‘Not like me’: educational aspirations and mothering in an urban poor neighbourhood in India

Abstract

The paper argues that the mother’s association with the child’s schooling and educational needs is not just limited and peculiar to the middle-class families, as the literature suggests, but it is increasingly true of poor and working-class families too. This paper discusses how mothers from a poor neighbourhood in India straddle between household work, paid employment and children’s education and how they envisage and support their children’s schooling, at times going against the general tide to ensure a better life for their children. Other than highlighting the gendered nature of support for children’s education, this paper, also outlines the nature of the differences and distinctions among mothers from a poor neighbourhood in terms of the family social status and educational levels.

Keywords:

• Education
• mothering
• gender
• poor
• working class
• urban

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank her PhD supervisor, Prof. S.Srinivasa Rao, for his comments on earlier versions of this work in the thesis. She is also immensely thankful to her respondents for their invaluable time and insights. The author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their critical comments on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The authors acknowledge this fact.

2 The words and phrases that are italicised are ones that were originally used in English by the respondent. Using English words and phrases was part of how they positioned themselves as educated.