This paper explores the relationship between parents and schools. Over the last 30 years the importance attached to parents' views on education has increased significantly throughout the Western world. Policy-makers encourage parental participation and involvement through the creation of councils in which parents have a say. In Flanders in Belgium…

Interviews with low-income parents revealed that they were aware of the class character of local schools and believed that high-income schools were superior. Ninety-four percent favored social class school desegregation, believing that their children would thereby obtain a better education and better preparation for social interaction in adult…

A two-year longitudinal study of 200 working women in California urban areas represents an effort to understand the processes by which specific interests and commitments to paid employment develop. Data from intensive personal interviews with women in traditional and nontraditional occupations should indicate factors which facilitate the entry of…

Research literature suggests that adults from working-class minority backgrounds demonstrate authoritarian and coercive tendencies in their choices of disciplinary strategies when compared with adults from middle-class, "white", "Anglo", or "North American" backgrounds. However, in a recent study in New York City,…

This paper explores the emotional resources generated by working class mothers to support their children at school. Analysis of material from qualitative interview research with a range working class mothers will focus on specific accounts of children's school lives to reveal how situated meanings can clash with institutional expectations. By…

This article examines the diversity of practices utilized by working-class and poor black and Latina/o families to support their children's college-going processes. We employ the work of feminists, scholars of color, and critical ethnographers to critique the power undergirding the monolithic model establishing one entry point of parental…

This qualitative study investigated mothers' views about their role in their children's education and their expectations of their child's preschool. A particular focus of the study was to contrast the views of mothers with differing degrees of parenting self-efficacy and to contrast the perceptions of working-class and middle-class mothers.…

Routes into education and employment for young Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in Oldham, England, were examined. The data sources were as follows: group discussions with Pakistani and Bangladeshi young people at different stages in the educational system and at an early stage of labor market participation; interviews with public and voluntary…