What do you think?
Rate this book
Class Work
This text looks at the ways in which women as mothers are positioned in society in terms of ethnicity, social class and marital status. Using case study material the author expands her assessment to analyse the way women's educational experience influences their involvement in their children's schooling. The book examines the support of the mother in her child's schooling to reveal the part she plays in social reproduction and to recognize her centrality to an understanding of social class. The book should be of interest to undergraduates in the sociology of education, gender studies, and to those studying PGCE primary education.
206 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 1998
30 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 11, 2015
Often, when I finish reading a book, I think to myself, ‘what is it about this book I’m going to remember in five years time?’ The point being that when I think that, I’ve generally already decided what that thing will be. In this case it is the idea that when you want to make female work invisible, you don’t talk about ‘mothers’ and their relationship to school – you talk about ‘parents’ or ‘parental involvement’ – that ‘parent’ 99 times out of a 100 is actually a mother, is beside the point. One of the things very clear from this research is that it is mothers that do the vast majority of the ‘work’ involved in the education of children, both outside of school and in organising their kids for school. An overwhelming majority of the ‘fathers’ here did literally nothing.
Often, when I look back on reviews where I’ve been so confident about what I would remember in five years time it turns out that I am wrong – but I hope not in this case, as this is a remarkably important thing to remember.
Why? Well, so much of education is about producing or reproducing a social class status. Decades of research have shown that if you come from a family that already has a particular class status, it is infinitely easier to ‘reproduce’ that status than it is to ‘produce’ it basically from scratch. The research in this book uses Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus, cultural and social capital to help to explain this fact – but the bottom line is that if your mother spent lots of time educating you (helping you with homework, taking you to the library, driving you to piano lessons, and ballet lessons, and acting classes) then the chances are that you too will see this as a completely normal part of ‘being a mother’ and you will do the same with your kids. If you are a single mother, live on something like less than half what the middle class mothers in this research live on, don’t own a car and hated school – well, it is going to be much, much harder for you to be as involved in your child’s education in a very effective way, even if you have lots of time and really want to be helpful.
This is also particularly important because a lot of research that seeks to slot kids into particular social classes tends to do this sorting on the basis of the social background of the father. It is almost as if the mothers did not exist. Whereas, the research reported here might encourage you to look at the mother’s social background and more or less ignore the father’s. What is also interesting is that Reay uses Bourdieu’s ideas about social classes – that is, as relationships, rather than fixed categories and as dispositions and habits rather than steps on a ladder. But she also extends this to include what Bourdieu often overlooked – racial and gendered ‘habituses’ and how these work in ways that are both similar to and distinct from class habitus.
This research was conducted at two London schools: one in a middle class area, the other in a working class area. Diane Reay sent her own kids to the working class school. There are lots of interesting inversions mentioned along the way with this research. For instance, we tend to think of working class areas as being a bit scary. But when Diane was trying to recruit mothers from the middle class school for her research she found it remarkably difficult and, in fact, scary. This was because the middle class mothers dropped off and picked up their kids by car, so they didn’t really stand around talking as they did in the working class school. This meant, particularly in winter, the isolation of these schools, being the only person standing around, could be frightening indeed.
The other bit of this book that really grabbed me was where she asked mothers to tell Diane about their memories of school – that is, the ones they went to themselves as children.
Mostly the middle class mothers would say that they really loved their time at primary school. But when pressed they mostly couldn’t remember a thing about it. For example, this is a quote from a middle class mother remembering something from her reportedly very happy school years:
“I don’t think I can remember anything much about it. I can remember seeing some production on the stage that I can’t remember much about but I can’t really remember anything else.” p. 50
So, her clearest memory of school is of a play she says she basically remembers nothing about at all. Don’t get me wrong, this probably is a very good indication of both a happy childhood and a very positive schooling experience. Education for this woman just ‘happened’. There was nothing exceptional or out of place, she was, as Bourdieu likes to say, like a fish in water.
This is certainly not the case with many of the working class mothers and their experiences of school. For them school was anything but a positive experience, and there were many, many instances of humiliation, shame, punishment and fear that these women remembered in agonising detail. It is hardly surprising, then, that these women found their relationships with their own children’s schools much more difficult than the middle class mothers did.
And this certainly wasn’t because these working class mothers weren’t interested in their kids education – in fact, one of the other things that is interesting here is that contrary to other research I’ve read, these working class mothers fronted up to talk to teachers (something all of the mothers in the sample found challenging) about their children’s education just as regularly as the middle class mothers did. The problem was that the middle class mothers had both the authority and the demeanour – what Bourdieu calls the ‘habitus’ – to approach the teachers in a way that was very likely to be effective. The teachers are, after all, if anything to be less educated than these mothers, so, the mothers are likely to treat the teachers as social equals (at best) if not their social inferiors.
Not so with the working class mothers. To them the teachers are ‘professionals’ and to ‘challenge’ what they are doing in the classroom – particularly given your own history of ‘school failure’ – makes this a very different kind of relationship to the one enjoyed by the middle class mothers. Diane Reay presents a couple of examples from her field notes that mirror each other, literally, through inversion – with the teacher terrified of when she is going to bump into a middle class mother who had written her a long letter and then followed by a working class mother terrified of when she was going to bump into a teacher who was likely to reduce her to feeling like a child.
The other thing I liked about this was that the middle class mothers rarely saw what they were doing as ‘work’ – now, a lot of the reason for this was that they could buy in other services, and so spending time with their children (or buying tutoring services and so on) was available to them in ways this simply wasn’t the case with working class mothers. All the same, there is a lovely line in this about their being a direct relationship between how likely a mother is to consider herself ‘working class’ and how much housework she does. And then also about middle class mothers saying they hardly do any work at all with the kids, but then going on to explain the efforts they go to so as to get their ‘little darlings’ out of bed, washed, fed, dressed and into school with their homework with them – well, you know, it certainly sounds a hell of a lot like work, if you were to ask me.
Working class mothers were much more likely to think their kids needed some ‘time off’ from school. Financially this was more or less making a virtue of necessity – they couldn’t afford the extra school activities the middle class mothers raced their kids through during the week and over the weekends anyway – but this also meant that the working class kids ended up with much more ‘unstructured time’ than the typical middle class kid did. For the middle class kids school was ‘a’ site of education, for the working class kids it was ‘the’ site. With all of one’s eggs in one basket, the risks associated with school became all that more tangible.
The other really interesting thing here was the idea that race plays such an important, and not always ‘negative’ role, in people’s lives. As some of the mothers say at the start of this book – they decided on the school they would send their kids to on the basis of the racial mix of the school. They certainly didn’t want their children going to a school where they were likely to be racially insulted. And that, to see if this was going to be the case, there was no point asking white mothers about this. One of the joys of white privilege is being blind to most racial discrimination. But many of the black mothers at the school also sent their kids to black school on Saturdays – and this actually meant providing their kids with advantages that weren’t available to some of the white working class kids at the same school. Issues with a child’s learning that were not being addressed at school might just be identified and addressed at these schools.
This really is lovely research – and like her other book ‘White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling’, it is just a pleasure to read. She is so smart and so interesting and her research just makes me jaw drop. Again, can’t recommend this one too highly.
Often, when I look back on reviews where I’ve been so confident about what I would remember in five years time it turns out that I am wrong – but I hope not in this case, as this is a remarkably important thing to remember.
Why? Well, so much of education is about producing or reproducing a social class status. Decades of research have shown that if you come from a family that already has a particular class status, it is infinitely easier to ‘reproduce’ that status than it is to ‘produce’ it basically from scratch. The research in this book uses Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus, cultural and social capital to help to explain this fact – but the bottom line is that if your mother spent lots of time educating you (helping you with homework, taking you to the library, driving you to piano lessons, and ballet lessons, and acting classes) then the chances are that you too will see this as a completely normal part of ‘being a mother’ and you will do the same with your kids. If you are a single mother, live on something like less than half what the middle class mothers in this research live on, don’t own a car and hated school – well, it is going to be much, much harder for you to be as involved in your child’s education in a very effective way, even if you have lots of time and really want to be helpful.
This is also particularly important because a lot of research that seeks to slot kids into particular social classes tends to do this sorting on the basis of the social background of the father. It is almost as if the mothers did not exist. Whereas, the research reported here might encourage you to look at the mother’s social background and more or less ignore the father’s. What is also interesting is that Reay uses Bourdieu’s ideas about social classes – that is, as relationships, rather than fixed categories and as dispositions and habits rather than steps on a ladder. But she also extends this to include what Bourdieu often overlooked – racial and gendered ‘habituses’ and how these work in ways that are both similar to and distinct from class habitus.
This research was conducted at two London schools: one in a middle class area, the other in a working class area. Diane Reay sent her own kids to the working class school. There are lots of interesting inversions mentioned along the way with this research. For instance, we tend to think of working class areas as being a bit scary. But when Diane was trying to recruit mothers from the middle class school for her research she found it remarkably difficult and, in fact, scary. This was because the middle class mothers dropped off and picked up their kids by car, so they didn’t really stand around talking as they did in the working class school. This meant, particularly in winter, the isolation of these schools, being the only person standing around, could be frightening indeed.
The other bit of this book that really grabbed me was where she asked mothers to tell Diane about their memories of school – that is, the ones they went to themselves as children.
Mostly the middle class mothers would say that they really loved their time at primary school. But when pressed they mostly couldn’t remember a thing about it. For example, this is a quote from a middle class mother remembering something from her reportedly very happy school years:
“I don’t think I can remember anything much about it. I can remember seeing some production on the stage that I can’t remember much about but I can’t really remember anything else.” p. 50
So, her clearest memory of school is of a play she says she basically remembers nothing about at all. Don’t get me wrong, this probably is a very good indication of both a happy childhood and a very positive schooling experience. Education for this woman just ‘happened’. There was nothing exceptional or out of place, she was, as Bourdieu likes to say, like a fish in water.
This is certainly not the case with many of the working class mothers and their experiences of school. For them school was anything but a positive experience, and there were many, many instances of humiliation, shame, punishment and fear that these women remembered in agonising detail. It is hardly surprising, then, that these women found their relationships with their own children’s schools much more difficult than the middle class mothers did.
And this certainly wasn’t because these working class mothers weren’t interested in their kids education – in fact, one of the other things that is interesting here is that contrary to other research I’ve read, these working class mothers fronted up to talk to teachers (something all of the mothers in the sample found challenging) about their children’s education just as regularly as the middle class mothers did. The problem was that the middle class mothers had both the authority and the demeanour – what Bourdieu calls the ‘habitus’ – to approach the teachers in a way that was very likely to be effective. The teachers are, after all, if anything to be less educated than these mothers, so, the mothers are likely to treat the teachers as social equals (at best) if not their social inferiors.
Not so with the working class mothers. To them the teachers are ‘professionals’ and to ‘challenge’ what they are doing in the classroom – particularly given your own history of ‘school failure’ – makes this a very different kind of relationship to the one enjoyed by the middle class mothers. Diane Reay presents a couple of examples from her field notes that mirror each other, literally, through inversion – with the teacher terrified of when she is going to bump into a middle class mother who had written her a long letter and then followed by a working class mother terrified of when she was going to bump into a teacher who was likely to reduce her to feeling like a child.
The other thing I liked about this was that the middle class mothers rarely saw what they were doing as ‘work’ – now, a lot of the reason for this was that they could buy in other services, and so spending time with their children (or buying tutoring services and so on) was available to them in ways this simply wasn’t the case with working class mothers. All the same, there is a lovely line in this about their being a direct relationship between how likely a mother is to consider herself ‘working class’ and how much housework she does. And then also about middle class mothers saying they hardly do any work at all with the kids, but then going on to explain the efforts they go to so as to get their ‘little darlings’ out of bed, washed, fed, dressed and into school with their homework with them – well, you know, it certainly sounds a hell of a lot like work, if you were to ask me.
Working class mothers were much more likely to think their kids needed some ‘time off’ from school. Financially this was more or less making a virtue of necessity – they couldn’t afford the extra school activities the middle class mothers raced their kids through during the week and over the weekends anyway – but this also meant that the working class kids ended up with much more ‘unstructured time’ than the typical middle class kid did. For the middle class kids school was ‘a’ site of education, for the working class kids it was ‘the’ site. With all of one’s eggs in one basket, the risks associated with school became all that more tangible.
The other really interesting thing here was the idea that race plays such an important, and not always ‘negative’ role, in people’s lives. As some of the mothers say at the start of this book – they decided on the school they would send their kids to on the basis of the racial mix of the school. They certainly didn’t want their children going to a school where they were likely to be racially insulted. And that, to see if this was going to be the case, there was no point asking white mothers about this. One of the joys of white privilege is being blind to most racial discrimination. But many of the black mothers at the school also sent their kids to black school on Saturdays – and this actually meant providing their kids with advantages that weren’t available to some of the white working class kids at the same school. Issues with a child’s learning that were not being addressed at school might just be identified and addressed at these schools.
This really is lovely research – and like her other book ‘White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling’, it is just a pleasure to read. She is so smart and so interesting and her research just makes me jaw drop. Again, can’t recommend this one too highly.
Displaying 1 of 1 review