The Value of Education and Educación: Nurturing Mexican American Children’s Educational Aspirations to the Doctorate

ABSTRACT

Guided by the framework of community cultural wealth, this study uncovered how 7 low-income, 1st-generation Mexican American PhDs interpreted their parents’ and families’ educational aspirations, messages imbued with aspects of normative parental/familial involvement as well as cultural forms of support. This study demonstrates the power of narratives that children carry with them as they navigate various educational systems. I discuss strategies for helping Mexican American students make meaning of these messages and negotiate potential conflicts with their goals of degree attainment, and I add a new dimension to research on the formation of educational aspirations and the role of educación.

KEYWORDS:

• Community cultural wealth
• educación
• educational aspirations
• Mexican American
• parental involvement

After the Latina/o population became the largest minority group in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004), projections of garnering greater influence in society and within institutions, such as education, were widespread in the media (El Nasser, 2003; Schmidt, 2003a, 2003b). These projections are not yet realized in the area of educational attainment, particularly for Mexican Americans, the largest ethnic group within the Latina/o population.¹ As of 2010, 57.4% of Mexican Americans older than the age of 25 had graduated from high school compared to 62.9% of the entire Hispanic population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). In terms of attaining postsecondary education, only 10.6% of Mexican Americans older than the age of 25 have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to 13.9% of the total Hispanic population and 29.9% of the entire U.S. population.

The purported causes of these disparities can be traced over decades of educational research and practice. As early as 1916, for example, discriminatory educational policies across the country used linguistic differences and phenotype to segregate Mexican American children from White classrooms and placed Spanish-speaking children and children with Spanish surnames in segregated schools (Fernández & Guskin, 1981). Americanization programs coordinated at local schools dispossessed Mexican Americans of their culture and language by enforcing American values that Mexican Americans supposedly lacked, such as proper hygiene (Delgado Bernal, 2000; Fernández & Guskin, 1981). In addition, culturally determinist theoretical models were used to perpetuate negative cultural stereotypes and criticize values such as “present versus future time orientation, immediate instead of deferred gratification … cooperation rather than competition” (Solórzano & Solórzano, 1995, p. 297).

Presently, Mexican American families are blamed or held accountable for low rates of educational attainment despite countless efforts to dispel these stereotypes (Ceja, 2004; Solórzano & Yosso, 2001; Valencia & Black, 2002). Decades of research have critiqued the ethnocentric nearsightedness of educational research pertaining to Mexican American communities, yet the deficit discourse continues to affect how educators and researchers perceive and work with Mexican American students and families at various educational levels (Ceballo, 2004). Little consideration is given to the moral development (i.e., educación) that families provide in the home that complements the formal education received at school (Valdes, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999). The master narrative that Mexican American communities² do not value education is pervasive in thought and practice despite substantial evidence to the contrary; this narrative has become a convenient excuse to deny support to these communities.

This article describes the interpretations and (re)tellings of parental/familial messages about education that affected the formation of educational aspirations of seven Mexican American PhDs. These participants were selected from a larger study focused on the life narratives of 33 Mexican American PhDs (Espino, 2008) because they identified as low income or working class in their childhoods, they were the first in their families to attend college, and their “parents’ highest level of education [was] a high school diploma or less” (Ceja, 2006, p. 91). Because much of the parental involvement literature focuses on families from low-income backgrounds and those with lower levels of educational attainment, I focused on participants who reflected similar backgrounds in an effort to illuminate and reject deficit-centered findings in the literature about this population. The primary research questions were as follows: (a) In what ways did Mexican American PhDs interpret their parents’ and families’ messages about education and educación? and (b) To what extent did parents’ and families’ messages about education and educación shape the educational aspirations of these Mexican American PhDs? This study contributes to literature that substantiates parental messages about education and parental support that can lead to positive outcomes in educational attainment. In addition, this study adds complexity to the scholarship on educational attainment, considering the multiple facets that lead to the development of educational aspirations and the convergence of parental/familial support and structural educational opportunities. The (re)tellings of parental/familial messages as shared from the perspectives of adult children contribute to the discourse regarding the extent to which children internalize and interpret parental/familial messages about education and how the messages shared through word and example can be forms of parental/familial involvement.

Literature review

In an effort to contextualize the role of Mexican American parents and families in the formation of educational aspirations and the extent to which their messages about education and educación are internalized, I provide an overview of how educational research positions parental involvement and how parental/familial messages can be interpreted as a form of parental involvement.

Parental/familial involvement

The roles that researchers and practitioners claim that parents and families should have in students’ education have fluctuated over time (Tierney & Auerbach, 2004). These claims fall along a spectrum that categorizes forms of involvement, or the purported lack thereof, across race and social class (Freeman, 2010). Quantifiable behavior such as rates of parental participation in schools, the frequency of discussing educational issues with children, and rates of contact with teachers pertaining to academic issues are often the only forms of parental involvement supported in the literature (Altschul, 2011; Perna & Titus, 2005).

The myopic view of parental involvement within research is also translated to practice. For example, teachers who have lower expectations for ethnic minority students or students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds transfer their expectations into classroom environments and students’ classroom behavior. Such teachers are less likely to praise and reward students, “wait less time for a response to a question … [are] more likely to criticize a wrong answer, interpret [student] behavior in more negative ways, and teach less material … than teachers with high expectations” (Solórzano & Solórzano, 1995, p. 304). Administrators and teachers, even those with the best of intentions, can show a lack of care or personal concern for students of color, marginalizing them in the process. Through their interactions in classroom environments and school structures, students of color (sub)consciously recognize that they are Othered as individuals and members of communities whose cultures, language(s), religious beliefs, and traditions are marginalized in education and society (Valenzuela, 1999). School administrators expect particular actions taken on the part of parents and families, centering all school activities around school schedules and on school grounds rather than extending the school into the community and arranging events and activities around family time. For parents who actively engage in school activities or attend parent–teacher conferences, activation of accepted forms of capital can result in greater access to and support from teachers (Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Monkman, Ronald, & Theramene, 2005). Conversely, approaching teachers and school administrators with forms of capital that are not valued can lead to barriers between teachers and parents (Lareau & Horvat, 1999). Families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds or with children who are first-generation college students do not necessarily have access to these resources and are held accountable for not performing normative forms of parental involvement (López, 2001).

In such environments, Mexican Americans are forced to live among incongruent worlds, with the pressure of assimilating to the dominant culture while struggling to maintain connections with family through languages, cultures, and values. Mexican American and Latino families may not demonstrate parental involvement in normative ways, but there is ample evidence that these families place education and educación at the forefront of their values (Auerbach, 2006; Quiñones & Marquez Kiyama, 2014; Valdes, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999). The concept of educación refers to the ways in which Mexican American families incorporate the values of personal development and respect for others as part of what it means to be educated as well as layer lessons taught in the home with lessons taught in the classroom (Auerbach, 2002; Valenzuela, 1999; Yosso, 2006). According to Auerbach (2006), “The cultural schema of educación has a powerful impact on how Latino immigrant parents participate in their children’s education,” which often entails offering “moral support on the sidelines” rather than performing normative forms of parental involvement (p. 278). As a result, parents and families emphasize the moral development of their children in the home while encouraging good behavior at school.

Assessing the level of involvement for low-income Mexican American families is difficult, especially when the “not so visible ways” of parental action are neglected in the research (Auerbach, 2002, p. 1385). Parental involvement should be “reframed as a multidimensional concept inclusive of family-school engagement practices and educational expectations and aspirations, anchored in Latino-centered views of education” (Quiñones & Marquez Kiyama, 2014, p. 150). In this instance, the educational aspirations shared and (re)interpreted throughout a child’s formative and young adult life should be analyzed more critically as an imaginative aspect of agency that is “shaped by parents’ social location, cultural models, and family dynamics” (Auerbach, 2006, p. 276). Parents’ educational aspirations—verbal, embodied, and performed—demonstrate the various ways in which parents and families “address, respond to, and struggle with dominant beliefs and ideologies” as well as provide venues for “creative meaning-making and improvisations—a different kind of power” found within marginalized communities (Villenas, 2006, p. 150). The “pain, joy, and contradictions” (Villenas, 2006, p. 149) expressed in these messages may ultimately affect access and retention in college and graduate school as Mexican American students negotiate the possible tensions between conflicting messages of what it means to be educated and bién educados (i.e., well-educated, well-mannered; Auerbach, 2006; Gándara, 1995).

Parental and familial aspirations

Parents’ aspirations are based on their own educational experiences, insider knowledge about educational systems, as well as their perceptions of school climate and perceptions of their children’s academic abilities (Ceja, 2004; Spera, Wentzel, & Matto, 2009). In addition, parents tend to have higher expectations of children finishing college, even if this is something that they were unable to accomplish themselves (Bank, Slavings, & Biddle, 1990). Latina/o parents are cited as having more influence over their children’s educational aspirations than other ethnic groups (Clayton, 1993; Qian & Blair, 1999). Latina/o parents who express their interest in advancing their own education have children with higher educational aspirations and believe that such aspirations are achievable (Behnke, Piercy, & Diversi, 2004). However, barriers as cited in the research exist, such as lack of time to dedicate to furthering parents’ education because of work obligations, lack of understanding of how children’s aspirations could actually become reality, and limited English language proficiency that constrains the type of assistance that parents can provide with homework (Behnke et al., 2004).

For Latina/o families, aspirations are often manifested in parental/familial consejos (advice) shared within the home that motivate children (Auerbach, 2002, 2006) and lead to advocacy for children in schools (Delgado-Gaitan, 1994). Stories play a powerful role in Latina/o families because they establish a sense of worth and build resistance against the challenges faced outside of the home (Gándara, 1995). These stories become embedded in how the child perceives himself or herself as well because they “reinforce the sense of mutual obligation among family members” (Auerbach, 2006, p. 278). At times, the stories are manifested in behavior and life experience, as noted by Ceja (2004), who found that the parents of Chicana college students did not have to talk directly about college to instill in their daughters the importance of higher education. Children can observe the challenges that parents experience as a result of not having an education (Auerbach, 2006; Ceja, 2004; López, 2001). These observations can uplift and motivate children, as well as serve as an added weight as children contend with the pressures of advancing their families and communities through education (Fisher & Padmawidjaja, 1999). Parental/familial agency and shared consejos cannot solely resolve the challenges that Mexican American communities face in advancing through various educational systems, but the stories gathered from this study offer greater depth to understanding the wealth of support that parents provide that is often overlooked in the educational literature.

Conceptual framework

In order to address the deficit discourse about Mexican American students, families, and communities that is found in the parental involvement literature, I use Yosso’s (2005, 2006) concept of community cultural wealth. Community cultural wealth challenges the specific focus on cultural capital, a concept that reminds scholars as well as students of color that communities of color lack the knowledge that is most valued in schools. This section focuses on the origins of the community cultural wealth framework and the extent to which this framework can uncover the imaginative aspects of agency found within the recollections of parental/familial consejos and narratives.

Critical race theory (CRT) as the foundation of community cultural wealth

CRT places race and racism at the center of political, social, and educational discourses. The larger umbrella of CRT focuses on counter-storytelling, which is “a method of telling a story that casts doubts on the validity of accepted … myths, especially ones held by the majority” and the permanence of racism (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001, p. 144). Four tenets guide CRT scholarship: (a) Racism is ordinary and not aberrational, (b) U.S. society is based on a “White-over-color ascendancy” that advances White supremacy and provides a scapegoat (i.e., communities of color) for working-class communities, (c) race and racism are social constructions, and (d) storytelling “urges Black and Brown writers to recount their experiences with racism … and to apply their own unique perspectives to assess … master narratives” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001, pp. 7–9).

In the mid-1990s, researchers defined CRT in education as “a set of … perspectives, methods, and pedagogy that seeks to identify, analyze, and transform those structural, cultural, and interpersonal aspects of education that maintain the subordination of [students] of color” (Solórzano, 1998, p. 123). Education is viewed as an institution that “operate[s] in contradictory ways, with the potential to oppress and marginalize co-existing with the potential to emancipate and empower” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001, p. 479). The critical race scholar in education can counter the deficit model by focusing on Mexican American students’ and families’ assets and lived experiences and, through careful analysis of the data, inspire action through the counterstories constructed.

Community cultural wealth

Asset-based models such as funds of knowledge (Moll & González, 2004; Vélez-Ibañez & Greenberg, 1992) and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005, 2006; Yosso & Solórzano, 2005) have not only challenged deficit-centered discourses but helped scholars to reconceptualize how Latinas/os navigate educational pathways. Yosso’s community cultural wealth framework was first introduced in 2005 as an organization of literature based on decades of research on Latina/o educational experiences. She drew from a branch of CRT called Latina/o critical race theory that not only centered race and racism as an inherent part of the struggles faced by Latinas/os in U.S. society but also recognized that the intersections of language, immigrant status, accent, phenotype, and surname contributed to the subjugation of Latina/o communities (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001).

Because wealth is not merely an accumulation of income but an accumulation of “assets and resources, [such as] stocks, savings, owning a home or business” (p. 40), Yosso (2006) theorized that assets and resources found in communities of color had the potential to support students along their educational pathways. She aggregated studies about these assets and resources into categories of capital that would “account for how students of color may simultaneously promote the practice of both dominant and transformative forms of cultural and social capital to achieve academic success” (Maldonado, Rhoads, & Buenavista, 2005, p. 633).

The categories of capital within a community cultural wealth framework are aspirational, linguistic, navigational, social, familial, and resistant. Aspirational capital is parental transmission and maintenance of dreams and goals “beyond present circumstances” throughout the children’s educational journeys despite “real or perceived barriers and, often, without the resources or other objective means to attain these goals” (Yosso & Solórzano, 2005, p. 130). Mexican American children who know multiple languages and communication methods can serve as language brokers for their families and build “connections between racialized cultural history and language” (p. 132). These real-world literacy skills engender linguistic capital, or the “intellectual and social tools attained through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style” (p. 132). By traversing through social institutions and dominant structures, Mexican American children gain navigational capital, which is a “set of social-psychological skills that assist[s] individuals and groups to maneuver through structures of inequality … [and] acknowledges individual agency within institutional constraints” (p. 131). Kinship networks and loose ties to other social networks and resources, or social capital, help children and families gather resources and information to navigate social structures and give back to social networks. Familial capital is nurtured through kinship networks and includes cultural identity(ies) as well as community history and well-being. “From these kinship ties, [Mexican American children] learn the importance of emotional, moral, educational, and occupational consciousness” (p. 130). Finally, resistant capital is developed through awareness of and agency against forms of oppression as well as “the willingness to challenge [and transform] inequalities” and prove others wrong (p. 155).

The accumulation of various forms of capital can provide the springboard for Mexican Americans to navigate through educational systems. From the standpoint of educational research, focusing on different forms of capital (in addition to cultural capital) can help affirm the values inherent within Mexican American communities and develop better strategies for accessing and completing postsecondary education.

Methodological approach

This article is part of a larger study that analyzed the life narratives of 33 Mexican American PhDs along their journeys to the doctorate (Espino, 2008). I used narrative analysis, which “takes as its object of investigation the story itself” and analyzes how the story is ordered (Riessman, 1993, p. 1). Context is especially important because it involves the “historical moment of the telling; the race, class, and gender systems the [participants] manipulate to survive and within which their talk has to be interpreted” (Riessman, 1993, p. 21). This approach dispels dominant cultural assumptions and encourages reflexive relationships between the researcher and participants (Auerbach, 2002).

Participants

The participant sample extracted for this article consisted of two females and five males of Mexican descent who successfully completed their doctorates at five different U.S. universities between 2004 and 2006. Recruitment e-mails encouraged participants from any discipline and were distributed widely through social networks and organizational listservs, such as the National Latina/o Psychological Association and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanas/os and Native Americans in the Sciences. Interested participants completed a demographic form that included open-ended questions about racial/ethnic identity(ies), gender, academic discipline, current occupation, pseudonym, and contact information. I ascertained participants’ social class backgrounds during the interviews as well as additional background information regarding their immigrant status and parental educational attainment. The participants incorporated into this article were the first in their families to attend college, had parents who did not enroll in college, and identified themselves as working class or poor. The participants were raised in Arizona, California, and Texas; two participants had been born in Mexico and then raised in the United States. I categorized participants’ doctoral disciplines based on the National Research Council’s (2006) taxonomy of doctoral fields: arts and humanities (two participants), education (three participants), and social and behavioral sciences (two participants). Five of the participants were faculty members, one was a university researcher/analyst, and one was a therapist. The participants spoke English and Spanish throughout the interviews and often alternated between the two languages. I made every effort to respect how the participants chose to identify themselves; therefore, their chosen racial/ethnic identities are included in their quotes.

I conducted all of the semistructured interviews via telephone with the exception of two participants whom I interviewed in person while attending two separate education conferences. The interview protocol focused on participants’ family histories, their educational experiences, and the structures or mechanisms they used to successfully complete the doctorate. Each audio-recorded interview lasted at least 1.5 hours, and participants were interviewed at least twice to ensure that the interview protocol questions were answered. To mitigate concerns regarding data collection, I focused on being an empathetic interviewer (Fontana & Fey, 2005), developing rapport and trust with the participants by listening carefully to their stories and providing opportunities for reciprocal conversations that would help “create the space for [us] to reflect on the meaning-making process together” (Jones, Torres, & Arminio, 2006, p. 166). Centering personal truths and experiential knowledge in this study meant that I made space for the lived experiences of individuals from working-class backgrounds who identified as first-generation college students.

Data analysis

I approached the data through a narrative analysis perspective, which meant that my role was to (re)present participants’ stories and (re)interpretations, considering five levels of representation. Participants first think about their experiences (attending to experience) and then decide how they will share those experiences with others (telling about experience). The audience will largely determine how those experiences are explicated, as the telling of experiences demonstrates how participants want to be known to the audience. The experiences are recorded and then (re)presented in text, which is a “fixation of language … into written speech” (transcribing experience; Riessman, 1993, p. 11). The researcher-interpreter then critically evaluates the transcribed experiences and, based on his or her theoretical framework and positionality, formulates similarities and differences in experiences across the sample and then discusses “what the interview narratives signify; editing, and reshaping what was told” (p. 13). The final level in representation is reading experience, whereby participants or external readers encounter the written work and provide feedback on how the narratives are (re)presented.

The data from the larger study were analyzed as “verbal action … explaining, informing, defending, complaining, and confirming or challenging the status quo” (Chase, 2005, p. 657). I maintained a journal of my interpretations in an effort to (re)consider the themes that were emerging and the multiple interpretations that could explain the participants’ life narratives. For the purposes of this article, I further analyzed how the seven participants interpreted the parental/familial messages they recalled from memories and forms of capital that were acquired through those parental/familial messages, if any. The narratives shared and analyzed were (re)presentations of the realities experienced and remembered by the participants at particular moments in time.

Trustworthiness

A critical tool in narrative analysis is the use of member checks or external readers who can provide feedback on the (re)presentations and (re)interpretations of participants’ realities (Jones et al., 2006). When asked to provide feedback on the transcription drafts, participants added new narratives and requested edits to their responses in order to protect themselves when referencing racist interactions with colleagues and faculty; one returned the actual transcriptions with corrections. I utilized the finalized transcripts when interpreting the data.

I felt an obligation to (re)present the participants’ narratives in a responsible manner. Many of these participants are the only Mexican Americans or faculty of color in their departments and may be easily recognizable depending on their disciplines and social identities. In an effort to protect their anonymity, I do not include the names of any institutions attended, graduation dates, or ages and only describe doctoral discipline and general geographic location, if necessary, within the context of the narratives.

Positionality

Disclosing one’s “understandings, beliefs, biases … and theories” is helpful in addressing how the researcher (re)presents the findings (van Manen, 1990, p. 47). My decision to analyze the life narratives of Mexican American PhDs was based on uncovering and addressing my own journey as a Mexican American/Chicana, middle-class, first-generation college student who is not proficient in Spanish and who was the first in my extended families to obtain a doctorate. Some of my most treasured memories of being with my family involve storytelling around the kitchen table. The stories shared helped me learn about the history of my family, the values we espouse, and the role that I play in paving the trail for future generations. I have observed how the same story that has been recited many times through the years shifts and changes, inflected with new lessons or given a different emphasis based on what I am supposed to learn that day. My parents and extended kin have wisdom that goes beyond formal schooling, and I believe that the cultural assets that they brought to that kitchen table and imparted on me have been and continue to be vital to my educational success and to my personal development. I am driven to write about parental/familial consejos in an effort to combat the master narrative that Mexican American parents and families do not value education and to honor the imaginative aspect of agency embedded within the stories shared while also attending to the contradictions found within the consejos that may reflect dominant paradigms. The concept of community cultural wealth challenges me to consider how asset-based models facilitate better understandings of the complex experiences of Mexican American communities that should not fit the deficit-centered discourse on Latina/o educational attainment.

Limitations

This study illuminates the experiences of a small group of Mexican American PhDs who successfully navigated through educational systems and cannot necessarily be generalized to the entire population of current Mexican American PhDs or to those who aspire to earn the doctorate. In addition, the memories shared cannot be verified, as these are interpretations made by adult children about events that occurred in childhood. However, the (re)interpretations of those memories are still salient because the extent to which the participants internalized these messages led to real outcomes as evidenced in the findings. Despite these limitations, I understood the power I had as an interviewer to guide the interviews and my role as a narrator, weaving together participants’ recollections into a larger story about Mexican American educational attainment and taking the responsibility for (re)presenting these narratives with care and respect.

Findings

We are the manifestations of all of our parents’ hopes and dreams. It’s always because of our parents. That’s the way I see it. I belong to them and whatever I become was just because of them. (Christine, Mexican American/Chicana, social behavioral sciences)

The participants’ recollections of parental/familial messages about education illustrate forms of capital as described in Yosso’s (2005, 2006) community cultural wealth framework. With particular attention to the imaginative aspects of agency activated through word and example, the findings demonstrate the formation and maintenance of familial, aspirational, and resistance capital, which were at the forefront of the narratives shared. In an effort to dispel the assumption that Mexican American communities are monolithic on issues related to education, I also present the contradicting messages found within some of the participants’ attempts to interpret parental/familial consejos about education (Auerbach, 2007). On the surface, the stories shared could be misconstrued by the reader as perpetuating the master narrative that Mexican American parents/families do not value education. It is important to move beyond a deficit-centered approach and recognize that these are adult children’s interpretations of their parents’ motivations and that systemic and structural barriers can affect parental/familial perspectives on social mobility through education and the subsequent consejos that are shared with younger generations (see Villenas, 2006).

Tearing down the drywall

Jesús Pierda’s (Chicano, social behavioral sciences) father worked in construction and would often take him to work. Jesús recounted his father presenting a set of choices regarding education that inadvertently led to building resistant capital (Yosso, 2005, 2006):

When I was in high school, he starts shooting acoustic and texture on the walls, but it’s really hard work … and my dad would tell me, “You can do this, or you can go to school. What do you want?” When I was a kid … I was not a very good student. In fact, I was a poor student. But, nevertheless, I knew that my way out of this life … was in education.

Watching his father work in construction motivated Jesús to succeed in school. His narrative extended to discussions about resistance, explaining moments when he witnessed his father fight against unfair practices at work:

He would work for [White men], but they wouldn’t pay him. He’d go and call them, go to their houses … and I saw that, you know? “Lo dieron el nopal en la frente” (They tried to take advantage of me), as he would say. So they wouldn’t pay my dad … and we’d go knock the drywall down. I always thought that was a lot of fun and it was good to get back at the man, you know? I mean, of course, I didn’t think about it in these terms at that time, but I knew it was because we were Mexican and because we were disregarded. And there was honor [in taking down the drywall].

Jesús discussed the ways in which his academic training gave him a new language that he could incorporate into reflections about his family’s involvement in developing his educational aspirations. As a child, Jesús could not articulate the racism and mistreatment his father experienced, but he understood the forces that were situating his father in a lower social position because of his race/ethnicity and his limited English language proficiency:

I remember when I’d go to work with my dad … at these people’s homes and they’d speak to me in [English] because I spoke to my dad in Spanish and I remember the condescending attitude that people had and … to this day I was disturbed by that. So these little experiences really helped to shape an understanding of myself.

Working next to his father in construction, Jesús developed a strong work ethic as well as a sense of workmanship. Witnessing his father confront contractors who mistreated him and would not pay him for his labor led to the development of resistant capital (Yosso, 2005, 2006), and Jesús learned that he could fight against “the man” by refusing to let those in positions of power take his labor (i.e., knowledge production) for granted.

There are no borders for you

Monique’s (Chicana, education) family had lived in the same town on the West Coast “since before desegregation.” Stories passed down through generations detailed the extended family’s experiences with racism and segregation. Older family members drew from that history to offer advice and talk about educational possibilities with younger generations:

At family parties, my uncles would say, “You were born [in California] and your family’s from Mexico. There are no borders for you here. You should be able to go wherever you want. You should be able to cross wherever you want” … and so [my university] was cited as another place where there were no borders.

Monique’s generation of cousins was raised with messages transmitted in the form of resistant capital (Yosso, 2005, 2006) that encouraged that generation to cross physical and metaphorical boundaries in their journeys to college. These messages were further solidified in seventh grade when Monique’s father expressed his expectations: “[My dad] sat me down formally and said, ‘I expect you to go to college and we expect you to help all your cousins go.’” As the oldest cousin, Monique took her role very seriously, recalling her family’s stories of resistance when the pressures of attending a private research-intensive university were overwhelming. The power of familial capital (Yosso, 2005, 2006) was vital to her educational survival and coaxed her younger sibling and cousins to consider college.

Carlos and the sewing machine

Throughout his childhood, Carlos’s (Mexican, education) family maintained a small factory that made clothes. He remembered his home filled with garments and máquinas de cocer (sewing machines). He and his siblings were responsible for trimming the thread from the garments, “so you walk in and it was like a maze of clothing and machines and everything and our responsibility, as kids … was sort of routine, every day, ‘Come home, do your homework and then, start trimming some of these things.’” Carlos did not always enjoy being part of the family business:

I remember sometimes walking in from school and I knew when there was going to be a lot of work that day when I saw that big bag of stuff, “Oh my goodness! That’s mine! That’s my bag right there!” And so, there was this expectation that we would help out with the family business either at the house or during the weekends …

From a deficit perspective, putting children to work in the family business could deter them from their studies. However, as Carlos mentioned, completing homework was always the first priority. In addition, he understood the invaluable role he played in contributing to the family:

What I understood was that I was trying to sell stuff that my parents made, but, as you grow older, you start looking at some of these things and you realize, “You know, they really counted on that five bucks,” … or maybe, on a Sunday I sold $25 worth of things, that probably bought the milk and bread and some of the necessities, right? I think me and my older brother … were at the age where … we could start appreciating some of that stuff because we saw how hard my parents were working.

Through their example, Carlos understood the value of working hard as well as the importance of education:

It was clear … that education was always important, despite the circumstances, despite the fact that there was always a lot of work to be done, education came first, so at no point during my elementary or junior high or even at my high school years, were we told … or pushed towards becoming more involved in the family business … at the expense of our … schooling.

Because Carlos’s parents had limited English language proficiency and limited educational attainment, they seldom reviewed his homework, but they fostered a sense of responsibility in Carlos to do his homework and study. He remembered receiving stern messages from his father when he did not want to complete his homework:

[My dad] would say, “Look, if you don’t wanna do your homework, if you don’t wanna do good in school, that’s fine. Let me know and I’ll buy another máquina de cocer … You could help your mom sew … I can take you out of school now and you could start working.” I think the effect he was after was for us to say, “Oh, hell no,” because, [I thought,] “I hate trimming [threads], I don’t wanna be sewing.” And so, from a young age … school was important.

Carlos’s recollection illustrates the way that consejos were connected to parental labor. As an integral part of the family business, Carlos knew that the only way to move out of manufacturing clothes was to obtain an education. In this sense, the shame of sewing clothes as a career kept Carlos focused on completing his homework and aspiring for a different life. His parents used their work as a tool to leverage their children’s educational aspirations. From an early age, he gathered aspirational capital (Yosso, 2005, 2006) that led him to succeed in school and eventually enroll in higher education.

Participants’ parents were often subjected to labor-intensive and, as a few noted, humiliating jobs that yielded little pay and limited respect from the White middle-class communities that hired them. As children, the participants understood the importance of education because their parents articulated the sacrifices that they made by ensuring their children attended school and placed homework above work. Although their parents often told the participants that education was important, it was rarely forced. Parents challenged their children to make their own decisions about obtaining an education, which supports earlier research on Latina/o parental facilitation of autonomy (Ceballo, 2004). Participants were given a choice: Do this labor-intensive work or get an education. Obtaining an education was perceived as a way to move out of the current class stratum. Although their parents did not necessarily know how to navigate through educational processes, they believed that education was the key to success and to “indoor work.” The children learned that hard work was important, but if hard work did not lead to something substantial, they would never advance. Working smarter instead of harder and fighting for fair payment for their labor were aspects of these participants’ belief systems.

Also present in these narratives were tensions among different family members regarding what advanced education would mean. The following narratives are intended to illustrate the challenges that some participants had in interpreting memories of parents and family members who, faced with social realities, projected low or conflicting educational expectations on their children that affected their educational aspirations.

A loss of respect

Dr. O (Mexican American, social behavioral sciences) was raised by a father who had completed high school and a mother who had earned a general equivalency diploma when Dr. O was a child. Throughout his interview, Dr. O talked about the role of his mother and the aspirational capital (Yosso, 2005, 2006) that she instilled in him through her example and her resistance against family members who worried about the consequences of formal education:

[My uncle asked], “Why is Dr. O even going to school?” So my mom said, “He’s going because he wants to better himself.” And my tio’s [uncle’s] response … was, “Why do you want him smarter than you? Once he thinks that he’s smarter than you, he’s going to treat you differently. In fact, he’s going to have less respect for you.” And my mom says, “I beg to differ. He’s going to respect us more …”

Because of his mother’s support and resistance, Dr. O persevered in college and inspired his cousins to pursue higher education. His interactions with extended kin illustrate the role of familial capital (Yosso, 2005, 2006) in forming and maintaining educational aspirations across a generation, as illustrated in Dr. O’s conversation with his cousin:

I had primos [cousins] that were roughly my age … who thought that Dr. O walked on water. As a matter of fact, one of my primos … went for his master’s because he said I inspired him to go on. That was just amazing to hear. And after he heard that I was pursuing a PhD program, he’s even talking about that now. He says, “Dr. O, when I saw that you did it and we grew up together … I thought, ‘Man … if Dr. O can do it, I can do it.’”

Juxtaposed against the conversation between Dr. O’s uncle and mother at the beginning of the vignette, this quote demonstrates the philosophical transitions that occurred in Dr. O’s family. Although older generations feared how educational attainment could influence their children (i.e., lack of respect, limited enactment of educación), by paving the way for his cousins, Dr. O demonstrated that educational attainment was possible and could keep him connected to his family. His narrative illustrates the complexity within individuals and family structures to simultaneously support and constrain educational aspirations.

You’re on your own

Cuahtemoc (Chicano, education) was born in Mexico and moved with his parents and siblings to California. As the sole financial supporter, his father worked constantly, and his mother was responsible for the children’s upbringing and education. Cuahtemoc concluded that their decision to change the manner in which they raised their children was a reflection of pressures from working multiple jobs and managing the children’s daily activities:

At some point [my parents] realized the whole concept of biculturalism and that they were in a new environment … and you have … a lot less control over your kids, especially if you have six of them … so … I grew up in the barrio where there was absolutely no parental supervision … telling you when to eat dinner, when to come home, when to go to sleep, none of that … So [I] learned, “Holy shit … I need to study ‘cause no one’s gonna tell me to study. If I don’t do it, I fail … Nobody cares what I do.” Well, it’s not that my parents didn’t care, but, in a way, they didn’t really care …

Cuahtemoc believed that transitioning to a new country and a new culture, along with the strains of trying to support the family, led his parents to set aside their cultural traditions and espouse what they perceived as American cultural values, which were individualist in nature. He perceived that his parents’ newly adopted sense of individualism led to a laissez-faire approach to his upbringing and, as he concluded, a lack of investment in his educational pursuits:

[In] American culture, individualism is very valued, and [in] my parents’ culture, from México, community is valued and so when you’re a bicultural individual, you’re living in both of these worlds. How [do] you manage that? Well, you look at that concept of individualism, that’s what [my family] really focused on. They focused on themselves, advancing themselves economically …

Cuahtemoc believed that he was on his own to construct his educational success and keep track of his homework and school responsibilities without parental assistance. Despite his efforts to downplay the critique of his parents, Cuahtemoc blamed biculturalism for leading to his parents’ limited, normative forms of involvement in his education. Although he did not connect his mother’s constant presence at the schools, “help[ing] the teachers with whatever they needed,” with five of the six siblings attending college, Cuahtemoc believed that articulating one’s survival within U.S. society meant losing the family’s culture, traditions, and sense of connection. His sense of loss was made even more evident when he recalled a time when he shared his goal of attending college:

I was like, “I think I wanna go to college,” and [my parents said], “Oh, well, good luck, Do whatever you gotta do.” I once asked for financial support [for college] and [they said], “Well, we said, ‘Good luck,’ so you have to do it on your own,” and I did. I had to get a job. I had to pay for everything. Complete individualism from the ground up and that’s been the way in our family, right? And there’s some criticism in that, you know … Where’s family? Where’s community? Where’s what we had when we came from México?

Cuahtemoc’s parents may not have been able to help him navigate college admissions processes or provide funding for college, but they encouraged him to seek educational opportunities and maneuver through the financial aid process on his own. From Cuahtemoc’s perspective, the freedom they gave him to make his own decisions was stripping him and his family of a Latina/o collective identity and made Cuahtemoc feel isolated and unsupported in his educational journey.

Nieves, you’re gonna sink us

Nieves (Chicano, arts and humanities) was 9 years old when his parents divorced. He and his two brothers lived with his mother, and the family qualified for food stamps until Nieves’s youngest brother was 18 years old. Nieves shared stories of growing up as a middle child and described the ways in which he was ignored by his brothers and felt unappreciated by his mother. When asked about his parents’ involvement in education, Nieves struggled to describe whether he believed that they supported him:

In terms of everyday stuff, [my parents] never really … told us to do our homework … ’cause they really didn’t know the answers … I feel bad for saying this, but it just wasn’t that high of priority, you know … as long as you went and came back, every day … They just put all the trust in the school.

Nieves and his brothers attended private Catholic schools until high school, when they could each decide to continue in private school. When Nieves was in eighth grade he received a scholarship for a private Catholic high school along with a group of

… strong students. It was kind of an unprecedented thing; they didn’t do it every year. [The school] knew that … all of us were gonna go off to public school … We didn’t have the money or whatever. We’re all working-class kids …

In return for receiving the scholarships, which included “my books and everything,” Nieves and his friends spent the summer before high school working at the local church. As the summer ended, Nieves recounted the pressure he faced from his family to withdraw from the private high school and the ways that he perceived his mother distancing herself from his educational pursuits:

My mom was always like, “Catholic school, they may pay for your tuition, but they’re still gonna nickel and dime us for money. We need to sell these tickets, you need to buy this, and everything,” and she hated that. She was not a [parent–teacher association] mom; she never wanted to go to the school at all … If they said there was a parent–teacher conference, she would just tell us not to bring the letter home …

After 1 week in Catholic school, Nieves dropped out:

I had a full scholarship and everything … but … they were like, “Eh, it’s a pain to get you out there.” I think, one time, I walked … it was like 5 miles and I couldn’t get a ride. No one really helped me.

Nieves felt guilty about the financial constraints that private schooling required and attempted to dismiss this pressure by rationalizing his mother’s actions:

My mom made it seem like … I was gonna sink her financially going to the school. So, maybe it would have. I don’t think she was just trying to take something away from me … they weren’t trying to punish me … everyone was just trying to make it …

Nieves often credited himself for his academic accomplishments in high school and his college aspirations, noting that he seldom felt any support from his family. He remarked that his mother was “more concerned that [he] mowed the lawn” than concerned with his educational pursuits. It is possible that Nieves’s mother was concerned about the hidden costs of the scholarship, especially considering that the family qualified for welfare and food stamps. In addition, as a single parent of three boys, Nieves’s mother may have been concerned with juggling the additional demands of a private school education while contending with limited resources. As his mother stated, a scholarship did not preclude the school from requesting additional funds through fundraising and school involvement. Instead of disappointing her son later in the year as more financial demands were requested from the school, perhaps Nieves’s mother thought that she would stem potential embarrassment by dissuading him from attending the private high school.

We’re service people, Araceli

Although a college degree can be viewed as an avenue to social mobility, Araceli’s (Mexican American, arts and humanities) story illustrates that the pull of maintaining class status through social reproduction can override the dream of higher education. Growing up in a Texas town with few Mexican families, Araceli relied on her family for support. While her father cleaned tables at a local restaurant, Araceli’s mother, who spent most of her childhood working in agricultural fields, found work for the children cleaning cotton fields on a local farm. Araceli and her siblings worked in the fields for “4 years up until high school.” When Araceli was a sophomore, her father was promoted through the ranks to restaurant manager in a nearby city and gave her a job as a waitress. Working in a larger city gave her an opportunity to escape the racism she experienced in high school. She witnessed teachers favoring the White ranchers’ children, who were encouraged to apply for scholarships and meet with college admissions counselors while the Mexican children were ignored. In her senior year, Araceli earned a scholarship based on a beauty contest and began discussing the possibility of attending college:

I think [my parents] were hesitant about [college]. Even though I had, by my senior year, gathered $12,000 to go somewhere … I remember my dad saying, “What are you gonna do with a college degree? What are you gonna study?” because they were working-class people. It’s like, “Well, what are you gonna do, practically?” because … my dad had a fifth-grade education; my mom had a sixth-grade education …

Moving outside the confines of service work was beyond her parents’ hopes and seemed impractical. Obtaining an education was only a means for “employment in the service industry.” Anything beyond that was deemed only appropriate for the affluent: “I think [my dad] highlighted the fact that, ‘We’re the working class of America and education is for the ricos [rich people] and … we’re not rich.’” Araceli’s narrative illustrates the difficult negotiations that some Mexican American children face within family units as they apply for college. Similar to other participants who shared stories about labor-intensive work, Araceli felt a sense of shame and guilt for admitting that she did not want to remain a restaurant worker:

When I laid it out for them, I said, “Well, I graduated from high school. What am I gonna do?” And I didn’t want to degrade what my dad was doing. I didn’t want to say, “What? Work at the cafeteria the rest of my life?” I just told them, “Am I gonna be a waitress for the rest of my life? I wanna go to college and get an education.”

According to Araceli, her parents, particularly her father, indicated that college was not the place for working-class people and that earning a college degree was a futile exercise if it did not provide skills that helped her serve others. The pull of social reproduction is evident in her depiction of her father’s hesitancy and skepticism of social mobility through education. It is possible that her parents not only worried about funding higher education but feared that Araceli would lose her connection to her family and the values inherent in educación. Despite her parents’ ambivalence, Araceli was able to leverage her educational goals by obtaining a scholarship, enrolling at a nearby junior college, and subsequently transferring to a 4-year institution a few hours away from home.

Three of the participants in the sample portrayed their parents as less engaged in their children’s education based on normative forms of parental involvement, and one participant shared the fears that extended family members had about the consequences of higher education. The portrayals of their parents’ and relatives’ ambivalence toward higher education often reflected “misinformed upward mobility and generational thinking [that] perpetuate[d] low expectations” as well as social and structural barriers that limited children’s educational aspirations (Quiñones & Marquez Kiyama, 2014, p. 163). For some families, providing alternatives to higher education might have been better than the physical, emotional, and perhaps intellectual distances (i.e., the loss of educación) that they feared could result from a college or graduate degree. It is also possible that previous experiences with schools, a lack of trust in teachers and administrators, and institutional racism could also have affected parents’ trust in higher education (Quiñones & Marquez Kiyama, 2014). The power of educational systems to press on children a negative, deficit perspective about their own communities is also evident in the ways in which participants depicted their parents, who had never attended college yet were faulted for not providing tangible tools for navigating educational structures (i.e., normative forms of parental involvement). Each of the participants was given the freedom to make decisions about his or her education, which is consistent with literature on the extent to which parents see themselves as motivators rather than facilitators of college knowledge (Auerbach, 2006). Participants’ portrayals, in many respects, failed to consider the potential struggles to maintain households with limited incomes and the potential community cultural wealth inherent in Mexican American families and communities. Their depictions illustrate, yet again, the tensions expressed by participants between being grateful for (in)tangible resources and support they received from their families and, as formally educated PhDs, knowing that these resources and familial support structures are not necessarily valued in educational contexts. The participants’ stories suggest a multifaceted set of parental/familial perspectives on the value of education and educación within their families. Based on the literature and participants’ recollections, it seems that some families embraced formal education and encouraged their children’s educational aspirations in ways that challenged normative forms of parental involvement.

Discussion

In an effort to interrogate the deficit discourse and contribute to asset-based educational research, this article focused on the interpretations and (re)tellings of parental/familial messages about education that affected the formation of the educational aspirations of seven Mexican American PhDs. This study is a critique of dominant culture normativity and ethnocentric nearsightedness that envelops the discourse on parental involvement and the extent to which educational researchers exclude (under the guise of cultural norms) other viable pathways to and processes involving educational attainment. To this end, I used the framework of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005, 2006) to uncover various forms of capital embedded in word and example that are often overlooked in the mainstream literature as well as the tensions expressed by participants as they navigated between education and educación while resisting hegemonic forces that support school rather than community expectations of parental involvement. Along their journeys, most of the participants gathered and activated familial, aspirational, and resistant capital (Yosso, 2005, 2006), even when the dominant culture found little value in their stories, culture, language, and traditions. This study was a (re)presentation of Mexican American PhDs’ memories and perceptions of invisible forms of parental involvement that were essential to cultivating and, at times, lessening the participants’ educational aspirations along their journeys to the doctorate.

The participants’ educational accomplishments, despite institutional and societal barriers, serve as inspiration for the next generation, but at what cost? All of the participants’ recollections involved great concern for the outcomes of formal education. The majority of the participants acknowledged how formal education could create physical, intellectual, and emotional distances between them and their families. Unfortunately, their school environments did little to bring together the values of home and school. Because educational systems are composed of sorting mechanisms along the lines of knowledge and labor production (Bowles & Gintis, 1976), few mechanisms are available to help students become interdependent and socialized to value traditions, customs, and languages found in the home, community, and school. In addition, because these participants had to successfully navigate through multiple hostile schooling environments (secondary, college, and graduate school), it is not surprising how they articulated their survival in academe, perhaps resisting traditional forms of educación (e.g., respecting authority) in order to be the first in their families to graduate from college.

In three instances, families with differing perspectives and experiences appeared to question the benefits of continuing education. Participants who received conflicting messages about education had difficulty expressing their understanding and interpretations of what their families were able to do for them as well as, from their perspectives and rooted in normative forms of parental involvement, were not able to do to nurture a culture of possibility. Developing a more nuanced understanding of why some families did not seem to activate forms of cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005, 2006) within the family and community structure as a form of resistance against normative forms of parental involvement is beyond the scope of this study; however, possible explanations may be rooted in familial experiences with formal education, racism, the demands of managing the household, and limited contact with others who have accessed higher education.

This study focused on the ways in which the accumulation of various forms of capital and retention of cultural integrity can provide the springboard for Mexican Americans to successfully navigate through educational systems, regardless of whether parents/families use normative forms of parental involvement. As a result, what is perceived externally as valuing education may be consistent with the stories of what higher education means for Mexican American families. Because these imaginative aspects of agency are not validated by the dominant culture, Mexican American families are misconstrued as not valuing education, and students are forced to experience tensions between what it means to be educated and what it means to be bién educados (i.e., well-educated, well-mannered; Auerbach, 2006). Stories are an important imaginative form of agency that not only build self-efficacy but remind the children about their role within the family and the costs that could be incurred if the children left their families for individual educational pursuits. Stories tell people about themselves and what is possible and appropriate within familial and cultural contexts. Further research should explore the extent to which Mexican American children make meaning of these tensions, especially while they are in the process of forging through various educational systems.

Future research should also focus on the perspectives of Mexican American parents and extended kin to gain greater understanding of the rationale behind decisions that are made with regard to their children’s educational aspirations and pathways to college and graduate school. In addition, the majority of the participants had siblings and cousins who also attended college. Further research should analyze the influence of parental, sibling, and extended kin involvement on the entire family’s educational aspirations, which may contribute to perspectives divergent from the current college choice literature (see Ceja, 2006, for a discussion of the role of Chicana/o siblings in college choice processes).

Outreach to families is essential, particularly in communities with underresourced schools. As illustrated in the narratives presented here, participants’ feelings of shame in childhood were often associated with parents’ occupations and perceived lack of involvement at school functions and interaction with teachers and administrators. Empowering children through classroom discussions about the skills and knowledge gained from parents, siblings, and extended kin; the various forms of capital (aspirational, linguistic, navigational, social, familial, and resistant; Yosso, 2005, 2006) that they have accumulated in their home environments; and the historical significance of their families and culture(s) can provide the foundation for higher levels of self-efficacy, cultural integrity, and educational aspirations. Projects that involve partnerships between communities and schools; research opportunities among various stakeholders, including local colleges; and environments that inspire an ethic of care that integrates practices in the home with practices in the schools can help children articulate their familial and community assets and integrate them into their classroom learning.

Along their journeys to the doctorate, Mexican Americans gather knowledge, skills, and abilities from families and communities and activate their community cultural wealth, even when the dominant culture and educational researchers find little value in Mexican American culture, language, and traditions. Mexican Americans find strength in the margins. Their ability to access and complete college and graduate school, in spite of the tensions between education and educación, is a reflection of parental and familial aspirations—forms of capital that will help to inspire the next generation.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Judy Marquez Kiyama and Rebeca Burciaga for helpful feedback in the preparation of this article.

Funding

This article is based on data used in my doctoral dissertation at the University of Arizona, which was supported in part by a dissertation fellowship from the Ford Foundation.

Additional information

Funding

This article is based on data used in my doctoral dissertation at the University of Arizona, which was supported in part by a dissertation fellowship from the Ford Foundation.

Notes

¹ The term Mexican American is defined as individuals of Mexican descent living in the United States. When drawing from participants’ narratives, I use personal racial/ethnic identifiers ascribed by the participants as well as terms used by studies cited to describe Mexican American communities (e.g., Hispanic, Chicana/o, or Latina/o).

² Mexican American communities is a phrase used to critique deficit models that present a static, uniform, and uncomplicated community of color as well as recognize the diversity in social class, sexual orientation, phenotype, geographic location, educational attainment, and language acquisition, among other areas, within this population.