Bringing up Children Bilingually: The Benefits and Negative Aspects - Thesis Example

Some modern countries have several official languages, due to the historical mixing of different ethnic groups, as for example in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland where there are Celtic languages alongside the more dominant influence of English, or Switzerland and many African countries where several languages are routinely spoken by the population. Bilingualism in these contexts is a daily necessity and these societies support the use of more than one language in all official contexts such as education, work, and government services.

According to McArthur (1998) about half of the world’s population is bilingual, although, in the UK and the United States, where English predominates, it is considered the norm to be monolingual. Despite the dominance of English in the UK, there are nevertheless multiple possibilities for children to become bilingual through family connections. Many people migrate over the course of a lifetime, either to escape war and persecution, or in search of better economic conditions, or to take up a preferred lifestyle or simply to join with other family members who may have migrated in previous years.

Global transport links and the emergence of many very large urban hubs have contributed to the mixing of ethnicities and cultures. This has in turn resulted in a rise in the number of marriages and relationships occurring between people who have different native languages. This situation, where a bilingual childhood is an exception rather than the norm, produces a dilemma for parents of children who grow up in this multicultural, and bilingual or even multilingual context: should children be brought up to speak two languages, or should parents concentrate on ensuring that their children are fluent in just one language?

Parents usually desire to do the best for their children, but as this essay will show, it is not always easy to work out what the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism might be.