2010), little do we know about men who serve as the primary caregivers for families. Fathers usually identify their role with the ability to provide financially being a key determinant of their involvement with the child. On the other hand, the male breadwinner model is potentially eroded by the increasing flexibilisation of the labour market, making one income insufficient for the maintenance of the household, but also by women’s desire to actively participate in professional employment. That being said, the intertwining of these changes means that there exists an increasing complexity of the forces subject to daily negotiations and reflexive practices, which have altered the construction of contemporary families (Magaraggia 2012).

Against the backdrop of social changes influencing family roles, a new father–child relationship characterised by acknowledged paternity, presence and active involvement in a child’s life, has recently transpired (Doucet 2018). It is through this perspective that the present article gives voice to fathers who want to engage in everyday language practices that seem to transgress the codes of hegemonic masculinity. Consequently, fathers who have established a daily relationship with their children highlight new tensions between prevailing models of masculinity and innovative practices of fatherhood resulting in, amongst others, minority-language maintenance and cultivating ethnic cultural practices.

Methodological considerations

Rationale and research questions

Because much of the existing literature on raising children with more than one language has grossly underplayed and underestimated the way in which the language work of minority-language speaking men in intermarried families is realised, this paper aims to augment the role of fathers in heritage language maintenance. By applying a Family Language Policy framework to data collected from seven in-depth qualitative interviews, this study aims to explore the agentive role of Polish-speaking fathers of 7–10 year-olds in heritage language maintenance in the diasporic community of Melbourne. The small size of the sample is testament to the fact that fathers are a notoriously difficult group to recruit (Wilkes, Mannix, and Jackson 2011). The widespread downplaying of the involvement of men in the family, and the persisting belief that having children is primarily a concern of women, form a major barrier to the inclusion of men in research agendas. However, this is not necessarily problematic, given that the primary focus was not generalisability but rather exploration of an undocumented perspective. That being said, it is worth indicating that this paper uses a mixed-method approach to study a relatively unexamined, emerging form of paternal agency, which has been hardly ever studied due to a lack of large-scale survey data. Through an analysis of transcripts from semi-structured interviews, I investigated the informants’ general perceptions of bilingualism, whether they conceive plans to support bilingualism at home, how their plans have changed during their child’s transition to formal schooling. Thus, the research questions were as follows:

1. How do the fathers perceive the importance of bilingualism for their children?

2. What is the role of home and school in supporting language development?

3. How do their language management strategies and practices align with beliefs about bilingualism and bilingual development?

Research instruments and procedure

The semi-structured interviews with the fathers were conducted in August 2016. In order to establish rapport with the informants, I first approached them in Saturday schools where short conversations focusing on explaining the purpose of the study as well as collecting consent forms occurred. The second meeting involving the interview was planned a week later. Most of the fathers suggested a neutral place where they could talk more openly without the presence of other family members. One-on-one semi-structured interviews in Polish were aimed at eliciting in-depth information regarding their children’s bilingual development. The interviews were open-ended so as to disclose unbiased beliefs without implying correct or incorrect responses or attitudes, and they aimed at guiding the fathers to converse on their own experiences, stories, and perceptions in relation to heritage language maintenance. The same topics and questions were discussed (e.g. the children’s language practices at home and school, the parents’ attitudes to bilingualism and ways of supporting the heritage language). The interview protocol contained 12 pre-formulated questions drawn from various sources in the literature. The researcher opted for this type of interview because it not only addressed specific dimensions of the targeted research questions, but also left some ‘space for participants to offer new insights and meanings to the topic of the study’ (Galletta 2013). The interviews flowed naturally and lasted up to 60 min. They were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.

Participants

This study employed a wide sampling strategy as three fathers were recruited through Polish Saturday schools and two through Polish community centres in Melbourne. Also, another two fathers were found through snowball sampling whereby one earlier recruited father would provide me with the names of his acquaintances. The cohort was homogeneous in terms of the participants’ first language, their bilingual proficiency and socioeconomic status. All the fathers were born in Poland, had immigrated to Australia between the ages of 20 and 26 and married there. The range of educational attainment spanned from a BA to an MA university degree. All 11 focal children were born in Australia and were attending Australian primary schools. Five of them were female, six male and three were the only children. The Socioeconomic Status (SES) of the seven families was estimated to be middle or high based on the parents’ occupations, education levels, and the schools their children were attending. In addition, all the fathers exemplified heteronormative families, for whom the concept of marriage was very rigidly defined as a relationship between woman and man (Table 1).

Table 1. Fathers’ sociodemographic profile (all names are pseudonyms).

Father’s name	Age	Education	Profession	Children’s name & gender	Children’s age	Type of family	Spouse’s dominant language
Jan	34	MA/Accounting	Accountant	Zosia (F)	7	Single-parent family	N/A
Krzysztof	30	BA/Physiotherapy	Physiotherapist	Leo (M)	9	Heteronormative nuclear family	English
Adam	27	BA/Social work	Office worker	Olivia (F) Eunice (F)	7 8	Heteronormative nuclear family	English
Jacek	36	MSc/Archeology	Teacher	Thomas (M)	10	Heteronormative nuclear family	English
Piotr	31	BA/Public administration	Office worker	Ania (F) Tomek (M)	8 9	Heteronormative nuclear family	English
Michał	29	BSc/Urban design & planning	Architect	Oscar (M) Elijah (M)	7 10	Heteronormative nuclear family	English
Wojciech	33	MA/Geography	Teacher	Grace (F) Noah (M)	7 9	Heteronormative nuclear family	English

Data analysis procedure

Bearing in mind the need to reflect on the participant’s story and in order to facilitate thematic connections across interviews, notes were recorded after each interview. After all the interviews were transcribed verbatim, thematic coding followed according to the grounded theory approach (Charmaz 2003). Its methodology was used to analyse the collected data qualitatively as it enables researchers to conceptualise covered social patterns and structures through the process of constant comparison (Heath and Cowley 2004). The analysis of data commenced instantly alongside the data collection process. Having compared emic codes, a codebook including all the identified themes was developed. The seven transcripts were coded by means of the qualitative data analysis software NVivo 12. The main advantage of this type of software is that it allows researchers to reveal richer insights and produce clearly articulated, defensible findings, which are backed by rigorous evidence. Coding labels were created as soon as all the interview data were uploaded into the programme. Some of the nodes that emerged from the interview data served as central themes discussed in the paper.

Findings

(1) Perceptions of bilingualism

The fathers involved in this study declared that through the exposure to the heritage language since early childhood, they could develop bilingualism in their children. In their opinion, the ability to speak two languages can bring their offspring better career opportunities (King and Fogle 2006). Three fathers mentioned better cognitive abilities or higher IQ as the positive aspects of bilingual development (Genesee and Nicoladis 2006). Piotr (31) indicated that the advantages of bilingualism were enormous:

First of all, cognitive abilities are better developed, and secondly, bilingual children have a higher IQ. That’s why, we often play memory games, which help them practice some Polish words.

Becoming well-educated and literate in two languages is invoked as what Piller (2001) defines ‘investment’ that will yield a high return. Unquestionably, as raised by the fathers, bilingualism, as a human capital, is a valuable vehicle for economic empowerment. Jan (34) noted:

I am fully aware that it is much better to have two languages rather than one. My task has always been to foster Zosia’s development of Polish through puzzles, rhymes and songs. Through my caring activities I have become a true father, especially after my wife passed away.

All the fathers accentuated a belief in academic excellence as the only way for their children to obtain upward social mobility in Australia. Jacek (36) continued:

Knowing an additional language can bring benefits to the speaker on the job market. I know myself how hard it was for me to obtain well-paid employment when I arrived in Australia. I want life to be easier for my son.

He also showed a very positive view of bilingual development by having stated that he did not worry much about the influence of heritage language maintenance on the development of English, despite the fact that English is for his son a means to assimilate into the Australian society.

Fishman (2001) and Cavallaro (2005) indicated that the heritage language was a tool for transmitting cultural identity to the children, especially in multilingual contexts, where prestigious languages dominate. The fathers, in this study, believed that bilingual acquisition and maintenance of the heritage language would help their children better safeguard their identity. Jan (34), who is a single father, indicated the role of Polish in maintaining family ties with his cousins in Poland. He said:

Thanks to staying in contact via video calls, my daughter can identify with my country. To some extent, it is part of her identity. I want to cultivate ethnic cultural practices so I read a lot to her about Poland. I even sometimes sing songs and recite poems. She really loves them.

Cultivating ethnic cultural practices provides a link for the fathers and their kids to the Polish extended family and enhances inner family communication whereas being fully immersed in their Australian life is important in terms of affinity and belonging (Bezcioglu-Goktolga and Yagmur 2017). Another father, Jacek (36) emphasised the value of maintaining Polish in their household by saying:

I believe that I need to maintain contacts with my family living in Poland for my son, who likes spending the time with his cousins. They speak Polish all the time, watch cartoons and play games. This is crucial for his bilingual development.

He further commented that if his son could seize the chance to have a family environment where only Polish was spoken, he would be more competitive than other Australian children, who are monolingual.

(2) Language development as supported by the home and school

All the fathers in this study have acknowledged taking responsibility for their children’s development of oral and written skills. At the time of research, they were in different career stages, which allowed for disclosing diverged patterns of home-work balances. Being himself a successful teacher, Jacek (36) perceives a critical role of the Saturday school in his son’s bilingual upbringing He says:

I need to help my son learn to read and write in Polish. This is my role as a father. Especially now, when I have reached some kind of professional recognition. However, I also want the school to assist me.

This seems consonant with King and Fogle’s (2006) understanding of good parenting resulting from parental motivation. Three fathers mentioned that it would be hard to maintain Polish without the support of the Saturday school, e.g. Krzysztof (30) says:

We meet other [Polish] families in church as I am actively involved in our cultural centre’s activities, which partly results from the fact that I work in my wife’s business. I feel it is my duty to organise some additional activities for my son where he could practise speaking Polish with peers.

He assists his son in extra-curricular activities as he thinks of them in terms of the only means to halt the minority language loss. By the same token, Michał (29) notes:

There is still a lot to be done at home, but without the school, it would be impossible to teach the children everything they need to know. I wish they would organise more extra-curricular activities, such as: storytelling or essay writing competitions.

These activities could lead to better development of literacy skills in the heritage language. Another father, besides attending a Polish Saturday school, mentioned going to a Polish national dance class once a week. In his view, this activity, in particular, requires more conversations in Polish with instructors, other children and their parents.

Wojciech (33) is one of the fathers who declares to have taken over most of the duties related to upbringing from his wife, e.g. he is now more engaged in fostering literacy practices. He explains:

I have become more active in childrearing after my wife started to pursue a PhD three years ago. It was her turn for her career to take off. Since then, I organise my children’s free time. I don’t find it hard. Whenever possible, I work on their literacies. We very often use a tablet, which offers an abundance of interactive tasks and games in Polish.

Such life events as the need for further education, transition between jobs or careers, taking on part-time work or moving jobs into a flexible home-based setting can force reverting the social roles of parents in a family affecting the tasks related to childhood bilingualism. That being said, it seems crucial to emphasise that all the informants reported speaking Polish in the household when they are with the children. Piotr (31) says:

I speak Polish to my children, even when we are sitting at the table and my wife is present. I want this to be done properly. I read a lot about how bilingualism should function in a family. As I have temporarily managed to move my job into a home based-setting, I have been more in charge of the children’s development than ever before.

Adam (27) manifests his disapproval of switching between the two languages when speaking to his children, however he is fully aware of their intentional practices of switching whenever possible:

I speak Polish to my children in public places, and hardly ever code-switch. We sometimes have friends or relatives in. My children prefer responding in English when other people are around.

This father has also noticed that his daughters’ Polish is less restricted when compared to their peers’ oral performance. He says:

When Eunice was born, I decided to take a paternity leave. I am an architect, so I could work from home. The same happened when Olivia was born. Thanks to it, my daughters’ competence in Polish is much higher. I am so proud.

He emphasises his contribution to the process of transmission of the minority language and cultural literacy. He further explicated that when the children were not so little anymore, he would also switch to reading aloud, and he would sometimes recite stories from Polish classical literature. He admitted:

I wanted my children to accumulate experiences as they grew up in order to have a more comprehensive and critical perspective of Poland. This was possible mainly because I had been trying to combine working and caring for a long time.

(3) The alignment of management strategies and practices with beliefs about bilingualism

The fathers demonstrated different approaches to supporting the minority language. In accordance with their beliefs about bilingualism, these ranged from strict enforcement of home language policies to more flexible strategies aimed at cultivating the learning of Polish. Michał (29) and Wojciech (33) reported the need for more formal support in the minority language development from the Saturday school. Michał (29) said:

I would expect the school to be more responsible for my children’s literacy development. Being the president of the parent-teacher council, I do what I can myself to help. I can see how hard it is for my boys to talk about everyday stuff in Polish.

By taking on a leadership position in the school council and the community centre, this father highlights how active he is and how his new role has almost become ‘a full-time job’. Another father, Wojciech (33), emphasised the role of teaching about Poland when he explained:

My children should constantly learn about Polish culture, literature and history. I am aware of how important it is for the young generation. I tell them stories about life in Poland. To check if they remember, I ask them questions and require responses in Polish.

The remaining five fathers insisted on more consistent minority language use at home. Especially Jan (34), who is a single father, implemented his policy in an effort to maintain a Polish monolingual context in the home, with his mother’s help, to counterbalance the English-monolingual context at school. He concluded that:

Instilling Polish at home is crucial to see the best results and halting the language loss. Me and my mother have a mission to support my daughter’s development.

Of the four fathers who declared following an OPOL policy at home, only two were very consistent in its use. Krzysztof (30) indicated that:

In my language management I attempt to be highly restrictive and controlling. Even when we play sports with Leo, I use Polish and teach him new vocabulary.

As seen, this father plays a role in his son’s extracurricular activities, e.g. recreation and competitive sports, which constitutes a kind of a symbolic arena in his strategies of being a father. Fathers may view coaching and assisting children’s sports as a venue that makes fathering more responsible than it actually is. In the same vein, Adam (27) added:

I pretend to understand less of a language than I actually do. I ask my girls questions just to make them use more Polish. Together we do the gardening. I tell them what different tools and plants are called in Polish.

This is how Adam gets involved in his children’s lives – in a manner that builds on traditional areas of male interests, such as gardening or sports. In fact, these types of involvement and caring reflect the ways in which fathers seek to distinguish fathering from mothering and to reconstruct particular kinds of masculine care. From the linguistic viewpoint, both fathers declared that by not understanding the child’s English utterances, they would expect an instant switch back to Polish (Lanza 1997). Krzysztof (30) maintained that:

I always try to make my son use the heritage language when he addresses me. When he does not, I usually repeat in Polish what he has just said in English.

This repetition strategy serves to establish a monolingual environment and elicit Polish in their conversations (De Houwer 2015). Jacek (36) underlined the fact that to enhance his son’s acquisition of Polish he would travel with him to Poland so that the boy could experience ‘full immersion’. While being in Poland, they would engage in physical labour, e.g. helping to renovate their relatives’ flat. He noticed that:

The purpose of my son’s holidays in my homeland is to disconnect from English. Last summer I observed a significant surge in his Polish after we had spent a month assisting my cousin in refurbishing his place.

Through this type of activity, Jacek wanted them to maintain masculine affiliations and carve out his own paternal identity, while at the same time working on the transmission of Polish to his son.

Discussion

This article demonstrates the results of a limited and self-selective sample of respondents, hence it does not claim to be representative of all the fathers. The results might have proved to be divergent under a different geographical context or with a different ethnic cohort. Therefore, based on the findings, it has to be articulated that the observed complexity and diversity across the researched group may, in a way, preclude us from making generalisations concerning paternal agency in heritage language maintenance. Since a growing body of literature has argued that minority-speaking mothers are more likely to raise bilingual children than minority language-speaking fathers (Piller and Pavlenko 2004), we may need to reconsider this assumption when we have looked at the data collected in this research.

The analyses of the collected data reveal that these fathers have shifted their life focus and actively renegotiated their identity and roles through the choice to take responsibility for their children and their heritage language development. Most of them have structured their personal goals and relationships with their spouses in terms of providing emotional, financial and linguistic stability for their children, because fathers’ presence is needed for the proper socialisation of children (McBride et al. 2004). Thus, we might assume that fatherhood becomes a highly valorised masculine trait. These fathers resolved the tension between the pursuit of hegemonic gender ideals and determination to act as caregivers to their children, thus casting fatherhood as a site to challenge stereotypes of absent fathers (Trahan 2018). This study indicates that fathers are not invisible and that fatherhood is a potentially transformative force in the construction of masculinities, which include provision, protection and care, including language development.

As should now be apparent, all the fathers were found to be both motivated and actively involved in the language work required of their children due to the fact that they had achieved financial and professional success and wanted to take a break from working. This was the overarching commonality with the studied group of fathers. They were looking for other forms of fulfilment, one of which was caring for their children. Consequently, this research suggests that the gender of the minority language speaking parent is less important in the bilingual childrearing process than the access to the resources, time, and motivation, which is congruent with the findings obtained in prior studies by Jackson (2006) and Doyle (2018). For the researched fathers and their children, the quality and the amount of interaction mattered, as well as their consistent use of Polish at home, and the provision of trips to Poland proved to be the decisive factors in the children’s heritage language development. As a result, fathers may find a comfortable fit between upbringing, sense of masculinity and fathering without the disruption to the smooth functioning of contemporary gender regimes. In this study, they came to appreciate how vitally important caring work is and yet also socially devalued (Okita 2002). The question that underlies the discussion is whether new practices are capable of redefining a form of life that decentres paid work and valorises uncommodified activities, such as care work, holding responsibility for children’s bilingualism and heritage language transmission.

This paper adds new insights to the studies of children’s heritage language development by synergising the examination of FLP with the theory of agency. The study has illustrated how paternal language management is an act of agency in promoting children’s development in the minority language through their fathers’ conscious choices in input provision. Further, the language learning resources and activities initiated by the fathers in the present study may transform the children’s linguistic environment. The investigated fathers were more involved in the lives of their children than in the past and were spending more hours conducting ‘fatherly activities’. This type of involvement is often labelled as ‘responsible fatherhood’ (Doherty, Kouneski, and Erickson 1998). In the case of the Polish fathers, a father–child relationship was characterised by acknowledged paternity, constant presence in a child’s life, economic support, and active involvement with the child. Through playing sports and doing physical labour, these fathers displayed and reinforced their masculinity and worked constantly on their children’s heritage language, because discontinuity in using it may have detrimentally affected not just their own families, but also the diasporic community as a whole, e.g. including the loss of sentimental connections in intergenerational relations, as well as the deprivation of linguistic and cultural diversity. Moreover, this study re-emphasised the value of home as an important site where its actors, the researched fathers, endeavoured to prompt their children to make further progress in the heritage language. As the fathers in this research were emotionally involved in the process, they consciously affected their offspring’s willingness to learn Polish. They carved out an autonomous space, unmediated by the presence of the mother, in which to learn the importance of intimate communication in Polish with their children and to become for them a reference point just like their mother.

Conclusion

From the experiences of these Polish-speaking fathers it transpires that they strived to sustain their children’s competence in Polish by applying various home language policies and strategies. The study suggests that paternal agency and the overall family socialisation exert a significant influence on children’s linguistic orientation. Fathers, as the primary agents, can impact profoundly their children’s beliefs, values, attitudes, and behavioural patterns concerning the heritage language. This research contributes to the limited literature on paternal agentive role in their engagement with children on heritage language maintenance. While the findings indicate the importance of socialisation at home for forming children’s pro-HLM acts, more studies are needed to understand how such agency can be a force for social transformation and change. In addition, there are clear benefits for members of the community in strengthening their awareness and knowledge of their heritage culture and language. The comparatively low status and lack of international significance of Polish as a language of formal study mean that it is not generally thought of as a language suitable to offer within the mainstream Australian school system, which happens to the detriment of the Polish community.

For these fathers, the shared interest in sport and getting involved in other activities were the catalyst to communicate with their children in Polish. Joint activities facilitated other conversations about the children’s emotional wellbeing, interests and everyday hardship fathers may face. These excerpts of father’s involvement in child care activities demonstrated the ways in which they maintained the minority language, supported their children’s efforts, and used the time together to strengthen their relationships. Fathers’ engagement with their children constructed mutually positive feelings and nurturing attachments. These fathers were invested in their children’s language development, and this was apparent each time they spent the time together. It needs to be reiterated that it is necessary to conduct more research to ascertain the variety and complexity of circumstances, perspectives and experiences of other men situated in diasporic communities. Future research can investigate the relations between divergent contexts, e.g. geographical location, ethnicity, paternal agency in other family types (e.g. one-parent, adoptive, or LGBTQ+ families) and heritage language maintenance. Because the fathers in the study encouraged their children to participate in various events organised by Saturday schools, e.g. storytelling or poetry reading contests and essay writing competitions, as well as Polish dance classes held in Polish ethnic clubs supporting the maintenance of linguistic and cultural heritage, studies can look at their role and significance across multiple contexts.

Fathers are in the process of building new models of fatherhood, which suggest potential shifts in social relations between women and men in the social institution of home. Living and working as primary carers while maintaining only a tenuous relation with breadwinning, these fathers were in a unique position to create new forms of masculinity by breaking the existing pattern, contesting and reconstructing the gender practices as well as reconfiguring the roles of men and women in heteronormative immigrant families where traditional gendered roles, e.g. with men providing money and their wives performing childcare duties and minority language transmission, still prevail.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Piotr Romanowski

Piotr Romanowski, PhD is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Applied Linguistics, the University of Warsaw. His main areas of research lie at the intersection of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.