Shifting Status: Mothers’ Higher Education and their Children’s Schooling

Abstract

As we have argued throughout this book in relation to children’s schooling, the educationalists’ agenda has crossed the home—school boundary — home life has been converted into schooling within professional discourse and activities. Parental involvement in their children’s education has come to dominate the educational research and policy agenda. In particular, contained within the literature on home background and children’s educational achievement is a focus upon the role of a mother’s own level of education as correlating with her childrearing and participation in her children’s education (New and David, 1985; Walkerdine and Lucey, 1989). A mother’s education is viewed as important for her children’s advancement at school not only through direct influences, such as helping with homework, but also through indirect influences, such as having books around the house and so on. This view of mothering has a long history. Many of the nineteenth-century feminists who advocated higher education for women as a means of improving their position in the public world of paid work also felt educated women would make better mothers, utilising their education in rearing their children (Banks, 1981).