A Narrative Study Examining Latina Collegians’ Maternal Relationships and Their Influence on Educational Trajectories

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on Latinx communities has consistently underscored the role that families play in college students’ educational aspirations and success. Forms of familial empowerment are particularly beneficial as Latinx college students encounter environments and individuals that do not account for their cultural knowledges. A subset of this literature has focused on the gendered dynamics that exist as Latina daughters navigate postsecondary education, especially as they employ lessons and strategies from their mothers. To add to this scholarship, this study engaged a narrative inquiry methodological approach to examine the stories of twelve Latina college students. Informed by a conceptual framework integrating community cultural wealth (CCW) and funds of knowledge, we were interested in how Latina daughters described the influence of their maternal relationships on their educational journeys. Findings illustrated how mothers translated their own funds of knowledge to their daughters; how daughters interpreted this knowledge and, in turn, gained capital; and how they mobilized these capitals to sustain the larger community. We then provide implications for future research and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Latina
• family
• mother
• community cultural wealth
• funds of knowledge

Scholarship on Latinx¹ communities has consistently underscored the role families play in college students’ educational aspirations and success (e.g., Alfaro et al., 2014; Kiyama, 2011; Marrun, 2020; Sáenz et al., 2020). With many Latinx individuals placing a strong value on the family unit (Noel Taylor & O’Flynn, 2020), researchers have investigated how immediate, extended, and chosen family members encourage Latinx students to enroll in higher education and help support them as they navigate collegiate contexts (Carey, 2016; Matos, 2015). These forms of familial empowerment are beneficial as Latinx college students encounter environments and individuals that do not account for their cultural knowledges (Garcia et al., 2021). Especially notable is that though the number of Latinx individuals progressively has risen, the number of students graduating compared to other racial/ethnic groups has been lower (Flink, 2018).

Beyond examining the roles of families broadly, an increasing amount of research has attended to the influences that particular familial members play in Latinx students’ educational trajectories. For example, scholars have examined how Latino fathers encourage students’ success and help challenge the racist realities that their children face in schools (Quiñones & Kiyama, 2014). Similarly, the work of Sáenz et al. (2020) brought to light how female family members, including mothers, cultivated Latino males’ cultural wealth, which in turn allowed them to persist in higher education journey. These articles highlight how gender shapes the lessons and supports that Latinx families provide to their students that assist them in navigating their environments. One such area of inquiry that has emerged relative to this body of scholarship involves the relationships that Latina mothers and daughters hold and how they inform their daughter’s education (see Suarez & Quiñones, 2021; Villenas & Moreno, 2001).

The purpose of this narrative inquiry project was to add to this growing research by further examining the influences that Latina mothers’ pedagogies have on their Latina students’ college experiences. The impetus for this research stemmed from previous work showing how Latina mothers can help students in understanding how to be simultaneously submissive and rebellious (Villenas & Moreno, 2001), balance filial and educational duties (Espinoza, 2010), and apply cultural knowledges (Marrun, 2020). To guide this study, our research questions were:

1. How do Latina daughters describe their mothers’ life teachings?

2. What stories do Latina college students have to tell as they apply their mothers’ life teachings to their current undergraduate experiences in the United States?

Through a conceptual framework integrating community cultural wealth (CCW; Yosso, 2005) and the concept of funds of knowledge (González et al., 2006), we sought to understand what lessons Latina mothers offered their daughters as it relates to family, education, and identity. We underwent this investigation hoping to contribute to educational leaders’ understandings of how to better work to incorporate students’ familial presence to bolster their success.

Conceptual framework

For this study, we answered the call put forth by Ramos and Kiyama (2021) to uncover “a comprehensive understanding of knowledge, skills, and resources that historically marginalized communities possess, transfer, and mobilize to succeed in college” (p. 445). To do so, we employed a conceptual framework integrating conceptualizations of funds of knowledge (González et al., 2006) and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). This framework represented our commitment to highlighting asset-based perspectives, as well as culturally sustaining perspectives (Paris & Alim, 2017).

Stemming from scholars’ strides to incorporate culturally-relevant knowledges into school curriculum at the K – 12 level, Vélez-Ibáñez and Greenberg’s (1992) case study found unique sets of knowledges, or funds of knowledge, being produced in Mexican-American households. Providing an in-depth snapshot of a Mexican-American family, Vélez-Ibáñez and Greenberg (1992) drew attention to how Hortencia, a wife and mother, sustained funds of knowledge by drawing on her bank-telling job to teach her grand/children math skills, as well as the values of religion she instilled through the church’s auxiliary. Though 30 years have passed since Vélez-Ibáñez and Greenberg’s (1992) conceptualization of funds of knowledge, countless K – 12 schools, as well as colleges and universities, still disregard these cultural knowledges. We were particularly informed by Ramos and Kiyama’s (2021) work on funds of knowledge, which they defined as “strategies and bodies of knowledge historically accumulated and essential for a household and its members to survive and function” (p. 429). They further operationalized funds of knowledge by presenting the following six tenets: leveling the playing field, sharing the wealth, navigating societal systems, foregrounding culture, building community trust, and sustaining oral traditions, we aimed to underscore the invaluable insights of Latina mothers.

Moreover, in the tradition of asset-centered funds of knowledge, we used the scholarship of Yosso (2005) who named how Communities of Color employ forms of cultural wealth to navigate educational systems, or community cultural wealth. Originating from critical race theory, CCW served to disrupt the deficit-minded, social immobility perspectives associated with marginalized Communities of Color. Particularly, Yosso’s (2005) conceptualization of CCW challenged Bordieu’s and Passeron’s (1977) notions that upper and middle social classes possess the most valuable forms of capital and knowledge by instead bringing attention to the role of social class in upholding racist thought. The six forms of capital she countered with–aspirational, familial, linguistic, navigational, resistant, and social–were helpful in conceptualizing the present project. Briefly, aspirational capital describes futuristic hopes and dreams that students cultivate despite systemic challenges. Familial capital refers to the shared history and cultural teachings of family, biological and chosen, that guide students. Linguistic capital encompasses the knowledge associated with understanding, speaking, and making meaning utilizing multiple languages. Navigational capital equips students to make sense of counterproductive spaces by providing them the information on how to move through social institutions. Resistant capital identifies lessons drawn from through lived or observed experiences of inequity. Lastly, social capital encapsulates support and resources gained from peer groups, mentors, and educators.

Together, bringing these two frameworks into conversation allowed us to convey not only the resilience of, but thriving that Latinx communities accomplish as a result of community-based knowledge and cultural wealth. Moreover, these bodies of literature emphasized the stake that Latina mothers consistently have in their children’s educational trajectories despite the minimizing or lack of accommodation they experience from schools.

Literature review

To guide this study, we first reviewed some of the recent literature that centers funds of knowledge or community cultural wealth Latinx families enact to guide their children in academic settings. Then, we examine the intricacies of Latina mother/daughter relationships as it relates to education given the relevance of this scholarship to our study.

Funds of knowledge and cultural wealth from Latinx families

Many scholars have noted the support and guidance from the family unit for Latinx students as they navigate educational systems, including when they transition into college (e.g., Alfaro et al., 2014; Cuevas, 2020). To sustain themselves as they navigate higher education, Latinx students frequently rely on the pedagogies of the home, or the informal, commonplace teachings occurring within Latinx households (Delgado Bernal, 2001). These pedagogies of the home often manifest through funds of knowledge, cultural capital, and other forms of cultural empowerment. Notably, Luedke (2020) contributed to existing scholarship linking the relationship between funds of knowledge and community cultural wealth, naming two important ideas: one, funds of knowledge from families can be converted to cultural capital for Latinx children (Kiyama, 2011; Rios-Aguilar & Kiyama, 2012), and two, these children can then transform this capital into funds of knowledge for future generations. In her study, this process manifested as older siblings passing on knowledge related to the college-going path and aspiring to be a role model for younger siblings.

Though some scholars have contested the amount of support that Latinx students receive from their families and shed light on the challenges that frequently accompany familial pressures (e.g., Kouyoumdjian et al., 2017), others highlight the advantages that family engagement fosters for academic persistence (Espino, 2016; Marrun, 2020; Matos, 2015; Sáenz et al., 2017). Constant in this body of literature is Latinx students attribute their aspirational, resistant, and familial capital to memories of their parents’ labor-intensive occupations and the discrimination they subsequently faced. Moreover, these students associate their goals with the larger familial expectations to make something more of their lives (Espino, 2016; Sáenz et al., 2017). Beyond explaining the influence of the family unit broadly, researchers have named the unique roles that mothers play in the lives of Latinx students specifically, regularly serving as a source of inspiration or challenge (e.g., Ballysingh, 2019; Espinoza, 2010; Sáenz et al., 2020). For instance, the work of Ballysingh (2019) used Yosso’s (2005) CCW framework to examine how Latino men students developed forms of cultural wealth through their relationship with their mothers, manifesting through aspirations, persistence, and a familial sense of duty. Based on the participant narratives, Ballysingh proposed a Maternal Cultural Wealth framework in which mothers “emerged as strong conduits of capital, motivating their sons to matriculate and persist through challenges” (pp. 5–6). Though studies like Ballysingh’s (2019) set an important foundation for our own research, we found it necessary to explore the scholarship on Latina mothers and daughters specifically.

Latina mother/daughter relationships in education

Latina daughters frequently face the added pressures of being an involved family member, caretaker, and/or cultural broker while also needing to be a successful college student (Camargo Gonzalez, 2020; Espinoza, 2010; Matos, 2015). As one example, Camargo Gonzalez’ (2020) study explored the experiences of Latina doctoral students and their negotiation of multiple identities. Using a life history inquiry, collaborators in the research spoke to the struggle of boundary-setting with their mothers and the guilt associated with these boundaries. Mothers can often bring about these pressures by offering contradictory messages of being independent and an obedient mujer de hogar (woman of the home) all at once (Villenas & Moreno, 2001). Though a significant stressor, many Latina students imagined how to convert these expectations to advantages to get ahead. Of these advantages, Matos (2015) found that, for Latina students at a selective all-women’s college, “aspirational capital was evident when women discussed a desire to prove that women were capable of being sources of pride and that this was something to be shared with other women in the family” (p. 442). As indicative of studies like Marrun’s (2020) and Espinoza-Herold’s (2007), mothers often imparted linguistic capital in the forms of consejos (advice) and dichos (proverbs). In some cases, scholars have examined the exchange of dichos uniquely occurring between mothers and daughters (Espinoza-Herold, 2007) to resist and succeed in the face of gendered racism. This finding is significant in that researchers like Matos (2015) and Espinoza-Herold (2007) are drawing connections between salient cultural capitals, Latina mothers, and daughters.

In other studies, mothers possessed the lived knowledge of being a Latina woman in the United States that empowered their daughters navigating academia (Espino, 2016; Fujimoto, 2013; Guzmán, 2012; Suarez & Quiñones, 2021). For instance, Fujimoto’s (2013) study delved into how Latina mothers’ stories functioned as a support for resisting racial discrimination that their daughters faced in educational settings. Similar to the broader literature on Latinx families, Latina students discerned the gravity of their parents’ sacrifices and connected these observations to the importance of doing well academically. For many participants, their mothers specifically regarded them with high expectations and were some of the first to challenge racist notions of Latina students in schools (Fujimoto, 2013). Comparably, mothers played a role in Espino’s (2016) study by opposing family members who viewed their daughters as “sell-outs” (DeMirjyn, 2010) for attending college.

Latina mothers also challenge inequitable education systems in subtler ways (Gonzales, 2012). Providing an overview of Latina students’ K – 20 experiences, Gonzales’ (2012) study examined how Latina faculty retrospectively viewed their cultural capital. Focusing on maternal influences specifically, Gonzales (2012) detailed one participant’s mother driving her from their Mexico home to a Texas school daily for seven years for the sake of better educational opportunities. Gonzales’ (2012) research highlighted the lessons Latina mothers instill, noting participants’ mothers’ teachings of helping others first, working hard, and finding balance in life. Evident across this scholarship is the differential role of Latina mothers in their daughter’s educational journeys, leading us to further understand this relationship in the present study.

Study methods

For this study, we employed a narrative inquiry methodology (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) to center our participants’ experiences. Those who employ narrative inquiry believe that researchers can understand how people make meaning of certain experiences and phenomenon through the stories that they see as salient to their sensemaking. Narrative scholars are thus particularly attentive to the narrative elements of participants’ realities. Specifically, individuals conducting narrative studies are encouraged to analyze the contextual influences, the temporal components, interactions and internal meaning making present in participants’ stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).

Participant recruitment and selection

We used criterion and maximum variation sampling as strategies to recruit and select participants (Creswell & Poth, 2018). To begin recruiting individuals for this narrative inquiry study, we shared a call for participants on social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. The recruitment flyer and accompanying language noted criteria for participation, naming people should have been current Latina college students who have a mother of Latin American descent including the areas of Mexico, Caribbean Islands, as well as Central and South America. Furthermore, we were clear cisgender and transgender Latina collegians were eligible to engage in this research (though no trans Latinas ended up expressing interest in participating).

We then directed those who were interested in the research to fill out an electronic demographic form that asked people about their social identities and educational information. This form allowed us to be mindful of selecting people who represented different nationalities and types of institutions (e.g., region, size), representing a decision that aligned with maximum variation sampling. We wanted to be mindful of not selecting a participant pool that was too similar in terms of their backgrounds and institutional types. In the end, we identified twelve participants, a number that is consistent with narrative methodology allowing us to focus on the nuances of the Latina daughters’ stories. For more information on the participants, including their characteristics as well as their mothers’, see Table 1.

Table 1. Self-reported demographics of Latina collegians in the study.

Pseudonym	Ethnicity(s)	Pronouns	Region of Institution	Mother’s Ethnicity(s)	Mother’s Occupation
Alex	Peruvian, Puerto Rican	She/her/hers	Midwest	Peruvian	Stay-at-home mom
Esperanza	Mexican	She/her/hers	Midwest	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Gabrielle	Peruvian	She/her/hers	Northeast	Peruvian	Spanish-to-English interpreter
Janis	Peruvian	She/her/hers	Midwest	Peruvian	Scientist
Josie	Mexican	She/her/hers	Midwest	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Julia	Puerto Rican	She/her/hers	Midwest	Puerto Rican	Stay-at-home mom
Maria	Puerto Rican	She/her/hers	Southeast	Puerto Rican	Teacher
Romero	Mexican, Peruvian	She/her/hers	Southeast	Peruvian	Stay-at-home mom
Samantha	Mexican	She/her/hers	Southeast	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Sandara	Mexican	She/her/hers	West	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Sylvia	Mexican	She/her/hers	Southwest	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom
Ximena	Mexican	She/her/hers	Southeast	Mexican	Stay-at-home mom

Data collection methods

For this study, we facilitated data generation by engaging in two 60-minute semi-structured interviews with participants. These interviews occurred via the Zoom video conference software, in English, and often involved the two primary researchers on the project. During these interviews, we asked pointed questions around participants’ mother’s involvement in educational settings, collegiate aspirations, and salient identities. Specifically, we encouraged participants to speak on formative moments and events that defined their relationship with their mothers, honoring the tradition of narrative methodology (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). We would often use the prompting language of “tell us a story about a time that best captures what you shared” or “what else was going while this was occurring? Who was present?”

The first interview focused largely on the Latina collegians’ relationships with their mothers in their K-12 years. It was in these first interviews that we asked them to speak broadly about their mothers’ presence in their home growing up and how they provided messages related to their educational aspirations, prompting them to speak about different forms of capital (Yosso, 2005) emerging through these relationships. For instance, we would encourage them to speak about communities of support (social and familial capital), messages pertaining to aspirations (aspirational and linguistic capital), as well as how they navigated and resisted barriers with the help of mothers (resistant and navigational capital). The second interviews attended more explicitly to the students’ higher education years and how they employed lessons their mothers taught them, reflecting the production and exchange of knowledges. Sample questions included:

• What did support from your mother look like in terms of your college aspirations?

• What were the messages that you received from your mother related to your identities?

• When do you think about the lessons that your mother passed on while in college?

In constructing questions, we made an intentional decision to align our interview protocols with our conceptual framework merging community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) and funds of knowledge (González et al., 2006). Of note, we purposefully asked participants to recall concrete things their mother would say, often in Spanish, in the form of advice, lecture, or warning. Subsequently, we gained better insight into how each participant received and translated these funds of knowledge across cultures, languages, and settings into their own day-to-day life.

Data analysis procedures

To analyze data for this project, we decided to follow Gubrium and Holstein’s (2009) belief that individuals do not frequently tell their narratives in a chronological manner. We observed this notion in our study particularly because we intermittently prompted participants to remember and compare their experiences across K–12 and college settings during both interviews. Therefore, there is a need to re-story the tales that people tell in a way that is more sequential in nature. We honored this by creating individual narratives for each participant by incorporating direct quotes from their interviews, as well as our own interpretations. These narratives were more chronological than the participants’ interviews, each being roughly 4–6 single-spaced pages in length. These narratives were also helpful in us highlighting the story elements of their experiences to align with our methodological tradition.

From there, the analytical process involved engaging in coding in a narrative fashion (i.e., attending to time, places, and individuals) while keeping in mind our conceptual framework. Namely, the first author coded the narratives twice. On the first reading, she coded being particularly attentive to how funds of knowledge (González et al., 2006) manifested in participants’ stories. On the second reading, she coded with a lens of community cultural wealth as it related to the six capitals (Yosso, 2005). Example codes included: mother’s messages on gendered expectations influencing persistence, mother’s experiences influencing cognizance of racist environments, and mothers shaping ideals of family dream. She then wrote memos to think about both rounds of coding together and to see what patterns were emerging. The first author then consulted the second author with her initial interpretations. Because the second author was present in many of the interviews with the participants, he was able to provide prompting questions and thoughts to further hone in on her analytical insights.

Ensuring trustworthiness

When conducting a qualitative research study, it is imperative that scholars ensure that the project is rigorous (Creswell & Poth, 2018), often referred to as trustworthiness. As a result, we took numerous steps to address trustworthiness in this current research. For instance, we relied upon an often-used method in qualitative inquiry: member-checking. Once we completed the writing of the individual narratives, we sent them out to the participants to make sure that we were adequately capturing their stories, our re-storying of their narratives honored their experiences, and to have them offer feedback on our initial interpretations. Out of the twelve participants, 3 individuals replied providing minimal changes to their narratives and additional context. Furthermore, having two researchers lead this project allowed us a chance to bring up dissenting opinions and questions permitting us to come up with richer analysis. One example of this came through in our analysis process. Though the first author took lead on the qualitative data analysis, the second author was then able to read her thoughts and helped refine the patterns she saw present in the data.

Positionality statements

Because narrative scholars articulate that researchers’ selves plays a major role in how they interpret participants’ stories, it is necessary for us to speak to our own backgrounds and how they may have influenced our engagement with this research. Hannah L. Reyes is a Latina and Indigenous cisgender woman. Two different maternal figures in her life raised her, one being her Latina mother and the other, her white stepmother. Largely, Hannah received messages related to her minoritized identities from her Latina mother, which drew her to conduct this particular project alongside Antonio. Though sharing multiple identities with many participants (e.g., race, gender, first-generation status) and thus some semblance of common understanding, Hannah took great care to appreciate and accurately represent each person’s unique narrative through conversations with Antonio. As another way of practicing care, Hannah would return to the audio recordings of interviews to better situate herself in her interpretations. Antonio Duran identifies as a cisgender Latino man whose other salient identities include being queer, from a working-class background, and a first-generation college student. During the data collection and analysis process, Antonio was mindful of how his cisgender man identity may preclude him from fully understanding how patriarchy and sexism informed participants’ experiences. Consequently, he would write memos while conducting this study that would help him work through the places he might overlook given his positionality, as it provided him the space to reflect on particular interactions that occurred in interviews that caused him to reflect on his standpoint relative to participants.

Findings

Connected to our research questions and conceptual framework, we sought to understand not only which capitals manifested for participants but also the significant events leading up to these manifestations. In doing so, we organize our findings into three parts: how mothers translated their own funds of knowledge to their daughters; how daughters interpreted this knowledge and, in turn, gained capital; and how they mobilized these capitals to sustain the larger community.

Funds of knowledge transferred from mothers to daughters

Informed by the concept of funds of knowledge (González et al., 2006; Ramos & Kiyama, 2021), our first finding focuses on how mothers imparted strategies and lessons to their daughters as discussed from the participants’ vantage points. Particularly, we focus here on how Latina mothers pursued and communicated knowledge related to their daughters’ educational journeys. These knowledges were integral as mothers encountered challenges in and outside of their children’s classrooms. This pattern manifested as mothers consulted their social networks for information about their daughters’ educational institutions, majors, and workloads, in addition to seeking out supplemental opportunities for their daughters’ educational interests.

Janis, a Peruvian student, attributed her persistence in STEM disciplines to her mother’s own background as a scientist. Having discussions with Janis, her mother shared how she experienced sexism in the workplace. In an attempt to prevent Janis from internalizing similar, sexist messages, Janis’s mother took a proactive stance toward Janis’s initial interest in STEM. As Janis put it, “[going into STEM] wasn’t anything that I ever doubted that I would … achieve, because of the attitude that my mom had.” Present in Janis’ quote were lessons of persistence transmitted by her mother’s experiences. She elaborated:

She put me into these like little science camps where we do like robotics because for a bit … we would also just go like science camp over the summer and this one like science center that we had in my town, and we do like bottle rockets and different things. were just learning like basic concepts of science and she always supported me in that sense.

Backing this attitude, we find this story exemplary because of the effort of Janis’ mother to seek out camps and other opportunities that would further empower Janis. Moreover, Janis’s mother was cognizant that sexist ideals were embedded in a field like STEM and attempted to prepare Janis as best she could though, as Janis recalled, her mother continued to endure these inequities in her own career–meaning she would encounter the same stressors.

As another poignant example, stories like Gabrielle and Sandara’s illuminated how their mothers utilized their surroundings and social network in order to get their children more educational assistance. Gabrielle, a half Jewish, half Latina student, recounted how her mother’s insights influenced her choice in career path. Originally aiming to major in social work, Gabrielle gained a new perspective from her mother, who worked as English-to-Spanish interpreter. Having friends who do social work in hospitals, Gabrielle’s mother saw firsthand the quality of occupation her daughter would experience:

But I think like the types of messages I would get just like that it’s really like sad like that you’re working like really long hours and it’s really sad. Just like seeing everything that happens, a lot of my mom’s friends work in hospitals and they would talk about that …

In turn, Gabrielle’s mother communicated these realities to her. Gabrielle distinguished that these insights were never to deter her but instead, describe the toughness and sadness that came with the job. In fact, her mother and father responded to her interest in the field by stating, “You would be good at that, like that would be a good fit for you.” With these messages in mind, Gabrielle was able to make an informed decision going forward.

For as long as she could remember, Sandara had a love for language arts, particularly reading. Noticing this, she and her mother would often “spend more time at the library than anywhere else” in order to nurture these passions. Later coming to struggle with subjects like math, Sandara also recalled how her mother helped until she could not any longer:

I remember like sometimes like for like math problems I’d be like a bit frustrated not being able to solve them and then my mom also feeling like … she couldn’t like offer that um like support anymore … saying “Well I can’t you know. No te puedo ayudar.”

Following this conversation with Sandara, Sandara’s mother enacted her own type of agency by consulting with her network to find out about tutoring opportunities, eventually hearing about an after-school program from other parents. Subsequently, Sandara recounted her mother saying, “They’ll help you guys out with your homework here” and enrolling them soon after. In this instance, Sandara’s mother relied on her own knowledge and networks to supply her children with the resources necessary to excel. In doing so, Sandara offered a glimpse of her mother’s resilience and unwavering investment. Although these experiences often happened before college for participants, what is notable is that each of them could recount how these stories instilled in them qualities of perseverance and dedication. In turn, these Latina daughters translated this into forms of cultural wealth, the focus of our second finding.

Daughters converting funds of knowledge to cultural capital

For our second theme, we noted how participants would tell narratives detailing the process of manifesting cultural capital. Connected to their own mothers’ emphasis on education, the Latina collegians in our study understood how important it was to succeed. Some examples of this motivation included setting themselves up as competitive college applicants through extracurriculars and dual-credit and recognizing the agency and potential to disrupt the status quo as Latina women.

For Ximena, a Mexican student who navigated the pre-college process as the first in her family, applying to college was a daunting task. Though in the dark about the application specifics, Ximena gathered that there were certain steps she could follow to secure admission and financial aid, representing a form of navigational capital:

In high school, I started working, I was involved in many, many clubs. I was the president of several clubs. So I was up early in the morning and I got to school early and I was there late. My parents didn’t understand it for a while. After a while … they accepted it. After I explained like, “This is how I’m going to get to colleges, I’m going to get things paid for. Because we don’t have money, I need to go to college on scholarship.

Making an important distinction, Ximena described how her parents were involved in other ways during this time saying, “their support never wane[d] … If I [told my mom I had] a test, she’s praying during the hour that my test is on … it was this concept of religious capital … I was like, “That’s what my mom does.”’ Ultimately, these ways of navigating the college application process while still recalling her mother’s presence helped Ximena to carve out her own pathway to higher education. Similarly for Romero, a Peruvian and Mexican student aspiring to go to law school, being the master of her own narrative was empowering and represented a form of aspirational capital. Accrediting her mother’s tendency to “never push a single school [or major]” on her, Romero blended her own interests in political science while honoring her family with a Spanish double major. Accomplishing this goal, Romero said, “makes me excited … because, like, I know how proud they’ll be … it’s like a place … they don’t really know about … so this is kind of something I have to conquer on my own and maybe that’s like what’s exciting.”

In another instance, Sylvia, a Mexican student, recounted her own motivations for pursuing a college degree, showcasing her aspirational capital. Specifically, recognizing how her mother prioritized education led Sylvia to connect the dots to her own experience, saying “my education has always been put first because my mom and my grandparents’ education didn’t really any go any further from high school or elementary level … that’s pushing me. I’m doing it for the fact that they couldn’t.” Moreover, observing that her mother’s experience was only one of many similar stories in her community, Sylvia resolved to go to college on behalf of her community, a direct connection to resistant capital:

I grew up in an immigrant-based community … It’s hard to see that from my other [college] friend’s point of view because their parents were the only people who spoke Spanish in their community, or who went through the same thing. My grandma and my mom, they had that support of the community where they weren’t the only ones. Other people knew what it was like to not learn English until later on in your life, or to not have documentation of your citizenship and things like that. It has been a different thing for my mom and my grandma than it has been for my other friend’s grandparents or mothers.

In many ways, Sylvia’s story reflects instances of gained capital, obtaining this through figures like her mother. Whether the aspirational capital imparted that affirmed Sylvia’s place in higher education or the resistant capital she developed to advocate for others, Sylvia perceived the benefits she reaped by being in community with individuals that looked like her.

Sustaining a community of cultural wealth

Closing the loop on our findings, our third theme highlights the perpetuity of community (cultural wealth) in the broader Latinx community. Specifically, we observed instances of Latina students mobilizing their knowledges and capitals to empower others. Some of these instances included encouraging and guiding others to enroll in dual credit, apply for colleges, and secure scholarships as well as bringing attention to larger societal issues.

Josie, a Mexican student, witnessed others pouring into her and assumed a role to do the same for others. For Josie, demystifying the college application process came with the expectation that others would continue to share the wealth, saying, “when someone cares about you, you see that you can do more stuff and you can imagine your life [differently].” This idea of someone caring was intimate to Josie as she recounted how passive her own mother was in schools, dropping out in middle school because she had no sources of support or people caring for her. Simply put, Josie “never had that guidance,” a difficult reality for her. With this sentiment in mind, despite transitioning to her current undergraduate institution, Josie resolved to help those in her home community explaining, “you always got to go back. You always got to help the next students because they were in the same shoes as you.” Thus, this wealth is sustained in an effort to create bridges into once inaccessible spaces.

Julia, a Puerto Rican student, also shared this aspiration in relation to her younger siblings. As a young child, Julia likened her demeanor to her mother’s, saying, “the me from then, I think, would be more similar to my mom, be like more quiet and not wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings and not wanting to rock the boat in that essence.” This approach was also noticeable in her mother’s educational involvement, Julia mentioned, rarely interacting with teachers. As Julia’s siblings started school, however, Julia realized the importance of taking risks and putting herself out there:

I used K −12 as a way to kind of guide my sisters … the kind of thing where a teacher will know your sibling, so they instantly like you, or they instantly don’t like you. I was like … “You better cash in on all of the brownie points that I’m going to get you. Okay, because I want to help them as much as I can.”

For Julia, taking risks helped her sisters in ways her mother was not in a position to previously.

As a final example, Samantha, a Mexican student and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, shared her aspirations to become an international journalist with a focus on DACA-related issues. As Samantha explained, she did not often see herself or those like her when it came to what was shared about DACA students’ educational journeys. To Samantha, the journalist stance toward DACA-related issues was always the same, saying, “I feel like a lot of people are just so into suffering stories. [Like] “Did you suffer? Did you? If so, I can write your story.”’ To change the monolithic narrative, Samantha resolved to bring silenced voices to the table:

I want to make a change for DACA recipients, it’s very hard, and the way I think is very different as well. So, it’s just like, tell me your story, but I don’t want to hear, “I go to Harvard.” Good for you. … I want to talk to someone who’s like, “Oh, I went to a community college,” or, “I’m making Cs, but I work at Wendy’s.” Oh, I want to hear your story. What is so interesting about yours? I’m so tired of just hearing of those people that go to big universities, and that’s how they think that that’s how DACA recipients are. It’s like, we’re also going to school for other things such as media studies, teaching. We’re not [just] going for business or civil engineering anymore.

This nuance was especially important for Samantha because as she explained, her mother bringing her to the U.S. was simply her “trying to do something for my future.” Yet, unless the suffering element Samantha mentions is present, stories like her mother’s are often overlooked or minimized. In disrupting this troubling approach, Samantha exemplifies how she uses the skills and insights she has gained in college to empower those at the margins.

Discussion

Findings from this narrative inquiry study suggested the unique teachings Latina mothers imparted for their daughters navigating higher education. Building on the literature that exists, our study reflected the agency mothers often possess when it comes to transmitting funds of knowledge to their daughters (Espino, 2016). Uniquely, our findings then detail how these Latina daughters received these funds of knowledge and, with converted cultural capital, applied them to their educational contexts.

To begin, evident in the first finding, the Latina daughters in this project spoke to the ways that they perceived their mother playing a role in their educational journeys before they matriculated to college. In doing so, these participants’ stories resembled the broader literature that speaks to the positive familial influences that Latinx college students experience (Espino, 2016; Sáenz et al., 2017) and that mothers themselves transmit (e.g., Espino, 2016; Fujimoto, 2013; Guzmán, 2012; Suarez & Quiñones, 2021). These realities were evident in stories like Sandara where her mother would spend time studying at the library with her and sought out assistance when she realized that she could no longer assist with her math homework. In instances like these, these mothers communicated the values of dedication and perseverance in the face of cultural challenges, representing a form of funds of knowledge (González et al., 2006; Ramos & Kiyama, 2021). Importantly, these pre-college experiences then translated into Latina daughter’s collegiate years, highlighting the phenomenon that Luedke (2020) communicated that funds of knowledge can become forms of cultural capital.

Of note, Latina participants in this study described how they mobilized the lessons they received from their mothers in postsecondary education environments. Even if the mothers themselves did not understand the processes or experiences that their daughters were going though, they provided the support necessary for these women to persist, challenging racist expectations that people typically have of Latinas (Fujimoto, 2013). Examples of this came through with Ximena’s story where she mentioned how her mother would pass along religious capital as she encountered stressful educational milestones, a concept not explicitly captured in Yosso’s (2005) framework but was salient for the relationship with her mother. In the narratives we highlighted, these daughters described other forms of capital including aspirational (as seen in Romero’s and Sylvia’s case) as well as resistant (underscored in Sylvia’s experience). Though past research has shown how the presence of mothers can be stressors for Latina daughters (Camargo Gonzalez, 2020; Espinoza, 2010; Matos, 2015), the stories the participants highlighted spoke to the positive influence that their mothers played.

Underscored in our final finding, participants realized their unique positioning to sustain their communities, representing their process of passing along cultural wealth to others. In these instances, they took the inspiration they gained from their maternal figures and gave their cultural knowledge to people around them. For Julia, for example, being the oldest meant she knew that she had to pass on her own know-how to her siblings, demonstrating Luedke’s (2020) notion of children transmitting cultural wealth themselves. Namely, this form of giving back may be representative of how Latina women are frequently expected to function in a caretaking role and to serve as a cultural broker (Camargo Gonzalez, 2020; Espinoza, 2010; Matos, 2015).

Implications for research and practice

Though this project is in part an answer to Ramos and Kiyama’s (2021) call to bridge funds of knowledge and community cultural wealth, specifically as it relates to Latina college women, we hope our study will not be the last. Therefore, we find it necessary to offer implications for future research and practice to further benefit the lives of Latinx college students, and especially Latina women.

For example, related to community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), several participants in our study explicitly named types of cultural capitals they thought they or their mother had. As such an example, Ximena recalled her mother’s prayers as examples of religious capital enacted to support her (for more reading on spiritual/religious capital, see Park et al., 2020). As scholars become more aware of the need to employ culturally sustaining frameworks, researchers should consider moving past their own interpretations when centering community cultural wealth and instead allow participants to share moments of perceived capital acquisition/conferment. This practice may look like asking students directly if they are familiar with any capitals as multiple participants like Gabrielle and Sandara naturally named in conversation, an action that those working in higher education environments can similarly take up. Researchers may also consider providing an overview of Yosso’s (2005) six capitals and asking participants if her definitions prompt any significant memories. Moreover, researchers could encourage participants to offer if they feel a capital is missing or incomplete.

Additionally, as Gabrielle and others shared, recounting her mother’s involvement in educational settings was “a side she didn’t often talk about.” Likely, this sentiment is not an isolated one as much literature about students’ college experiences is framed as an individualist journey or does not take into account home/family communities. Thus, when conducting research with marginalized student populations, including Latina women, scholars should include families and other support systems when appropriate. As one example, we encouraged participants to bridge their family and home contexts with the question, “when do you think of your mother when at college?” With questions like these, we acknowledged the multiple and holistic identities participants held, including a family member, student, and loved one.

The findings from this narrative inquiry study can also serve to influence educational practice, specifically within higher education institutions. What was evident in the participants’ stories is that too often, their educational settings and the individuals within them were not operating in manners that tapped into the funds of knowledge that these Latina collegians possessed. Additionally, though they encountered difficulties in doing so, their mothers frequently sought ways to be involved in their children’s educational aspirations. Consequently, educators across K-12 and higher education must reject the notion that Latina mothers do not wish to be present in their daughters’ schooling. At times, they may not simply have the chance to or know how to. Therefore, both K-12 and higher education professionals must create environments where Latina daughters are able to bring their mothers along, whether it is formal groups for Latina mothers or visiting days for mothers in postsecondary education environments. Within colleges and universities, such initiatives could be led by diversity affairs offices or BRIDGE programs as long as they are supported fiscally by the broader institutional context.

Additionally, these students vary rarely spoke about instructors who would ask about their backgrounds and how they were incorporating pedagogies of the home in their learning. As Gabrielle noted, speaking Spanish was an incredible asset to her but it was never positioned as such in her schooling. As a result, it is vitally important that pedagogues within collegiate settings adopt more culturally-relevant practices that actively involve the information that Latina students bring in with them from their home communities. Though not specific to Latina students, educators could reference literature reviews like the one developed by Llopart and Esteban-Guitart (2018) conducted tracking the trends in how instructors engage funds of knowledge. Drawing upon practices such as these, it would then behoove educators to recognize the gendered dynamics that play a role in how Latinas learn and draw upon their funds of knowledge. The same also applies to programs and initiatives in higher education environments designed for historically minoritized populations (e.g., cultural centers, BRIDGE programs).

Finally, as evident in the participants’ stories, they discovered ways that they could mobilize their cultural wealth beyond their own journeys, which then pushes educational leaders to consider how they may construct initiatives given these patterns. One example of this came through in Josie’s story as she was passionate about helping others enroll in classes or navigate financial aid processes. However, Josie and others did this on their own volition and time. Hence, we encourage both K-12 and higher education settings to formalize these relationships, making sure that they compensate students for their efforts. This could take the form of mentoring programs where Latinas are matched with someone who identifies similarly and where they receive financial compensation or class credit to help their mentee. Though participants did this without recognition, it is imperative educational leaders acknowledge the immense time and energy Latinas put in to assist others to succeed.

Conclusion

By emphasizing the collective family unit often involved in the student journey (Noel Taylor & O’Flynn, 2020), our study aimed to detail the importance of the Latina mother in shaping, guiding, and sustaining her Latina daughter’s educational trajectory. Given the literature that shows how families can inform Latinx/a/o students’ education (e.g., Alfaro et al., 2014; Marrun, 2020; Sáenz et al., 2020), we find it meaningful for practitioners and scholars alike to understand the complex nature of the relationships that Latina daughters have with their mothers. Importantly, what the participants’ narratives revealed is that there is a unique quality to the bond that mothers and daughters hold based on the similar ways that they have experienced gendered and sexist realities in and out of education. Hence, we hope educational leaders tap into these relationships to ensure that Latina collegians remain successful and persist in higher education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In an attempt to remain inclusive to those of various gender identities, we employ the identifier “Latinx” to refer to individuals within this community. When referencing other publications, however, we honor the language that they employ in their writing.