37.3364, Reviews: Language Strategies for Bilingual Families: Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert (2026)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3364. Fri Oct 16 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3364, Reviews: Language Strategies for Bilingual Families: Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert (2026)

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Date: 16-Oct-2026
From: Clay Hunter Williams [williams at aiu.ac.jp]
Subject: Applied Linguistics: Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert (2026)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/37-2086

Title: Language Strategies for Bilingual Families
Subtitle: The One-Parent-One-Language Approach
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: Multilingual Matters
           http://www.multilingual-matters.com/
Book URL:
https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?K=9781788921398

Author(s): Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert

Reviewer: Clay Hunter Williams

In a world where transnational migration and cross-cultural marriage
have become increasingly common, more and more children are being
brought up in families where more than a single language is used.
Whether the desired bilingualism is a result a child’s mother and
father speaking different L1s, or if the family lives outside of their
own L1 culture thus necessitating the child to use an L2 outside the
home for schooling and socialization (or even a mix of the two in the
case of trilingual/multilingual families), ensuring a child’s
successful language acquisition in a multilingual environment can be a
source of much stress and confusion for parents – especially when
confronted with conflicting advice from family, friends, and medical
practitioners (whom are often speaking from a perspective rooted in a
monolingual culture). It is in this context of widespread parental
confusion that Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert’s “Language Strategies for
Bilingual Families: The One-Parent-One-Language Approach” (2nd ed.)
will find a grateful audience. While the book takes a scholarly
approach to examination of methods, motivations, and factors related
to the successful raising of multilingual children, it is still
written for a popular audience with a warm, easy-to-understand tone.
The book traces the history of the one-person-one-language approach to
raising simultaneous bilinguals, as well as other methods, and
examines the academic literature on approaches, factors that will
affect end-state results, etc. At the same time, the author ends each
chapter with case study summaries and/or quotes and excerpts taken
from her own survey and interview data culled from a study of about
100 families raising children in a multilingual environment. This mix
of scholarly and reportorial approaches to analysis give the
manuscript a very “human” feeling, which gives it value both for its
scholarly contribution as well as for its usefulness for parents who
are just starting out or struggling with the implementation and
management of a bilingual household dynamic – especially when
employing the one-parent-one-language (OPOL) approach to raising
bilingual children.
SUMMARY
The book begins with an introduction which defines the issues which
parents face when raising children in a cross-cultural marriage, as
well as the author’s goals in the book. She gives a preview of the
chapter organization in the book, and then an overview of the survey
study she had conducted whose results form the basis for the quotes
and case studies cited throughout the manuscript. The study was
wide-ranging, with 93 couples and 156 children speaking 30 different
languages and living in 21 countries. Finally, the author delves into
her own background (and motivation for research into this topic) as a
native English-speaker, married with a French husband, and raising 3
children bilingually (French/English) in various national contexts.
The first chapter of the book, “The One-Parent-One-Language Approach.
What is it?”, delves into the history of the OPOL approach, its
origin, and how it has developed over time. She traces it back to its
earliest use in 1902 in Maurice Grammont’s “Observations sur le
langage des enfants”, and looks at its early scholarly implementation
in studies such as Ronjat (1913) and Leopold (1939-1949) as well as
some case studies. Turning to her own study, she excerpts quotes and
data from the survey results in order to examine the survey
participants’ own experiences with and feelings towards the OPOL
approach, with special emphasis at the end of the chapter on parental
reactions to the language mixing common to young children, which can
oftentimes provoke some panic among parents that the child is not
successfully distinguishing the language in his/her environment.
The second chapter, “The First Three Years and Establishing the
One-Parent-One-Language Approach”, as the title so aptly suggests,
focuses on the first three years in the life of the bi/multilingual
child as the child is exposed to the languages, begins to
differentiate them, and then ultimately begins to produce them (while
often mixing them in a fairly inventive manner at this stage as
individual vocabulary items are not necessarily learned in tandem with
both languages’ respective words being learned simultaneously). The
roles of mother and father input (i.e., motherese and fatherese) are
explored for both their value as language input and for emotional
bonding with the infant, and the author explores practical
considerations of how to get help in expanding language exposure (via
friend, family, and community networks). The common occurrence of
child refusal to speak one of the languages is addressed along with
commonly-employed methods to encourage children’s use of the language,
including the false monolingual strategy (wherein the parent pretends
not to understand the child’s dominant language in order to coax the
child into using the desired target language; this may or may not be
practical if the child regularly sees the parent interacting with
others in the child’s dominant language).
Chapter three, “Starting School and Becoming Bicultural –
One-Culture-One-Person?”, delves into the changes that inevitably
occur as children expand the circle of people influencing their
development to similar-age peers whose language use and cultural
expectations may be completely dissimilar from that in the home
environment. The array of schooling options available to (some)
parents is discussed including translanguaging options in school
environments (albeit geography and finances may preclude most options
outside of public schools for many such parents). The expectations
which schools may place on parents living outside of their own country
and culture are also explained along with the dynamics of introducing
a third, foreign language as part of the school curriculum. The author
explains the variables of child gender, peer influence, and parental
influence in positive and negative transfer of individual parents’
culture, values, and ideas to children growing up in countries where
such culture is not practiced. Towards the end of the chapter, the
author presents several case studies of families that have
successfully transmitted the minority culture to their children.
The following chapter, “Interaction Between Family Members and the
One-Person-One-Language Approach”, looks at the impact of interaction
between family members – both nuclear and extended, and including
regular visitors to the home – on language use norms within the
household. As this is frequently where the OPOL approach meets
resistance, the author expounds upon the potential pitfalls of
familial communication. When talking to both parents, should the child
have to say everything twice (i.e., in both languages), or can it be
assumed that the minority language parent understands everything said
in the other language? What should be done when one parent does not
understand the other’s language? What to do when monolingual visitors
(e.g., family or friends) come to visit? Should the child be made to
rigidly stick to the OPOL approach, or should the family accommodate
the monolingual speaker? In the surveyed group, various strategies
emerged, usually hinging on the degree of acceptance or rejection
experienced by family and friends for their multilingual household
dynamic (i.e., some extended family members fully supported the
efforts to foster bilingualism, even if they sometimes couldn’t follow
the conversations between parent and child, whereas other families
might openly disdain or criticize them for speaking a language they
don’t understand in front of them). The effects of language choice
between child siblings is also explored, as well as effects of birth
order (with younger children, anecdotally, at least, being more prone
to developing passive bilingualism – probably due to less and
less-varied minority language input).
Chapter five, “One-Parent-One-Language Families – Expectations and the
Reality”, investigates the variable of parental attitude on bilingual
development, focusing on how most bilingual families are not going to
experience the “perfect world” of perfectly smooth bilingual
development with children who are equally conversant in both languages
and can act in a culturally appropriate manner in both cultures
(without prompting!). The potential problems are myriad – one parent
may not fully accept the other’s attempts at fostering bilingualism,
one parent’s culture may enjoy lower prestige or support from the
surrounding community, or even the inherent differences in children
may affect language development (e.g., speech delay or some other
developmental disorder which makes bilingualism even more difficult to
achieve). The author explores such issues as parental attitudes about
multilingualism, language prestige issues, and differences in father
and mother behavior during child language acquisition periods. She
also delves into the isolation which naturally results when a partner
speaks a language which one doesn’t understand to the children or when
the parent tries to consistently speak their minority language in a
majority language environment where most people do not understand the
minority language. The impact of speech issues and one-parent family
dynamics are also covered.
Chapter six, “Living with Three or More Languages…
One-Parent-Two-Languages (or More)”, explores trilingual or
multilingual scenarios, such as parents who speak different languages
raising children in a third country with a third language. She draws
from a separate (1999) study of ten trilingual families throughout the
chapter. She begins by showing that child multilingualism is not
particularly rare, and in many countries, such a state is quite
common. She gives a variety of modern-Western world scenarios where
families might find themselves needing three or more languages and
then delves into a variety of case studies found in the academic
literature, involving different linguistic combinations such as
Japanese/English/German and French/Irish/English. The author draws
from her own (limited) experience, as well, as they had lived in
Zurich when their oldest child was approaching pre-school age, and
thus had been grappling with Swiss German in addition to French and
English but mostly looks at case studies from her 1999 study in order
to give data from more longitudinal multilingual child development.
She describes the myriad issues faced by such families, including the
conflict of national language vs. family language, child education,
how to introduce and honor three (or more) cultures within the family
environment, etc. Here, she presents excerpts from her study where the
reader can see successful examples of multilingual development with
children growing up with relatively balanced linguistic abilities.
The penultimate chapter, “Eight Strategies for Language Use Within the
Family”, discusses alternatives and alterations to the OPOL approach.
The approaches covered include the variable of how much support is
available for each language, what language parents speak together, and
time and place variables. The strategies are: 1) OPOL with majority
language support (i.e., parents speak the language of the partner
whose language is spoken by the surrounding community); 2) OPOL with
minority language support (i.e., the parents speak the minority
language together); 3) minority language at home, where everyone in
the family is encouraged to speak the minority language in the home
environment; 4) Trilingual strategy, usually taking the form of OPOL
approach by parents who are living in a foreign country where a third
language is spoken; 5) Mixed strategy: usually employed in
countries/regions where bilingualism is common and children will be
expected to pick up more than one language from the surrounding
community (and codeswitching is prevalent, even among adult speakers);
6) Time and Place strategy, wherein families develop rules of language
selection based upon location (e.g., English at Grandma’s house,
French at school, etc.) or timing (e.g., on Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday, we speak Spanish; on other days, we speak German); 7) the
supported second family language strategy, is when non-native speakers
of a language attempt to bring up their children to speak the L2; and
8) Two-Parents-Two-Languages wherein both parents are completely
competent in each other’s languages and both variably speak each
language to each other and to the children. These strategies vary
largely according to the circumstances of individual families.
Chapter 8, “Tips for Families with Children Growing Up with Two or
More Languages”, summarizes and concludes the book with some basic
advice on how to raise children in a multilingual environment. The
author speaks directly to parents here, encouraging them to stay
consistent in the early years, seek out familial support, and
ultimately to stay flexible in the application of providing language
input to children.
EVALUATION
As the book is obviously more directed at a popular audience, it is
very readable. The author is able to seamlessly blend together her
research with her own story of raising bilingual children and the
stories of her research subjects. As a research manuscript, however,
it may be perceived as somewhat underpowered. The book does a great
job of tracing the historical literature on multilingual child
development but is hardly breaking new ground. As such, I’m going to
relate my evaluation from two different perspectives: as a parent of
multilingual children (i.e., as the target market for this book) and
as a researcher.
As a parent, I thoroughly appreciated the information presented within
the manuscript. I often found myself laughing or nodding along with
what I was reading. Oftentimes, the tales from the parents surveyed in
the author’s study sounded surprisingly like my own experiences
raising my kids. I did pick up some useful information and tips, and
more importantly some hope that my wife and I are doing the right
things, and everything will work out in the end. This is exactly the
sort of information I wish I had had available earlier on (i.e., when
we had our first child; he’s a high schooler at the time of this
writing).
As a researcher, however, my opinion is more split. While the
information from the questionnaire study conducted by the author made
for entertaining reading, the overall value of the research (a very
subjective thing to gauge, I know!) is quite low, as much of it
essentially comes down to opinion polling. The author’s research
take-aways could have been wildly different if she had simply looked
at other people in other areas of the world (the author admits a
European bias in the study sample). It’s hard to argue for more global
conclusions based upon the information presented. Also, her
presentation of research data was not always very clear. Charts and
graphs were largely unintelligible (which, to be fair, might have also
been a consequence of the electronic version of the text I was using)
and seemed to be missing context. The author frequently alludes to
study information, but the research methodology and results are not
clearly articulated (although it is presented in the appendices). Due
to her heavy reliance on her research results, a clearer presentation
of the research in the introduction or first chapter would have been
greatly appreciated, albeit I realize this could have negative effects
on the text’s readability for popular audiences.
All in all, the book succeeds as a guidebook for young families who
may be struggling with the question of how to successfully bring up
their children to speak two (or more) languages. People looking for
more technical and more up-to-date research on bilingual child
development may want to pass on this, but for parents aspiring to
raise their children bilingually – especially if they are considering
the OPOL approach – I can heartily recommend “Language Strategies for
Bilingual Families: The One-Parent-One-Language Approach” (2nd ed.).
REFERENCES
Grammont, M. (1902). Observations sur le langage des enfants. Mélanges
Meillet.
Leopold, W.F. (1939, 1947, 1949a, 1949b). Speech development of a
bilingual child: A linguist’s record (in four parts). Evaston:
Northwestern Press.
Ronjat, J. (1913). Le development du langage observe chez un engant
bilingue. Champion.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Clay Williams is a professor in the English Language Teaching
Practices program of the Graduate School of Global Communication and
Language at Akita International University. He received a Ph.D. in
Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of
Arizona. His research interests include cross-script word recognition,
literacy acquisition, pedagogical adaptation in East and Southeast
Asia, and online and virtual reality technology integration into L2
acquisition. He is the author of such books as Teaching English
Reading in the Chinese-speaking World: Building Strategies Across
Scripts and Teaching English in East Asia: A Teacher’s Guide to
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Learners.



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