ABSTRACT
In this chapter I explore the many different types of work mothers undertake in support of their children’s education. In doing so I employ cultural capital, and habitus as conceptual tools for examining how those activities, despite apparent similarities, add up to significant class differences. It was evident that there was little difference across the sample in either the importance attached to education or the mental energy women devoted to their children’s schooling. However, underlying the similarities were the ways in which working-class women’s support of their children’s education did not count to the same extent that middleclass women’s did: first, it was not invested with the certainty of the middleclass women’s interventions; secondly, it was not underpinned by financial resources; and thirdly, it was conducted in a process uninformed by knowledge of just how uneven the playing field actually was.
