Aims: Multilingual families are often challenged with the transmission of their heritage language (HL) to future generations. Departing from this observation, this study aims to investigate which factors correlate with multilingual families’ HL maintenance efforts. The variables taken into account are the families’ language policy (FLP), advice from both Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) professionals and other (informal) sources, the parents’ linguistic and educational resources, as well as their migration generation. Methodology: Exclusively quantitative in nature, the data for this study involve 776 multilingual families in the Flemish community of Belgium. Analysis: These data have subsequentially been subjected to two inferential analyses: a bivariate correlational analysis followed by a logistic regression for a more detailed understanding of the relations at play. Findings: The results indicate a positive correlation between families’ policies and their HL maintenance efforts, in addition to confirming the independence of FLP’s three components (beliefs, practices, and management). Furthermore, contrary to advice from ECCE professionals, advice from other sources is positively and significantly associated with HL maintenance efforts. Finally, families comprised of parents with access to higher linguistic and educational resources are less likely to try and pass on the HL to their children, probably favouring the acquisition of the institutional language (IL). Originality: This paper quantitatively explores factors that correlate with parental HL maintenance efforts using a large and language-diverse sample. This quantitative approach facilitates generalizations for future (qualitative) research and advice-giving bodies to build on. Significance: Our findings bring about greater insights into the motivation of parents concerning HL maintenance and could contribute to the advice given to multilingual families.

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Objective Inspired by previous research, we investigated how perceptions about family have changed among first‐year university students at KU Leuven (Flanders, Belgium) between 1997 and 2018. Background The question of what constitutes a family has puzzled scholars for years, yet empirical information on this topic, especially from young adults, is limited. The perceptions are important because studies have found a link between perceptions about families and family behavior. Method We collected a convenience sample of first‐year university students at KU Leuven in 1997 (n = 674) and 2018 (n = 471) via online and offline questionnaires. Using cross‐tabulation analysis, we compared the data to consider changes in perceptions about families and investigate differences. Discussion We found that students in 2018 are more receptive to postdivorce arrangements, pets, and deceased family members in their conceptualizations of family. Also, we noted that the conceptualization of families including friends was not widespread, indicating that the “framily” is not yet established among the university students in this group. We found that women, students who report their parents as having a lower socioeconomic status, and students from nonintact families held more inclusive family views. Implications Our findings contribute to a better understanding of how Flemish college‐age students perceive families. This information, however limited, can provide valuable information for policymakers, opinion leaders, and (family) therapists.

Within multilingual families, the emotionality of languages can impact individual and family wellbeing. But few studies have investigated the influence of the familial linguistic context in shaping emotional language use preferences. Guided by the Family Language Policy framework, we consider how the language use and the language attitudes of parents, siblings and children themselves affect the emotional language use preferences of children, independent of children's proficiencies in their heritage (HL) and institutional (IL) languages. We analyse unique data from over 500 primary school children (aged 10 to 12) from Moroccan, Turkish, Eastern-European and mixed descent living in Antwerp, the largest Dutch-speaking city of Belgium. We find that children's emotional preferences are strongly affected by their proficiency in the heritage language but not their proficiency in Dutch, by their parents' and siblings' language practices but not their own practice and by children's attitudes about the relative importance of HL and IL. Overall, the results suggest that emotional language preferences of children reflect children's own acculturation process as well as that of their families.

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