ABSTRACT
Parental involvement is hardly a new practice. Some of America’s earliest European settlers, especially the Puritans, were strong believers in the primacy of parental involvement (McClellan & Reese, 1988). Of course, the Puritans generally did not use the word “parental involvement.” However, their family orientation, evening joint reading sessions, and their emphasis on teaching each parent’s role all demonstrated a high level of parental involvement (Hiner, 1988; McClellan & Reese, 1988). Understanding that parental involvement is not a new concept is important to comprehend if one is to properly contextualize the parent, school, and community partnership movement that is growing in the United States. The chief researchers and theorists in this movement are not trailblazers introducing a concept that hitherto has been foreign to American ideology (Jeynes, 2005c). Rather, these individuals are calling Americans back to a practice that has been interwoven into the fabric of American life for centuries, but due to the demands of modern society, diverse concepts of family life, and a plethora of other factors have been overlooked or deemphasized (Jeynes, 2007a). If one is to join the effort to call parents back to close participation in their children’s schooling and other elements of their lives, one should avoid reinventing the wheel. Instead, the ideal place to begin this trek is to examine past American practices of parental involvement (Jeynes, 2005c). Although the nation has changed over the years, there are particular requirements in a close parent-child relationship that change little or not at all that are necessary for parental involvement to transpire and enrich the lives of children.
