Will my bilingual children have a problem of identity with two different cultures? 

At one end of an ‘identity adjustment' dimension are children who learn to switch between two cultures as easily as they switch between two languages. They are Spanish in Spain and English in England; a Hebrew-speaking Jew in Israel, a Yiddish-speaking Jew in the home in New York and an English-speaking American at school. For some, there are few problems of cultural mixing or identity crisis. Theirs is biculturalism fully flowered, easily exhibited and much admired by all who view.

Among in-migrants, ethnic identity begins around three to five years of age, and by the age of seven or eight, is well established but continues to develop. In the teenage years, ethnic differences may become increasingly conscious and considered.

Identities are never static or permanent, never singular and rarely unified. It is natural for a child or adult to have different identities in different contexts which change across time. Identities are about becoming rather than being. It is not so much ‘who we are' or ‘where we have come from' as ‘how we are represented' and ‘what we might become' and ‘what we cannot be'. Cultural, ethnic or language identity is often not so much about a return to our roots but making sense out of our past, present and future routes.

As we move in and out of different roles, we naturally have different identities. The child assumes different identities, with different people and in different situations, the child, particularly the teenager, learns to play different roles, wear different ‘costumes' and harmonize with a different set of players. It is important that such roles and resultant sub identities integrate into a satisfactory harmonized whole. We all need coherence and wholeness around those sub identities. From this consideration, something important can be said about bilingualism and self-identity.

This discussion of sub identities and playing different roles suggests two things. First, that a child needs experience of, and exposure to playing different roles successfully. Acting on a new stage with different people with unusual props is difficult for any of us. The more exposure and experience to changing scenery, changing actors and actresses and a different play, the more harmonized with a role we become. Therefore, a child needs plenty of exposure and experience of the cultures that go with the two languages.

The identity of a bilingual is a particularly Western problem. In many African, and Asian language communities for example, bilingualism (or multilingualism) is accepted as the norm. The oddity is the person who is monolingual and monocultural, who cannot switch between different cultures and language communities. In many countries, linguistic diversity within society and within an individual is accepted as natural, normal and desirable.
While bilingualism and biculturalism may superficially appear to have a detrimental effect on personality, bilingualism is not likely to be the cause. That is, it is not language that causes personality problems. Rather, it is often the social, economic and political conditions surrounding bilinguals that generate such problems. Where the bicultural community is stigmatized, seen as socially inferior, economically underprivileged, and where there is symbolic or physical violence towards the minority language community, personality problems within children may arise. It is not the ownership of bilingualism, but the condition in which that language community lives that may be the cause of the problem. Where language communities are oppressed and downtrodden, it is the prejudice and discrimination by other communities, and not bilingualism, that may affect identity and personality.