My native tongue, German, has always been a strong part of my fathering my boys. I spoke to them in that language from the time they were conceived. I greeted them in German when they were born. I have spoken German with them ever since. German has created an intimacy for us that I have come to associate with being a father. It has connected my sons and me in ways that reach far into my own deep past, my childhood, my upbringing and my roots in Germany.
What about my wife? My wife understands German, but she generally does not like to speak it with me or the boys. On occasion she will speak a word with us. At times she may pronounce my first name the German way, "Mahteen". For a little while my middle-son attempted to give her German lessons. However, her German is not bad. She took a couple of classes when we first met and she took private lessons from a fellow German student. Most of her German, to be sure, stems from having been around German speaking folks for the last twelve years (i.e., the time since our first son was born). When she speaks to them, she will speak English with them. All are fluent in English as well.
So, everything should be fine. But it isn't.
We spent this Christmas at my in-laws' house in NJ. Neither speaks German. For the past 12 years while visiting with them we have done what we also do at home. I speak German with the boys and Leslie speaks English with them. With one difference, however, I do a lot more translating for my in-laws and so do my sons. Yesterday, after what now looks like years of stewing, a pretty heated argument broke out between them and us. My in-laws felt offended, excluded and marginalized by my sons' and my German conversations and exchanges.
I took in a lot of information. Most importantly how important it is for my in-laws to connect with my sons and how deeply they feel disconnected from them when we speak German with each other. There suggestion to me, out of politeness, was to speak English only when they were around. I was shocked. Shocked by the contrast between their feelings, which make so much sense, and the seeming absurdity of their request when I listen to my feelings about it.
It was clear to me that they were well-meaning about this "German thing," but that they were not really getting it either. Mention was made of German things they had done to please me (i.e., get a tape made by a band with a German sounding name, marinated herring-filets as they're sold in North Germany). They offered how "impressive" they think my achievement of "teaching" them German is.
Did they know that in asking me to speak English with my sons they were asking me to give up my home? I mean not the home I still remotely have in Germany with my parents, sister and other relatives. I mean the home of my language! Did they realize that their request amounted to nothing else but a final refusal to enter that home? Did they know that my convictions, objectives and outlooks have a home in that language as well? Did they know that their request feels like a request to cut myself off from my boys? Did they consider that it was Christmas, a time of deep-seated rituals, songs and stories all mediated in German? Did they understand that, not having those songs, rituals and stories already made things emotionally complicated for me and that I am yearning to recreate at least some of it with my sons?
For a while I was considering giving in to their request. Well, perhaps, I thought, this would be easier than it seemed. We'd just speak English with each other and then, when we're among ourselves, switch back to German. But I couldn't. And the more I thought about it, the more I recognized something I had never really figured out before about my speaking German with them: I saw my anxiety about losing them. I realized that this anxiety had been with me, and still is, since the time they were conceived them.
It is odd to see this as it is. At the same time it is the most normal and known feeling to me. It comes as anxiety to release them into a culture that to some degree still feels foreign and inhospitable to me. It is a culture that pledges allegiance to a flag and sends their children into unjust wars. It is a culture that proclaims itself highly ethical and moral but still hasn't come to terms with the holocaust-like treatment of Native Americans. It is a culture that proclaims itself to be highly religous but has little tolerance and interest in faiths other than their own garden-variety Christianity. It is a culture whose values I still can't trust. After almost 25 years!
This is, in a way, a chicken-and-egg situation. I can't figure out, if my anxiety is a result of my cultural observations or if it is the case that my cultural negativity is a result of my anxiety. Am I dealing with a prolonged case of post-partum anxiety? Have I been afraid of losing my children for the past 13 years? I am almost positive that this is the case. I realize that speaking my language with them has become some kind of insurance, or better some kind of immunization from this potential loss of my children.
What did I tell my in-laws? I told them that I respected and appreciated their feelings. I told them that I didn't want for them to feel or be marginalized by my German interactions with my sons. I told them, too, that the solution to this problem could not lie with me simply giving up speaking German with my sons while their grandparents are around. However, I told them, that I could see myself be less dominating in conversations. This means that I would interact with the boys less frequently, redirect them to their grandparents when they had questions and only answer questions that were clearly only answerable by me. I voiced my hope that this conversation alone might sensitize us enough to behave differently in our ways of interacting with each other.
My in-laws, to their credit, responded graciously. He pointed out, however, that I had all the power in this (meaning only I could decide to switch and that made them dependent on me). I thought, but did not point out, that he and she had the power of the dominant culture and language. A fact that would only be different, if we lived in Germany.
What is worse in all this is that it has made more visible a crack that is going through my relationship with my wife. I don't believe in relationships with no cracks, by the way. Relationships are like houses: when they settle cracks will develop along the ceilings, walls and floors. These cracks speak of incompatibilities, of arguments, of hurt, of confidence, arrogance, of a lack of understanding, etc. This crack is more visible and more in need of real construction work, though. It seems that my anxiety about losing my sons may have contributed to my wife's feelings of being marginalized. It may have contributed, even, to feelings that I was taking the boys away from her. This, I am certain, was never my agenda. She and I have mostly agreed on things, especially cultural politics, etc. Though we often do disagree on parenting issues (discipline, clothing, food, etc.). For my part I can say that my opinions about some of these issues (discipline and clothing are over-rated, food doesn't always have to be organic, etc.) are mostly just in need of a healthy compromise. They're not in need of dominance.
It's easy to see that speaking two different languages may increase the risk of the crack getting or seeming wider than it actually is. Differences of opinion suddenly look more like manipulation by the children as they attempt to speak to the parent with the more lenient attitude in that parent's language. They will also switch to that parent who is less likely to fly of the handle, to be sarcastic or otherwise off-putting in their responses to them. Often, I have been the parent to whom the boys switched. There are some famous examples to the contrary, however. When my sons wanted to join a community of internet gamers, I refused. They switched to my wife and she agreed. My sons wanted a new cat after our last one had died. I had said no, they appealed to her and got their wish fulfilled (that one made me mad, by the way). My wife has in the past more often agreed to McDonalds than I have. (Although my disagreement is in no way a claim to healthier food-choices at home.)
Imagine that these disagreements and moments of single parent domination always happen in different languages and it is easy to see that the language could be mistaken as a the culprit. It is easy to see, too, that especially with respect to their children (where couples need to show utmost unity), two different languages could amplify a sense of disunity and make it seem that the parents work against each other. Aside from the two languages, though, it is likely that the kind of anxiety I described above is one that other fathers feel as well. I do not believe that this is just about my being a foreigner (though that might add to it). Rather, I believe that fathers may have these feelings quite frequently. They begin to feel protective and quickly turn out to be over-protective. Paternal anxiety about losing their children may be a strong factor in how fathers act towards their children and their spouses
How can we begin to speak about this anxiety? It's something I feel. It is something that's real. Is it acceptable that, as a father, I feel these things? How might other fathers feel about this? How can mothers begin to understand this without feeling that fathers are trying to dig away part of their territory?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Wow...there is so much to say here. This conflict of languages and parenting choices, of mothers and fathers, is deep and rich! I, being a gringo by birth (Irish-Polish American), and a Spanish teacher, have spoken to my son in the language that I teach since his birth. I can't help feeling a twinge of jealousy, knowing that my ancestral languages, Polish and Gaelic, are not only "foreign" to me but play no part whatsoever in the raising of my boy (although sometimes we do eat potatos). Martin, you are lucky to have this linguistic link to your ancestors and ancestry! I hope that you keep pursuing it in that respectful way of yours.
My use of Spanish with Asher around others, all friends and family, has never led to any overt friction--but I wonder if anyone has any feelings about it they have not aired? Grandparents--these days, and I emphasize THESE days--have little enough time with their grandchildren even if they live in the same town. Such is the way that we have arranged our modern society. They must feel disapointed by any thing that adds to the distance, linguistic or otherwise. However, I believe that if they looked hard enough—which is to say, if they are motivated and determined enough—they can find plenty of things on their own side of the fence which they could modify in order to increase their level of involvement and intimacy. They could even encourage this brave and useful commitment to bilingualism—or even even, to take it to its furthest level, choose to learn as much of the “other” language as possible .
I remember my mother-in-law, who lives up in Wisconsin, coming to town to see her (only) grandson, only to camp out in front of magazines and the internet. I wanted to strangle her, thinking, Here he is! Be with him! (But, of course, I am guilty of the same physical nearness + distracted mental absence most days)....the point is, there are always many actions we can take to walk more closely with our loved ones, and one action is never exclusively necessary (unless it be the cessation of abuse). When someone is drily suggesting the need to pursue one avenue alone, it’s time for a brainstorm!
Part of the problem must be an undervaluing of bilingualism—many people in other countries are aware of the devotion to monolingualism in the U.S., but it’s often not identified as a problem by U.S. Americans. If one were reading to one’s child (in English) in the U.S., reading not being an activity that often encourages participation by people in the room—one would probably have those other people’s blessing if reading were a valued activity in the household. This would hold true even if it were a thrice-daily habit to read to a child in their presence.
One can go to the studies if one wants—how bilingualism relates to higher I.Q. scores and brain plasticity, or adds a marketable skill to any person’s C.V. One could look at the dismal outcomes from foeign language education efforts in the U.S.—how many people end up being fluent in the language they studied in high school, even in college? We’ll acquiesce to sending our children away, day after day, to study in a school something they statistically will never learn, but bring them in front of us, having learned it well, and it just might be an issue. Maybe people who object to the learning and use of foreign language are touching uncomfortable shadows of feeling stupid in sophomore Spanish class (and there’s no way to get out of sophomore Spanish class without feeling stupid at least part of the time, is there?). It’s now become a multi-generational phenomenon: the only parents I ever met who ended up fluent in their language of study were native speakers in the first place, or teachers themselves, or did something special like study abroad.
CONT'D NEXT POST:
Do parents call up and complain that their children are not fluent in their language of study? Do they demand that they be fluent? Or is their a generalized “O.K., we’ll put up with this if we have to, even though we don’t see they point…Just don’t push our kids too hard.” In my experience, the latter is much more often the case. ANYONE seriously pursuing a bilingual family is pitted against a vast groundswell of apathy if not antipathy. I have often desired to found a bilingual families support network, because I so often meet parents whose own native language they do not—they claim it’s “too hard”—pass on to their children.
It is hard. It’s just not impossible—or rather, it’s just VERY possible. It’s only impossible without commitment. And commitment is easier, or at least more pleasant, when people offer encouraging comments along the way. I have been gratified to meet many people when out with Asher who say how great it is that I have brought him up bilingual. I have been gratified to know you, Martin, and been shored up in my commitment to only speaking Spanish with Asher by witnessing your refusal to dilute the experience more than it already is (just by nature of the fact that our children are surrounded and inundated by English)
….It’s harder for me, you know. I feel some sadness at not communicating in my ‘native’ language, with which I have a much greater facility, with my own son, running to look up words instead of snapping off something funny or silly without thinking about it.
Linguistically speaking, my heritage was really cut off from it’s entire historical, even pre-historical, Polish/Gaelic development and replaced with a linguistic tradition that my ancestors had nothing to do with, racially: that of English. And so perhaps speaking Spanish with my son is, seen from this angle, not such a loss—rather, not so much more of one—since I had already been separated from the linguistic roots that—who knows?—my DNA might remember.
Don’t get me wrong: I love English, to speak it, to sing it, to play with it, to write and read poetry with it. I appreciate English for it’s beauty and usefulness, and for it’s being the language I express myself best in. But I have not ever seen it as the-be-all-and-end-all of human expression. And I don’t believe that a person, anyone, can be cut off from their linguistic-racial roots like that without some sort of consequence that may be impossible to isolate in a lab, but has definite effects of, perhaps, alienation, feeling in need of deeper roots….something vague but chronic and all-encompassing, something like having less oxygen in the air.
One could go on and on: Variety’s being the spice of life…Goethe’s quote: “One doesn’t really know one’s own language until one learns another.” Anyone reading this far knows how I feel about the issue, but my personal experience, involving as it does speaking my second language to my son, is removed from notions of linguistic links to an ancestral home and people.
Martin, your feelings are even more compelling since the language you share with your sons is the one that bespeaks your identity as a German-born man. It embodies the unbroken link you have with the likes of Goethe as well as the lovely, guttural barbarians who humbled the Roman Empire and, doubtless, entertained each other with wortspiel, stories and songs with a German character, cadence and rhythm.
DAS ENDE!
Possibly only selfish/unaware/insecure/territorial and unrealistic mothers will not allow fathers to have their own parental territory. It is sad to see families in this often-seen situation. No one, I believe, wins. I, as a mother, wish more mothers would see fathers as true equal partners in the realm of parenthood and not just as "seed-doners" for the creation of that realm in the first place. Perhaps, mothers need to learn to be more democratic and trust men in this regard hoping that fathers in return learn to trust their parental feelings and abilities.
Post a Comment