Multilingual language minority parents’ perspectives on their relationships with caregivers regarding the multilingual upbringing of the child: a large-scale exploration within childcare facilities in Flanders

ABSTRACT

The literature strongly emphasises the importance of constructive relationships between parents and their children’s caregivers. However, minimal empirical research has investigated relationships between language minority parents and caregivers in childcare. This large-scale study seeks to fill this gap by exploring the quality of the language minority parent‒caregiver relationship with a focus on the child’s multilingual upbringing. Therefore, three domains that reflect the quality of parent‒caregiver relationships were assessed: (1) interpersonal connections, (2) home‒childcare continuity, and (3) language and multilingual upbringing advice parents receive from caregivers. The sample consists of 404 language minority parents, recruited from 85 childcare facilities (0–3 years). Results indicate that most parents reported positive relationships with their child’s caregiver with respect to interpersonal characteristics (communication and trust). In contrast, parents responded less favorably regarding issues pertaining to their language expectations, including whether multilingual upbringing advice, either solicited or unsolicited, was discussed. While language advice was not frequently given, when it was given, multilingual advice was more prevalent than monolingual advice, and one-parent one-language (OPOL) advice was common. Practical and policy implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• childcare
• language minority families
• parent‒caregiver relationship
• multilingual upbringing
• language advice

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Foundation Flanders: [Grant Number S006518N].