The minefields of parenting and race | Code Switch

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0:18 Real quick, y'all.

0:18 So, Code Switch is about to turn 10.

0:21 So, one, thank you for rocking with us all this time.

0:24 We really want [music] to hear from you

0:25 about any episodes over this last decade that really,

0:28 really stuck with you.

0:29 You can email us or you can send

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0:36 All right, on to the show.

0:43 Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch.

0:45 I'm BA Parker

0:47 and I'm Gene Dempy.

0:48 So Parker, what are you doing for your mom for Mother's Day?

0:51 I'm like typical mom coming to New York stuff.

0:53 Okay.

0:54 Like bougie brunch and a Broadway show.

0:55 Oh, bougie brunch.

0:57 Yes.

0:57 It's like what are you what are your Mother's Day plans?

1:00 My mom's birthday is actually right around Mother's Day every year.

1:02 So, you know, it's hard to forget.

1:03 I got to double up, you know?

1:04 I got to get a birthday gift and a Mother's Day gift.

1:06 And my lady has been giving me [music] some not

1:08 so subtle hints about what she wants for Mother's Day.

1:11 Getting links, text links.

1:12 You know what I'm saying?

1:14 Exactly.

1:13 So, I already know what it is in advance.

1:16 Since this episode is coming out around Mother's Day,

1:19 we figured we should dig in the crates and revisit one of our favorite episodes.

1:24 [music] Tips from the toughest job in the world.

1:28 That job being parenting.

1:32 Mhm.

1:32 When that episode dropped, [music] Karen Griggsby Bates.

1:35 Hey Karen, we miss you.

1:36 Yes, Karen Griggsby Bates.

1:37 and our then editor Steve Drummond.

1:39 We're the only parents [music] on the Cold Switch team,

1:42 but now there's like mad kids in the Cold Switch extended universe.

1:45 So, this episode might have sounded a lot different if we were doing it now.

1:50 Yeah.

1:50 [music] But we have talked about parenting a bunch on the show because parenting

1:54 activates all these anxieties and all this urgency around

1:56 our identities and how we move through the world.

1:58 And our listeners also have feelings about it.

2:03 Listen, like I'm not a parent, but I don't know if you've seen the conversation

2:08 around the comedian and content creator Kev on stage.

2:12 So, like he talked about how holding his newborn son a long

2:16 time ago helped him really work through his latent uninterrogated homophobia.

2:23 Yep.

2:23 Because he couldn't imagine a future in which he would

2:26 disown someone he loved so much for loving who they loved.

2:30 Yeah.

2:30 The flip side of that protective instinct though is like people battening down

2:34 the hatches like they got to drive a car the size of a tank.

2:37 They got to send their kids to the right schools,

2:39 you know, or they just got to hoard resources for their kids

2:43 or I don't know, maybe folks become vaccine skeptics.

2:47 Right.

2:47 Right.

2:47 Right.

2:47 I mean, having kids might break your brain a little bit or a lot.

2:52 But remember, we talked about how moral panics almost

2:55 always involve some concern about the welfare of children.

3:00 Yeah.

3:00 the the anxiety thing and I mean listen parenting has a lot to recommend it

3:05 but I'm saying you will necessarily bump up

3:08 against all these systems in the world and all

3:11 these new ways right healthcare schools the built

3:13 environment and so on this episode we are

3:16 revisiting some of the questions you the listeners

3:18 sent us about some parenting dilemmas in your lives let's hear it

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4:50 This week on Up First, gas [music] prices just jumped 30 cents per gallon.

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5:00 Listen for overnight developments on Iran.

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5:10 Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

5:16 All right, y'all.

5:17 So, we are throwing it back to an oldie

5:18 but goodie where we answer your questions about your parenting dilemmas.

5:21 So, here's me and my old co-host, Sheree Marsaraji.

5:30 [laughter] [sighs and gasps] Babies.

5:34 They're so cute, aren't they?

5:36 My biological clock is about to explode.

5:39 That's a little That's a lot of information for audience.

5:41 But yes, I love hanging out with kids.

5:42 My little niece, [music] Ryan,

5:44 she's so cute, isn't she?

5:45 Is she?

5:46 Oh my gosh, she's so cute.

5:47 She's four years old.

5:48 I love her so much.

5:49 My son says he's afraid [music] of black people.

5:53 Wait, [laughter]

5:56 what?

5:55 My husband is adamant that our daughter will not go to public school.

6:00 Huh?

6:00 Wait, I'm sorry.

6:01 His biological family was very upset by this and claimed we

6:05 were going against his culture by allowing him to paint his nails.

6:08 Hold on.

6:10 What?

6:09 I'm rethinking this whole wanting to be a parent thing right now.

6:12 My biological clock is completely in check.

6:15 [laughter] No longer exploding.

6:20 So much struggle.

6:21 Oh [crying] no.

6:22 Make that baby stop crying.

6:24 [screaming] America always got to be America.

6:26 [crying]

6:33 You're listening to Code Switch.

6:34 I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji and I'm Jean Dempy.

6:37 And in honor of Mother's Day,

6:40 we're going to talk about the hardest job in the world, being [music] a parent.

6:45 Yes, we got a lot of questions from our listeners, but without fail,

6:48 the trickiest ones [music] are always about how to raise kids.

6:51 Not that Gene and I know anything about this because we don't have kids yet.

6:55 But don't worry, we brought in experts.

6:58 And on the agenda this week, we're talking fear,

7:01 [music] fluency, fingernails, and the first day of school.

7:05 I love alliteration.

7:06 But wait, wait, wait.

7:07 Finger fingernails.

7:09 Let's get some dirt under them.

7:21 All right, here we go.

7:22 Our first question is from a white mother

7:25 in Philadelphia who says her 12-year-old son, who's also white,

7:29 is afraid of black people.

7:31 Oh, here we go.

7:32 He has brown and black coaches,

7:34 though, karate instructors, teammates, classmates, teachers, etc.

7:38 But neither of us has friends of color that we see regularly.

7:41 So, it's often when he's on the playground near our house

7:44 and sees a certain group of kids who are loud,

7:47 um, gregarious, sometimes swearing, talking loudly, that he becomes frightened,

7:52 and then attributes it to black people in general.

7:56 When we go to new parts of town, he asks if it's a black neighborhood.

7:59 When we went to a new pool in Camden,

8:01 he was afraid because most of the kids were black,

8:04 even [snorts] though he ended up having a lot of fun.

8:07 He goes to a great school that has spent a lot

8:10 of time discussing events in the news around race and social injustice.

8:14 So, the conversations are definitely happening around him.

8:17 And I don't let his observations go unchallenged.

8:21 But he's 12, so the more I talk, the less he listens.

8:25 Is this just the process of learning and growing for him?

8:29 I know I'm going to keep the conversation going as he matures,

8:32 but I'm wondering how I can help him connect

8:35 the rational information he learns to the emotional situations he experiences.

8:43 Okay.

8:42 To help us out with this uh very tricky question,

8:46 we're bringing in our teammate Karen Grizzly Bates.

8:48 She's also the only mother on the Coast Switch team.

8:51 Welcome, KGB.

8:52 Hey y'all.

8:52 Hey Karen.

8:53 All right.

8:53 So, what do you think?

8:55 Uh, what would you do if your 12-year-old was afraid of black people?

9:00 Well, my 12-year-old back then was black, still is, and he's 26 now.

9:06 So, if he were afraid of black people, I would be really worried.

9:10 But for this 12year-old, I called an expert.

9:14 Okay.

9:13 My name is Cassandra Herwoods.

9:15 I specialize in child and adolescent psychiatry.

9:18 And Dr.

9:18 Herwood is not surprised that this 12year-old is anxious.

9:22 She says the current climate makes a lot of people

9:24 anxious no matter what their age is, including her.

9:28 Um, what's important here, she says,

9:29 is that when this boy starts to articulate his anxiety to his mom,

9:34 you know, I'm scared to go there.

9:36 Are there going to be a lot of black kids there?

9:39 Um, mom needs to probe a little deeper.

9:42 I would encourage her to explore that a little bit more.

9:46 So, it's full of black kids and what what about that is bothersome to you?

9:51 What about that concerns you?

9:53 What about that worries you?

9:55 And it's okay if she doesn't necessarily have the answers for him.

9:58 It's having that dialogue.

10:00 It's having that um discussion and not ignoring

10:04 it and not pushing it down and out.

10:07 Karen, did she talk about the media and exposure to certain

10:11 images or any of that as part of the problem?

10:14 Oh, yeah, she did.

10:16 Um, popular culture is full of scary

10:18 images of black people and men in particular.

10:21 From TV to movies to video games,

10:24 black men are often shown as violent and predatory and aggressive.

10:28 And Dr.

10:28 Herwood says, "If there are no real

10:31 life examples in this kid's life as counterbalances,

10:35 like we don't have a Gene Denby to bring

10:37 over to his house to have dinner with him so

10:39 he can feel about reasonable." [laughter] She did mention

10:44 in the question that she doesn't have any friends of color

10:48 that they see regularly,

10:50 right?

10:50 She did, which means that mom is part of the problem,

10:53 but it also means she could be part of the solution.

10:56 Here's Dr.

10:57 Herwood again.

10:58 Some of the onus does lie on the parents to help create those experiences.

11:02 Children don't necessarily do that on their own.

11:06 So, Dr.

11:07 Dr.

11:07 Herwood says the parents need to get

11:09 out of their comfort zone and consciously broaden

11:12 their social circle which will help the child

11:15 even if they're not comfortable with it.

11:16 She says you're thinking I'm going to do this for the good of my child.

11:20 Yeah.

11:20 Yeah, I think I remember in the last time we did

11:21 a an episode where we got reader questions and and one

11:24 of the experts we spoke to said something like um you

11:27 know if your kid is taking all these uh ideas from you,

11:30 right, of like who you love and who you trust and who you think

11:33 is important enough to be in your house and all those people are white,

11:36 then those are also very subtle signals about who is valuable, right?

11:39 Like who can be trusted that you're passing on to your child.

11:43 Sure.

11:43 I I we had a funny conversation at the end

11:46 of this because I said to her, you know,

11:47 for a long time I was the only black kid in all of my classes.

11:52 Um, and in lots of venues where, you know,

11:56 you were just sort of doing that I'm integrating it thing.

11:59 And I don't remember being afraid of white people.

12:03 And she said, well, it's harder for white people because they're in the majority

12:09 and so they think this is how the world should work all the time.

12:12 anyway.

12:13 And when it's when the shoe's on the other foot,

12:16 it takes them a minute to readjust.

12:18 But the parents are going to have to readjust if they want their child

12:23 to be able to move out into the world as it becomes increasingly diverse.

12:29 [music] Thanks Karen.

12:30 Thank you KGB.

12:32 You're welcome.

12:32 I think Okay, Shireen.

12:39 This next question comes from a parent in Aurora, Colorado.

12:43 And this is what she writes.

12:44 My husband, who is white and works in education policy,

12:47 is adamant that our daughter, who looks exactly like me, I'm black and Asian,

12:51 will not go to public school in our local district.

12:54 It is admittedly low performing with painfully

12:56 low numbers of kids proceeding to college.

12:58 He says, "We aren't using her to make a political point." I'm inclined to agree.

13:02 He is literally the expert here, but I'm guilty and torn.

13:05 I believe that public schools can only get

13:07 better if we middle class all stay in them.

13:10 If you plan to have kids, what would you do for their education?

13:13 How would you resolve this in your household?

13:15 All right, Jean.

13:18 Yeah.

13:17 Are we supposed to be answering this from our own personal standpoint?

13:22 Let's punt on that a little bit.

13:23 Okay.

13:23 [laughter] So, I looked up the Aurora school system.

13:25 It's mostly PLC.

13:26 It's mostly Latinx kids.

13:27 It's 55% Latinx, 19% black.

13:30 But yeah, this is a this question is tricky as hell.

13:32 So, I tagged in an expert.

13:33 My name is Amy Stewart Wells and I

13:36 am a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University.

13:40 So Amy is an expert in race and education

13:42 and she said that she was curious about how

13:44 much information this letter writer and her husband have

13:47 about their local schools beyond what they see online.

13:49 If they've ever visited the schools, talked to the principal,

13:51 stuff like that because she said that the numbers

13:53 they often belly the range of performance in a school,

13:57 let alone a whole school system.

13:59 But Amy also just took issue with their premise

14:00 because she said that school performance tends to be evaluated

14:03 by test scores and a school's test scores tells us

14:06 much less about attitude than they do about race and class.

14:10 We tend to make assumptions about schools based

14:13 on the race and class of the students and then

14:15 we use the test score data to you know

14:18 to validate that without actually going and seeing what's happening.

14:22 The single highest predictor of your child's test scores,

14:25 even though we all want to think some kids are really super gifted,

14:28 is the parents education level.

14:30 And Amy says that, you know, test scores, they can't really tell you about what

14:33 the learning environment in a school was actually like.

14:36 When we're only looking at performance and as measured by test scores,

14:40 which is usually the way we measure it,

14:42 we're missing a whole lot of things that are really powerful and important.

14:46 So, if this is their neighborhood public school,

14:48 um I would at least encourage them to go and spend

14:52 some time there and talk to the principal and understand more about

14:55 the curriculum and the and the teaching in the school and then

14:59 to think what is important for their um for their daughters.

15:04 Not all schools are the same.

15:05 Not all schools provide the same curriculum and teaching.

15:08 Um and not all kids do well on standardized

15:11 tests even when they're very talented and gifted.

15:14 Amy said that, you know, so every school is different, but generally speaking,

15:17 sending a middle- class kid to a school

15:19 that is quote low performing like the ones here,

15:21 that doesn't really have much impact on the middle class kids performance.

15:24 Their scores don't go down.

15:26 They don't decrease.

15:26 The opposite though, the opposite is true.

15:29 The more middle- class kids there are in a school,

15:31 the better the test performance will be

15:33 for the kids from the lower income families.

15:35 And Amy says like, look,

15:36 if you go to your local school and you've talked to the principal and examined

15:39 their curriculum and the philosophy of how they

15:41 teach there and you you've done your homework

15:42 and you've done your due diligence and you decide that the school near you is

15:46 just not the right sort of like pedagogical

15:48 like fit for the way your child learns,

15:51 that's a different equation.

15:53 But you at least sort of owe it to both your child and uh to like

15:58 your community to do the leg work and give your local public school a chance.

16:02 everybody is is is incentivized to think about their own kid.

16:06 Um, but if everybody's making that same choice like, oh, these schools are bad,

16:09 then you end up having these super segregated

16:11 schools with mostly black kids or mostly Latino kids.

16:14 And your husband might be the the education policy expert,

16:18 but you are definitely the expert when it comes

16:20 to what it's like growing up as a kid of color.

16:25 Yes.

16:24 So, you're an expert, too, right?

16:26 And if you decide to send your child to a mostly

16:29 white private school that has better test scores, etc., etc.,

16:34 you should know that we also get tons of emails and tweets and questions

16:40 from now grownup people of color about

16:42 the downsides of that experience for them,

16:46 being the only one.

16:48 Yep.

16:48 I was one of the only ones in my neighborhood.

16:50 And I can say it was I I did not enjoy it.

16:53 I wish it I had a different experience.

16:54 M but then again I turned out all right.

16:56 So

16:57 you did [laughter]

17:00 thank you for [music] writing us.

17:01 Write us again.

17:02 Tell us what you did.

17:05 [music] Well, if you thought those questions were hard, you're right.

17:12 [music] They were.

17:13 And we've got more where that came from after the break.

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18:30 Jean, just gan code switch.

18:32 [music] So, we're tackling your tricky questions

18:34 about parenthood and we're tapping in experts who

18:36 know their stuff to [music] help you

18:37 with these pressing questions you had about raising kids.

18:41 In a small note here, you're going to hear from an academic named Jen

18:44 Jackson whose pronouns have changed since we recorded this.

18:47 Jen now goes by they them.

18:50 And we're back and we've got two more parenting questions for you.

18:53 To help us answer this next one,

18:55 we're bringing in our teammate Leah Gersinfeld Danella.

18:58 Welcome to the show, Leah.

18:59 Hi, guys.

19:00 All right, Leah, what's this next question about?

19:02 Okay, so this next one comes from a couple in Raleigh and they're

19:05 white and right now they're foster parents to a six-year-old black boy.

19:09 Yeah.

19:09 Um, but recently they had a big issue come

19:12 up when they let their foster son paint his nails.

19:15 His biological family was very upset by this and claimed we

19:18 were going against his culture by allowing him to paint his nails.

19:22 Additionally, there are several other typical

19:24 gender socialization issues that our family does

19:26 not adhere to that appear to be very important to his biological family.

19:30 For example, things such as boys having to be tough and not showing emotion

19:35 or not being able to like the movie Frozen because it's just for girls.

19:40 The bottom line, are we damaging our six-year-old

19:42 or somehow illpreparing him for the hyper

19:44 masculine culture he may return to one day by allowing him to paint his nails,

19:48 sing Let It Go, and cry when he's sad?

19:51 Is this really a racial, cultural, gender issue that we should be in tune with?

19:56 [snorts] Yeah.

20:00 So,

20:01 something about that question.

20:03 There's a lot about that question.

20:04 There's a lot of things about that question.

20:06 Yeah.

20:06 That question has everything in it.

20:08 Um, I think the first part is how are race and gender

20:11 and gender expression all connected and how

20:13 is that playing out in this situation?

20:15 I spoke to a couple of experts and everyone

20:17 I spoke to was pretty adamant to say that letting

20:22 a little boy paint his nails or sing Let It

20:24 Go or cry is certainly not going against black culture.

20:28 Black people show up in all sorts of different shapes,

20:30 sizes, forms, genders, sexes, sexualities, and expressions.

20:34 Blackness is full.

20:35 So that was Jen Jackson,

20:36 and she is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago,

20:40 and she studies blackness and gender.

20:43 And so I do not think it's a racial cultural phenomenon.

20:46 But I do think that what his biological

20:49 family is likely contending with is this structural

20:52 contention of how will this young man be situated when he, you know, grows up.

20:59 It's also important to remember that policing expressions

21:01 of gender identity is pretty common in white families,

21:06 Asian families, Latino families.

21:07 So that particular parent getting upset does

21:10 not represent black culture as a whole.

21:13 Mark Anthony Neil, the other expert I spoke to, he's

21:16 the chair of the AfricanAmerican studies department at Duke University,

21:20 wanted to emphasize the fact that there are different

21:24 pressures around black people and black families to conform.

21:29 Um, so here's what Mark Anthony Neil had to say about black masculinity.

21:33 In many ways, you know, African-American people,

21:36 African-American parents are very much

21:40 invested in very normative gender standards

21:44 because of the way that blackness has been treated as an abnormality.

21:49 So, one of the ways that black folks have historically

21:51 fit in line with the larger society is to perform

21:55 very conservative and rigid gender performances so that they're

22:00 not looked at as strange and unusual within that context.

22:04 When you attach that also to a larger history of the idea that white racism,

22:11 white supremacy has very specifically attempted to deasculate

22:16 uh or emasculate black men and boys,

22:20 you get these added pressures of this idea that black men and boys have

22:24 to even counter these efforts to emasculate

22:27 them with a hyper performance of masculinity.

22:29 some of the history he's talking about

22:31 is that history of lynching and castration

22:33 of black men that goes way back to the beginning of our country.

22:37 So, one of the things that I guess jumps out to me here though is like the idea

22:40 that black men are hyper masculine seems I I

22:43 just want to push back on it a little bit.

22:44 The way that black people doing the same thing that white people are

22:47 doing in a given time seems like salient in a different way, right?

22:50 It's like, oh, look at them doing this thing.

22:52 And of course, like if there are all

22:53 these black men on TV who are athletes or whatever,

22:55 whatever, there's a way in which that gets like magnified.

22:57 So I asked Mark about that and one of the things he said is

23:00 that that's true that we see in our culture black men are noticed more.

23:05 The people who kind of rise to the top are

23:07 treated like they're different in some way like they're superhuman.

23:11 He pointed to Superfly, that iconic 1972 film.

23:16 This dude is bad and he ain't just fly, he's super fly.

23:22 Yeah, super fly.

23:24 when it comes to women, they come to him, but it's still not enough.

23:30 Or um he said they've also been kind of uh treated as like animals.

23:34 And so when you he talked about LeBron James, for example, and how LeBron James,

23:40 people don't talk about him as just like a man who works hard.

23:43 They talk about him as like almost like a beast, like

23:46 just like a different kind of physical

23:48 specimen where his masculinity is kind of like put forward in a way that you

23:52 don't see with white athletes or white entertainers.

23:55 But what about this point that he made,

23:58 which I I mean it definitely resonated with me,

24:01 which is that um African-American parents are invested in normative gender

24:07 standards because of the way blackness has been treated as an abnormality.

24:12 I mean, I think the same can be said for Latino parents.

24:15 Um, that, you know, you want to be very

24:21 rigidly whatever you're supposed to be in society, um,

24:25 so that people don't look at you like you're different

24:28 or treat you like you're different or discriminate against you.

24:31 You know, I think there's something to be said for that.

24:34 I think that kind of gets into a point

24:36 he made about respectability politics and sort

24:39 of like dressing in a way and performing sort

24:43 of social roles in a way that's very conservative.

24:46 Um, so one of the examples he talked about was

24:50 at Morehouse there are there explanatory comment here about Morehouse.

24:54 Morehouse is this very old, very bougie,

24:56 historically black college that is all men.

24:58 Marl King went there.

24:59 A bunch of very famous black people went there.

25:00 Anyway, sorry that's right.

25:02 Um, so there is a history and kind

25:03 of like a a pedigree that goes with Morehouse, the Morehouse man.

25:07 Yep.

25:07 Mhm.

25:07 Um, and I think respectability politics has

25:11 often been kind of associated with Morehouse.

25:13 Um, but what he was saying is that historically speaking,

25:17 black men at Morehouse get kind of policed in two directions.

25:20 So there's like uh rules against wearing sagging pants

25:25 and doing the whole like low hat grills um

25:29 which he described as sort of the what what

25:32 looks like the ultramasculine kind of expressions of gender.

25:36 And to Jean's point that's a racially coded expression of masculinity

25:40 in a different way than a tuna.

25:42 Right.

25:42 Exactly.

25:43 But then on the other side of that, there's also people

25:46 have gotten in trouble for right for wearing high heels or for

25:49 kind of any sort of public expression of queerness.

25:52 So there's like a class thing here and a gender thing here.

25:55 Exactly.

25:55 We haven't really answered the question.

25:57 I mean, we've complicated things here.

25:59 Um, what should this foster parent do?

26:02 Let his kid paint his nails knowing all this or say,

26:07 "No, we're not going to do that from here on out." Well,

26:11 I think kind of broadly um the advice

26:14 for these parents is sort of the same advice we

26:17 would give to any parents raising kids from a different

26:20 kind of racial or cultural background, which is that brown people, right?

26:24 You need to surround this kid with black

26:26 people who can show different gender expressions.

26:30 And then in addition to the people around you,

26:32 it's also a matter of the media that you're consuming.

26:35 So there's nothing wrong with having him paint his nails and watching Frozen,

26:39 but Frozen is also a movie with very few black people in it.

26:45 Yeah.

26:45 Right.

26:46 So not because it's a girls movie, right?

26:49 Exactly.

26:49 So maybe it's and and this is again it's a hard thing to do because

26:52 there aren't as many movies with black

26:54 characters and a wide expression of black characters,

26:57 but it's about finding age appropriate black media to expose

27:01 this kid to and have him kind of grow up with.

27:04 Thank you, Leah.

27:05 Thanks, guys.

27:09 [music] So, Shireen took on this last question.

27:13 Yep.

27:13 All right.

27:13 Fill me in.

27:13 What's her [music] vote?

27:15 All right.

27:15 This one is near and dear to my heart, a subject that I love.

27:18 Um, it's from a mother in New Mexico.

27:20 Her name is Janet.

27:21 She wants her daughter to speak both Spanish and English fluently.

27:26 Okay.

27:26 Wait, wait, real quick.

27:27 Which languages do you speak, Shireine?

27:29 I speak Spanish and English, but I'm a receptive bilingual.

27:33 uh which you're going to learn what that means.

27:35 That was a fast.

27:35 Okay.

27:35 [laughter] All right.

27:36 Um because I asked an expert to help me out with this question.

27:40 Her name is Juliana Melie and she

27:43 researches language development amongst Latinex kids

27:45 in the US and she's raising her own daughter uh to be bilingual.

27:49 She's originally from Peru and she lives in New York City.

27:54 Okay.

27:53 I am a faculty member at New York University.

27:56 I'm an associate professor of applied psychology.

27:59 All right.

27:59 I'm going to read you the question.

28:00 Here we go.

28:00 It's from Janette.

28:03 My husband and I are trying to raise our daughter in a bilingual environment.

28:06 I speak primarily Spanish to her while we're in the home,

28:09 which my husband supports and encourages.

28:11 However, when we are around people who don't understand Spanish,

28:15 my husband thinks it's not polite to speak

28:16 in a language which they don't understand.

28:19 My worry is that if our child only hears Spanish in the home,

28:22 she may think it's something to be ashamed about.

28:25 She might think it's not as good as English.

28:27 How can we encourage her language development

28:30 and preserve her heritage while also balancing social norms?

28:34 Big question.

28:35 Good question.

28:36 First thing that I I was curious about was

28:39 this idea of raising a child in a bilingual environment.

28:43 What does that mean to you?

28:44 For me it means that you are supporting the development of both languages so

28:51 that ultimately the child will be able

28:54 to communicate and function in two languages.

28:58 But I think you're also tapping a little

29:01 bit on the connection between language and culture.

29:05 So um raising a child in a bilingual

29:08 environment also means developing their biculturalism.

29:11 And how do you do that in a country where the dominant language is English?

29:16 Yes.

29:17 And and I think also we have to take a broader

29:20 perspective because it's not only that the main language is English

29:24 but English is a very cool language worldwide and so it

29:28 has higher status than Spanish and children are very attuned to that.

29:35 Um, when children see that certain languages have a lower status,

29:40 they have less motivation to learn

29:42 that language and to continue using that language.

29:45 And when does that happen?

29:46 When they go to school, I would venture to say that very early on.

29:50 A true anecdote, my daughter when she started school

29:54 and we are raising our daughter bilingually as well.

29:57 When she started kindergarten, she went through a phase of not wanting

30:03 to use Spanish when we got into the elevator

30:06 and there were other people there who she

30:09 guessed did not speak Spanish and she was five.

30:12 So, how did you push back on that with your own daughter?

30:15 So I continued speaking Spanish and it so happened that around

30:19 that time she started um her fascination with Shakita um

30:25 yes was um was supported by the home environment.

30:29 I started playing a lot of Shakita [laughter] um she resonated

30:34 with Shakita a lot and I encouraged that and so she outgrew it.

30:38 Oh that's fantastic.

30:39 So Shakita actually made Spanish cool for her and gave

30:42 her gave it that cool factor that you were talking about.

30:47 Yes.

30:46 So to answer this woman's question,

30:48 um she says here that her husband thinks it's not polite to speak

30:52 in Spanish uh out in public when

30:55 there are people around who don't understand Spanish.

30:58 How would you respond to her husband?

31:00 I I think that that he's being socially aware and I support that.

31:05 I will tell you what I do and I think that that it works for us.

31:10 So if we are outside in the street walking,

31:13 we speak Spanish to our daughter only.

31:16 Um if we go into a space where we are having

31:21 a group gathering and there are people there that speak only English,

31:25 let's imagine, and I want to say something to my daughter for her to do.

31:30 So bring me the plague that's in the on the table.

31:34 I would say that in Spanish.

31:36 But if I want to communicate with a larger group of people,

31:41 then I would use the common language.

31:43 And that common language is English.

31:44 In that particular context,

31:46 if you have been raising your child to identify you with a language,

31:51 the moment that you start speaking in that other language,

31:54 which is English, the child won't have the same

31:59 need to communicate with you in the home language.

32:04 And so then eventually that child will

32:07 turn to what we call a receptive bilingual.

32:10 She will understand the language, but she won't use it.

32:14 That's me.

32:14 That's how I was raised.

32:16 It's very common.

32:17 It's very common.

32:18 The the research actually shows that around preschool,

32:22 what is most predictive of children's bilingual abilities is

32:28 going to be how much they use that language.

32:31 So creating opportunities for the child to be

32:34 able to use that home language with peers.

32:38 Um building play groups is is critical.

32:42 So, it's not just about speaking to your child

32:45 in the home or even speaking to your child one-on-one in public.

32:49 It's about also encouraging your child to speak to other people

32:53 that maybe they're not related to in the quote unquote home language.

32:58 Language is contextual, right?

33:00 So certain vocabulary words are going

33:02 to appear in certain context more than others.

33:04 So we so in order for the child to develop linguistic skills,

33:09 strong well-developed linguistic skills,

33:11 they need to be able to see the language

33:13 in diverse context only speaking the language in the home.

33:18 It's it's good and I applaud that, but it's not going to be sufficient.

33:23 And what does it mean to be truly bilingual?

33:26 That's the $1 million question.

33:28 I you know I don't I think that that what I can tell you what

33:32 bilingual is not [laughter] and and tell me that yes so a bilingual is not

33:37 two monolingual put together right I think

33:40 that when we talk about bilingual children we

33:43 have this idealized idea that you're going

33:46 to be able to function exactly the same right in both languages right

33:52 and that's not that's that doesn't exist I mean not not really

33:55 well that makes me feel [laughter]

33:59 I we we have this idealized picture of what a bilingual is.

34:02 And I think we try to to meet that ideal and and it doesn't exist.

34:06 If you're functional in two languages, you're bilingual.

34:09 Big thanks to Juliana Melie, an expert in bilingualism and an associate

34:14 professor of applied psychology at NYU.

34:25 [music] Jean, do you know that song?

34:27 Uh, I do not know that song.

34:29 It's called Blanos.

34:32 What does that mean?

34:33 [laughter] Dream bare feet white dreams.

34:36 I really don't know what the white dreams part is about.

34:39 But the song is about, you know, [music] like um societal pressures and all

34:45 these obligations that we have and how, you know,

34:47 we we originally came into this world free and, you know,

34:52 barefoot and now we're like stuck [music] in shoes

34:56 and having to get married before we're 30.

34:59 Yeah.

34:59 She wants to be free and walk around barefoot like white people.

35:02 Yeah.

35:06 All right, y'all.

35:07 That is our show.

35:09 Just a reminder that signing up for Code Switch Plus is a great way

35:13 to support our show and public media

35:16 and you'll get to listen to every episode sponsorree.

35:19 So, [music] please go find out more at plus.npr.org/codesswitch.

35:25 This episode was originally produced by Lee Danella, Kumar Dear Rajin,

35:28 and Shireen Maras Maraji, and it was edited [music] by Sami Yanigan.

35:32 This rerun was produced by Xavier Lopez.

35:35 was edited by Dalia Mortata.

35:37 Our engineer was Robert Rodriguez.

35:39 And we would be remiss if we did not

35:40 shout out the rest of the code switch massive.

35:42 That's Christina Ka, Jess Kung, Courtney Stein, Leah Danella, and Yolanda Sangi.

35:47 As for me, I'm Jean Dumpy.

35:48 I'm BA Parker.

35:50 Be happy Mother's Day.

35:52 And hydrate.

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