agonyaunt | My Husband Won’t Let Me Teach Our Baby My Native Language

My Husband Won’t Let Me Teach Our Baby My Native Language

Dear Care and Feeding,

I grew up in Ireland, where we weren’t allowed to speak our language or participate in our culture in any way by English law. I went to America for college and married an American man, and am now pregnant. I suggested to my husband that I speak Irish and he speak English to the baby, so they grow up bilingual. He said the baby won’t be speaking a language he doesn’t speak.

I’m heartbroken, since he knows how hard it was for me and my family to be so disconnected from our culture, and how hard we fought—and Irish people still fight—for our language not to die. When I tried to explain this, he rolled his eyes and said his family is descended from French and Italian as well as English, so by my logic we should teach the baby four languages. 1) He only speaks English. 2) We could learn as much French and Italian as we can before the baby comes if it’s important, which I told him. 3) His families immigrated here more than 100 years ago, and I’ve never heard him talk about those cultures before now.

I’ve tried to discuss this calmly over the past few days, which has only resulted in worse and worse fights, until he finally yelled that I’m white and I should stop acting like I’m special, or the baby’s going to think white people are oppressed. I’ve never compared our occupation with what people of color go through in America, or any country. Since moving here my husband and I have participated in protests and political meetings for racial equality, and never once has he mentioned that my desire for connection to my culture is offensive or even related to the fight of oppressed people in America. I don’t understand why he is offended at the idea of our child having the freedom to know this part of their culture, which is so important to me since I know the pain of it being illegal. Is this inappropriate in America? Is it giving up solidarity with people of color if I teach my child my language, when many people face racist violence for not speaking English?

—Erin Go Wha?

Dear Erin Go Wha,

No, of course teaching your child to understand and appreciate their Irish heritage—through language and other means—in no way conflicts with your wish to be in solidarity with people of color in the U.S. Your husband’s comment about teaching the baby French and Italian, and the out-of-left-field accusation that it is somehow … racist(?) of you to want your child to speak your country’s language, is a clear example of derailment. The bottom line, I suspect, is that he doesn’t want his child to know something he doesn’t, and he might also fear being left out in some way if you and your child share a language he doesn’t understand. Both these things strike me as regrettably small and petty of him, perhaps springing from some insecurity (about himself, or his potential to be a good parent, or both), and I’m sorry you’re dealing with his attitude as fallout.

I think it’s wonderful that you want to share a language and other cultural knowledge and traditions with your child. They also have a right to their heritage. While it would be ideal to have your husband’s understanding and cooperation, you do not actually need his permission to teach your child about their roots or the culture the two of you will share.

It really sounds like there has been a communication breakdown, given both his accusations and the fact that he yelled them at you. I think he’s the one at fault, and I find his behavior to be a bit of a red flag. Both of you might benefit from some marital counseling if you find you cannot communicate about or work through this on your own. I hope that your husband starts being more reasonable and more generous—to both you and your future child—and that you can get on the same page before your baby arrives.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/04/bilingual-baby-disagreement-care-and-feeding.html

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Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a nagging suspicion that this sort of letter disproportionately features a parent who speaks Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, or Welsh. I know it can and does happen with other languages, but somehow it just seems to me that it's usually a Celtic language we see this with. Maybe those other people don't let their partners boss them around, or maybe they do and never complain to advice columnists.

At any rate, the only correct response to "We should teach the baby French as well!" is "Great, I'll start doing Duolingo today and order some self-teaching books. And as they're both Romance languages and we're Americans, I thought we should add some Spanish to the mix! It'll be fun!"

I've also noticed a transatlantic difference in attitudes on bringing up a child bilingual. In the UK, it's almost universally regarded as a positive thing that will give your child an advantage in life. I read a couple of American parenting forums and I notice a really different attitude there - often people who view it as something that will be bad for the child, etc.

I read a couple of American parenting forums and I notice a really different attitude there - often people who view it as something that will be bad for the child, etc.

*boggles* What possible mechanism for these supposed bad effects are they anticipating?

It seems to be partly an assumption that it's bad for speech development which seems bizarre as it's well known that it's the opposite. And then partly a vague sense that it's unAmerican somehow

Americans, this American says with exasperation.

Many people do think that it'll delay speech - and anecdotally, I've found this ignorance everywhere in the Anglosphere.

Additionally, there's a strong push for immigrants to assimilate. This isn't just coming from Americans, but often from inside immigrant cultures as well, an idea that if they speak their home language they somehow won't speak English as well.

It can delay speech a bit, but the bilingual kids catch up just fine.

which is so weird, because around here (in Massachusetts) there are bilingual preschools that rich white Anglos send their kids to, like it's a kind of baby mozart that will make them smarter.

I wonder if it's because of the 1990s-onward resurgence of attempting to reclaim Celtic culture/language, and a lot of white Americans not thinking it's a particularly legit language because, you know, it's supposed to be dead and all the Irish people assimilated and speaking English and stuff.

(I recently saw a post fly by on one of my social media feeds about someone teaching their kids Yiddish instead of Hebrew who was getting a lot of crap from fellow Jews for it.)

The husband telling her she's white and should basically get over it smacks really hard of both not wanting LW and child to have something he doesn't AND not thinking her language is legit, that it's just some weird pecadillo that she has.

I'm glad I learned Hebrew as a kid, but I wish my dad had taught me Yiddish; it was the language he fought with his parents in. (They spoke English fluently as a second language; he spoke English as a first language but Yiddish was the language for fighting with his parents.)

A friend of mine is the daughter of a hearing Child of Deaf Adults, and her dad never taught her ASL, which was his first language, so she never learned to speak to her own grandparents. It always made her sad.

We now know enough about brain development to know that multilingualism is good, actually, and teaching your kids all the languages in which you're fluent is good, actually.

Husband sux and should learn Irish if he's jealous. It's a cool language! It's full of random constanants!

One of my great-grandmothers was a WWI war bride from France. Her husband told her she couldn't teach the children French because he didn't speak it. The next family member to speak French was my younger sister who chose it from the list in high school when she had to take a language. Teach your kid your language. Please. If your husband continues to be a jerk about it, leave.

(I'm reminded of an AITA post where the husband was told he was the A and rethought his position and decided to learn his wife's language. I can only hope this guy will have similar growth.)

Unless I'm mistaken, that AITA dude just posted an update.

Lose the husband, keep the baby and the language.

What the absolute FUCK.

This guy needs an adjustment with a pipe wrench.

Yes, the whole man.

+1 This hits the tone of my immediate reaction more nearly than the answer or the more reasoned like, "He's being an asshole/research therapy etc". Asshole doesn't cover this level of wtf. How can ANYBODY be this chill about this kind of treatment from a partner?!

Cosign

This dude does not sound like a good potential co-parent and the baby isn't even here yet... even beyond counselling for the relationship, I hope she's thinking about custody issues and how much support she has or if she'd want to return to Ireland and her family if they split up at some point. This letter makes him sound like bees in a red flag coat and her choices might be so much more complicated after the birth.

yeah, I mean....if it was me? My ass would be on a plane to Ireland (esp. if I was from the EU part of Ireland, not the UK part). Like Oh you wanna play this game? Being the pregnant person means that until the child is born, she can up and leave, with the fetus on board, and make his dumb ass have to figure out international custody with the laws in her favor and the child's residence her home country. Fuck around and find out.

I wonder how hubby would respond if someone pointed out to him that his baby was going to have dual citizenship? *snicker*

"the baby won't be speaking a language he doesn't speak"

He could LEARN it. I started on Duolingo in 2015, there's online courses at FutureLearn, both are free to take, with payment options if you can afford them (Duo to get rid of ads, FutureLearn if you want a certificate).

It's not about the language is it? It's about LW having something he doesn't, and wanting to share that with their child, and instead of recognising the value of it to her, he is shouting her down and calling her racist. I bet 100% he is calling her racist to shut her up rather than because he actually thinks that speaking a minoritised language within the family is oppressive to Black people.

I bet 100% he is calling her racist to shut her up rather than because he actually thinks that speaking a minoritised language within the family is oppressive to Black people.

I want to tell that mofo husband not to use us as an excuse to bully his wife.

(There is also an interesting discussion to be had about how different countries/societies conceptualize race, but that's another discussion.)

Edited 2021-04-19 15:06 (UTC)

As an aside, I'm not sure it's true that speaking Gaelic was outlawed in Northern Ireland - I don't know lots about it but what I gathered from a bit of a google search is that Gaelic was deliberately not promoted in Northern Ireland but it wasn't ever the case that it was against the law or anything. I also don't think it was the case that in the 80s/90s/00s (extrapolating the OP's age from her pregnancy) that participating in Irish culture was banned either.

This page appears to support LW. Northern Ireland appears to have broken free of that somewhat in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and more in the 2006 Saint Andrew’s agreement. Still, when there's only something like 6% Gaelic speakers left in the country, that means that very few people speak it to teach it.

Lots of other stuff contradicts that. E.g. https://cassidyslangscam.wordpress.com/2014/06/08/did-the-english-ban-irish/

Also- as someone a similar age to the LW, court cases involving people charged with speaking Gaelic just not a thing!

Edited 2021-04-19 14:23 (UTC)

Even if it wasn't illegal in general, I believe LW may be speaking about being punished in school.

Edited 2021-04-19 15:33 (UTC)

But she literally says " we weren’t allowed to speak our language or participate in our culture in any way by English law." I find it hard to read it the way you suggest.

I also note her use of the term "occupation" and "Ireland" as opposed to Northern Ireland as indications of her/her family's views.

Edited 2021-04-19 15:59 (UTC)

My grandmother immigrated to the US from Ireland, before the Easter Rising and the civil war and all the rest, and speaking Irish WAS something you could be knocked around for. Breathing isn't illegal in the US either, but ask Blacks about that and see what they say.

I cannot be bothered to continue commenting on this as there seems to be a real disconnect between what I can see clearly written in this letter and how others are reading it.

It is crystal clear to me that the LW is saying that in her lifetime (and she is pregnant which means she is fairly young) speaking Gaelic was illegal by English law in Ireland. Not discouraged, illegal. She says that more than once. That is factually incorrect. And kind of bizarre in that the English have done so much wrong in Ireland over the last 200 years that there was no need for her to invent stuff!

Am Northern Irish, and it isn't illegal to learn the language or to take part in the culture with hurling/camogie/dancing etc -- just the existence of the GAA clubs disproves that, never mind the fact that you can study Irish in school up to A Level -- but in my experience it could still be heavily discouraged depending on where you lived and when.

Sure, I can definitely imagine that. I think exaggeration of the situation in NI does her no favours in this letter. Though overall, I am in a similarish position, I was raised bilingual with a minority language that my husband doesn't speak. It never occured to my husband that it wasn't entirely my decision how to raise our children.

(I decided against trying to bring them up properly bilingual though I am teaching them a few words and I hope that they can make themselves understood in my other language by the time they are older.)

I'd like to point out that she doesn't say she's from Northern Ireland in this letter.

That only makes it worse because you imply she's from the Republic and therefore that after nearly a century of independence they are letting London tell them anything.

Well, no, but clearly the English aren't banning anything in the Republic, it being a separate country. A clear political statement to use the term Ireland here and also "occupation"

...are you arguing that Ireland wasn't occupied in the past? She didn't say she personally experienced this? Colonization doesn't just vanish into the ether because a nation gains independence?

I read it as not talking about the past but the present though on a reread I can see it isn't clearcut on the occupation thing.

I still don't think it's possible to read her as not claiming that speaking Gaelic and participating in Irish culture was illegal recently in Northern Ireland though and I find it slightly baffling that you think she could be referring to English law in the Republic.

Edited 2021-04-21 19:30 (UTC)

Agreed.

Given that she said "Ireland" which...usually, in both Irish and American dialects, means "The Republic of Ireland", I would be more surprised if she WASN'T, frankly.

People remember. Ireland was occupied and Irish Catholics were oppressed for more than 400 years, and Ireland has only been an independent country since 1949. (The "Irish Free State" was still a British Dominion.) Bringing the language back is very important to many, many Irish.

Sure. But boil it to facts and this person could not be pregnant and have grown up with the 'law' as they stated banning them from speaking Irish. The letter is full of holes

I didn't read it the same way you are, obviously. For some people the memories are still immediate, even though the law itself has changed.

For an American example--I live in SW Virginia. You cannot convince a majority of my neighbors that the Civil War is over, much less that the last Presidential election has already been done and dusted. So for someone to say, "I grew up in Ireland, where we weren’t allowed to speak our language or participate in our culture in any way by English law," that statement makes perfect sense to me, even if TODAY that is not the case. It is a true statement whether it was the case while she was pregnant or not. She says, "we WERE not allowed," not "we ARE not allowed." I think you're trying to pick holes where none exists.

This. This is not 1910. Irish is absolutely not banned. Westminster still looks down on Irish, Welsh and Scots Gaelic but they are not banned anywhere and there are primary schools in all three nations that only teach in that language. This whole letter just feels very....American writing crap tbh and hoping no one on the other side of the Ocean would catch themselves on.

My dad's from Ireland, so this strikes home. I've never learned more than a few words of Irish, but Irish culture and heritage means a lot to me. I lived in Ireland for a year, attending Trinity College and did my high school honors thesis on the intersections between Irish history and Celtic mythology. While they are definitely Irish-Americans who are also racist as fuck, you can share in the culture and work against racism at the same time.

Unless OP lived in one of the few small Irish-speaking enclaves, they would have learned Irish at school as a second language. Wanting the baby to learn Irish as a first language is a very understandable impulse!

I would view the over-reaction of the husband as a clear red flag and would encourage the OP to head to counseling (with or without the husband) BEFORE the baby is born. Figuring out whether this is a sign of stress that can be resolved amicably (Irish is on Duolingo now if husband wants to learn!) or the start of a pattern of controlling behavior is critical.

That attitude is not unique to the US. I live in Spain, in a region with its own language which was forbidden during the Francoist dictatorship, on top of Spanish which is common to all the country. The reasons against learning the regional language are varied, but the end result is the same: people don't teach it to their children, and each decade it loses more speakers.

I think OP's husband's reasons might stem from a sense of nationalistic/xenophobic superiority, a sense of inferiority ("being left behind"), and given that's a common attitude there, maybe he also doesn't want to stand out or face other people's judgement? In any case those are shitty reasons, and he needs to reconsider.

It's also telling he brought out the issue of race. I'm a white woman who doesn't live in the US, so I don't think I can comment on the "racism against POC" bit, but it seems like he equates "white" to "white, anglo-saxon and English-speaking ONLY", which uh. It's not how it works?

Plus, I imagine normalizing speaking a second language among white people would probably reduce the stigma against other bilingual communities.

Anyways, it seems like xenophobia and racism are entangled and treated like they're the same in the husband's mind, even though that's not always actually the case.

Non-Anglo white person here. I have definitely been chastised in public, in the US, for speaking my native language. There's a big intersection between xenophobia and racism, but you are absolutely right: They aren't the same.

Speculation: Husbando does not want Mom and Baby to share a language he doesn't speak because it messes with his ability to control his wife and future kid.

Advice: Go back to Ireland before you have the kid and do not return to the US. with luck this entire man will not follow/stalk you back to your home country. With even more luck, he'll get distracted without future kid right there reminding him they exist and fade out of your lives as if he does not exist.

I am calling BS on this whole letter. No one of childbearing age was barred from using Irish by LAW in either the republic or the north. Places in the north discouraged it and schools might have snapped to 'speak proper English' as they did to me and my fellow students in Scotland speaking Scots but on break times? At home? Walking down the street? No. I don't know what LW expected to gain here but this is based on lies and can't be true.

Well, quite. I don't understand the persistent attempts to read this letter diffently when it is clearly making a claim that is total bollocks. Just bizarre
.

I'd seriously examine that relationship if I were the LW. The man she married is clearly ethnocentric, racist, and unwilling to acknowledge the rest of the world. Growing up bilingual is a gift, and allows a person to broaden their horizons and opportunities immeasurably. He isn't prepared to accept his wife's background or history, much less her language, and I feel very sorry for her and for their children. The idea that she's "white" and should stop acting like she's "special" is just confusing. Does he think that "white" means "American English"?

I would not walk, I would RUN away. What the actual and entire fuck.

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My Husband Won’t Let Me Teach Our Baby My Native Language

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