ABSTRACT
In this article I will examine, from a feminist perspective, the approach to education and the family developed by left sociologists in the 1970s in Britain and the United States. It is now accepted by many that the mainstream left discourse on the sociology of education was constructed primarily by male academics who have continued to focus almost entirely on boys’ educational experiences. This bias, fortunately, has been partially remedied by new feminist research on girls’ experience in school and their transition into waged and domestic work. However, while this research is a necessary first step, it does not solve the full range of problems created by the mainstream left discourse. The standard theories are also deficient in the way they pose the relationship of the family to mass schooling and, more specifically, the relationship between class and gender in both the family and the school.
