Habla conmigo, daddy! Fathers’ language input in North American bilingual Latinx families

Abstract

This study examines the language environments of bilingually raised Latinx infants (n = 37) in mother-father families of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, with a focus on paternal parentese, a speaking style distinguished by higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation. Two daylong audio recordings were collected on weekends, when both parents were at home.

What do parents really think? Knowledge, beliefs, and self-awareness of parentese in relation to its use in daylong recordings

“…Similar to previous research with monolingual and bilingual (Spanish-English) U.S. samples (Ferjan Ramírez et al, 2022;Shapiro et al, 2021), the current results indicate that children heard much less parentese from fathers compared to mothers, even though both parents were asked to be at home when the recordings were collected, and even though maternal and paternal scores on the parentese questionnaire were not statistically different. Gaps between maternal and paternal frequency of parentese use have been documented across North American families of varying backgrounds and will be important in designing future interventions for Latinx and non-Latinx families.…”

“…As in previous studies that examined naturalistic language samples collected in North American English-speaking and Spanish-English-speaking households with young children (Ferjan Ramírez et al, 2022;Ramírez-Esparza et al, 2014, 2017a, 2017bShapiro et al, 2021), all participating mothers and fathers in the present sample used at least some parentese. Furthermore, when parents directed their speech to children, their use of parentese was very frequent (81% for mothers, and 70% for fathers).…”

“…We study mothers and fathers, in monolingual English-speaking and Spanish/English bilingual Latinx families residing in the U.S., where parentese is well documented, but its frequency nevertheless varies widely. For example, recent studies have shown that fathers use less parentese compared to mothers (Ferjan Ramírez et al, 2022;Shapiro et al, 2021). Furthermore, some research suggests that Latinx families in the U.S. may use less parentese compared to non-Latinx U.S. families (Ramírez-Esparza et al, 2014, 2017a differences that remained unexplained.…”

Talking to talkers: Infants' talk status, but not their gender, is related to language input

“…If differences in early language development are due to gender socialization, then parents' beliefs about gender roles likely influence the extent to which they parent girls and boys differently. When considering the cross‐cultural variation in beliefs about gender, it may be especially informative to study gender differences in children's early language exposure and development cross‐culturally and in more diverse populations than have been studied to date (e.g., Ferjan Ramírez et al, 2022, who examined child‐directed speech in Latinx families in the United States).…”

Vocal input and output among infants in a multilingual context: Evidence from long‐form recordings in Vanuatu

“…In a study of 30 toddlers in Chicago, the number of tokens addressed to the child from all household members explained more variance in key children's vocabulary than input from primary caregivers (in this sample, mothers) alone (Shneidman et al., 2013). Little is known about the potential relevance of male, as opposed to female, adult speech for language development, although one study using long‐form recordings among bilingual Spanish‐English North American families found that input quantity from fathers accounted for variance in children's own vocal production above and beyond input from mothers (Ferjan Ramírez et al., 2022).…”