Family language policy under developmental uncertainty: emotions and cross-border reorganization in a Chinese family in the Netherlands

This article examines how family language policy (FLP) is explicitly activated and reorganized when a young multilingual child’s language development becomes uncertain. Based on an eight-month longitudinal ethnographic case study of one Chinese family in the Netherlands, it follows how the parents responded to concern over their child Ruirui’s limited expressive speech between two years and four months and three years of age. The study draws on repeated parental interviews, home observations, family conversations, parent-shared materials and institutional documents across the Netherlands and China. The findings show that this family’s FLP unfolded through a trajectory of concern, home language management, cross-border reorganization of care and Mandarin exposure, and later institutional reframing. The parents’ anxiety, guilt, ambivalence and reassurance shaped how language decisions were made, while grandparents, kindergarten routines and professional assessments became part of the organization of language support and care. The study contributes a processual account of FLP under developmental uncertainty, showing how such uncertainty turns relatively taken-for-granted language practices into objects of deliberate parental monitoring and management, while emotions, language-care ecology and institutional mediation shape how FLP is reorganized and reframed over time.