ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we looked at different patterns of complementary educational work among women who were full-time housewives. In this chapter, we have addressed the variations in the educational work of employed mothers and fathers that are directly complementary to the work of teachers in their children’s schools. As we’ve emphasized, we’re not concerned with families’ contributions to the achievement of individual children, but with the kind of contribution made, through the child, to the school’s educational work. Of course, these two contributions aren’t wholly separable. A child’s achievement is within a given educational context. Nonetheless, our aim is to look at the relationship between a family’s economic situation, particularly the claims on the mother’s time, and the kinds of contributions mothers and fathers make to educational work at home that complements the work of the school. We can first look at the contributions made by mothers, whether full-time housewives or employed, in terms of the different patterns of complementary educational work they contribute to each school. Table 7 combines the families from both schools in terms of the different patterns of educational work we identified among them. When we do so, striking differences between the two schools become visible as are illustrated in the following table:
As can be seen, all those who either give priority to educational work in the home in the organization of the family’s daily routine or whose routines are similar except that more time is given (for example, to sports) have children in Uptown School. By contrast all those who do not or are not able to make the same kind of commitment of time have
children in Downtown School. Only one of the mothers of the children at Uptown School is working full time whereas, of the Downtown school mothers, four of the seven are employed outside the home. Striking too, is that three of the four women who appear not to be very active in their child or children’s schooling, three are Downtown School parents.
