Who Is Shaping Notions of 'Right' Parent Involvement?
As parents, you are constantly walking on a thin line. If you don't show up at the school enough, it's assumed you don't care about your child's education; show up too much and you're a "helicopter parent" who suffocates your child and her/his teachers by your "overinvestment."
As did Goldilocks, school teachers, administrators, counselors and others seem to have a formula of "just right" participation that is not too much but not too little; not too pushy but not too passive; not too directive but not uninformed.
This begs some important questions: Where do these ideas about "just right" parent involvement come from? And who benefits from this particular take on the "right" way to be involved?
For one thing, my research suggests that "just right" parent involvement relies on America's white, mainstream, middle-class conventions of politeness, interpersonal interactions and relationships.
Far from being neutral, these conventions take for granted the ways in whichcommunication is shaped by gender, class, racial and cultural norms. As such, the "just right" involved parent manifests as a native-English speaking white woman who is available to be at school during the day because she isn't employed outside the home.
Additionally, there is an expectation that the good involved mother will not interact with teachers in ways that can be perceived as aggressive; will not pull the proverbial race card when her child experiences mistreatment; and will "speak the language" of school - that is, she will have the social and cultural capital to know what to do and say.
Consequently, the people who benefit from this frame of "just right" parent involvement are the people whose lived experiences fit its expectations, underlying assumptions and demands.
What is being missed in this approach is that America's population is vastly more diverse than it was a few decades ago. Indeed, the "just right" involved parent described above represents only a tiny slice of the US population today.
Changing demographics
Census data show a 158% increase in people over age five speaking a language other than English (LOTE) at home in the last three decades (1980-2010). Additionally,nearly a quarter of adults between the ages of 25-50 in 2014 were from racial groups other than white. Estimates also show that by 2044, more than half of all Americans will be nonwhite.
There are other changes happening as well at the level of household earnings.
The single-earner American household is a dying breed. In June 2014, the Council of Economic Advisers, a three-member agency in the Executive Office of the President that advises the president on economic policy, released a report titled Nine Facts About American Families and Work. The report showed that while most children live in households where all parents work, mothers are increasingly the household breadwinners and fathers are increasingly family caregivers.
Consequently, a growing proportion of today's students come from linguistically diverse families; families with different cultural understandings of the relationship between home and school; or families whose life circumstances make creating distance from school logical and self-protective (such as undocumented families or parents with multiple jobs).
Families could be facing other extenuating circumstances as well, such that a grandparent, an older sibling, a neighbor or close friend may be handling school Who Is Shaping Notions of 'Right' Parent Involvement? | The Conversation US: