ABSTRACT
Previous chapters have used detailed case studies of bilingual families in California and Texas to describe the various roles and functions that family members ascribed to Spanish and English, the variety of ways in which families that were so motivated attempted to maintain their home language, and the various definitions participants associated with Spanish maintenance. In some families, speaking Spanish was seen as important in preserving intergenerational linkages and literacy was not a concern. In other families, in which parents themselves had experienced significant hardships as a result of their lack of proficiency in English, the concern was that children acquire English—with an emphasis on English literacy—which parents identified with school success. There were, to be sure, some parents who also wished their children to learn to read and write the minority language, and who took steps to achieve this outcome, but they were decidedly in the minority. In addition, the parental goal of Spanish-language maintenance in the home was sometimes in tension with the educational agenda of the schools, and compliance with the schools’ agenda was sometimes difficult for minority-language parents.
