ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the dominant ideological family and educational context in which the women grew up. It examines the fit between this and their own situations, and the meanings the women attached to family and education in their childhoods. The story of the educational and family lives of the women on whose experiences this book is based is a familiar one for those who are aware of feminist literature on the subject. Six of the ten women who had described themselves as middleclass in adulthood felt they had come from working-class backgrounds, making eighteen white women from working-class backgrounds in all. Women were expected to devote their prime years and best energies to home and family in an 'orgy' of ultra-domesticity. Acting in concert, family and education had placed the women in the situations they inhabited when they made their decisions to return to formal education.
