Family Language Policy: Promoting Partnership in the Early Years to Support Heritage Languages

Recent years have seen growing recognition of the diversity of family composition and the significant changes that have occurred in how families care for their children. Among the societal developments that have impacted on families are the increasing participation of women in the labour market, and related changes in how parents care for their children, either within the family or in collaboration with professional or informal carers. Such factors require some reshaping of our definition of family (Palviainen 2020a) to recognise that families are dynamic in time and space, impacted on by external as well as individual factors (Curdt-Christiansen 2018). Such a shift towards viewing families as fluid rather than fixed units allows for more sensitive and appropriate exploration of family language policy (henceforth FLP) in particular. Some of these factors will be considered here in relation to family language policy in studies done on Irish in the Republic of Ireland, but also taking into account other Celtic languages and international research.