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Coordinating Family and School :
Mothering for Schooling

Alison I. Griffith
Department of Educational Leadership, Counseling and Foundations
University of New Orleans

aigel@jazz.ucc.uno.edu

Abstract: In this paper I explore the relationship between mothering work in the family and the social organization of schooling. In particular, I address the ways in which mothers coordinate and contest the textually-organized discourse of schooling In contrast to other studies of the family/school relationship, this research began in the experience of mothers whose children attend primary school. The data were collected through interviews with mothers in two cities in Ontario. Mothering work constructs families that are differently connected to schools -- a connection strongly shaped by and constitutive of social class.

For mothers, children have a past and a future. Our children were babies, toddlers. Now they go to school. We want them to do well at school but we are aware that schooling is only one part of their lives. Our children look just like other members of our family. We hope they will do well, be independent, be happy when they grow up. Our children are unique individuals with a history and a range of possible futures. We know that how they do in school will be part of how their futures are shaped. But our notions of the importance of schools for our children's future may be quite different depending on our biographies, our school experiences, our social class, our race or ethnicity.

This paper explores the work of mothering for schooling that shapes women's lives during the time our mothering is entwined with our children's primary schooling. Most research on the family/school relation begins in the school and then moves to investigate the family and their interaction with the school. In contrast, this research project began in the everyday activities of mothers as they construct the basis for their children's participation in mass compulsory schooling. Beginning in women's lives with women's experience brings mothering for schooling into view as work--actual activities that take time and effort to coordinate and contest the textually-organized discourses that shape the family/school relation.

Beginning with Mothering

Our research on mothering and schooling was informed by Smith's (1987) sociology for women--a sociology that begins in the actual life experiences of women and explores the social relations in which those experiences are given meaning. In previous work, we described the ways that mothering work coordinates the uncoordinated spheres of schooling and the labor market (Smith and Griffith, 1990). This paper also addresses the coordinative work of mothers but from focuses on mothers' coordination with and contestation of the textually-organized discourses that shape the relation between the family and the school.

Discourse has been defined in a number of ways (Foucault, 1973; Jary & Jary, 1991; Rosenau 1992; Smith, 1990a, 1990b; Walkerdine, 1986; Weedon, 1987) but is typically conceived of as texts; any product that can be separated from the immediacy of its construction (for example, books, films, video tapes, audio tapes). The conception of discourse used here builds on Foucault's (1973) insight into the intertextual organization of ruling or managing society. Texts are forms of signification linking language and consciousness to the social relations of power in society. Social institutions, such as education, or the family are located in and structured by different "discursive fields" which "consist of competing ways of giving meaning to the world and of organizing social institutions and processes" (Weedon, 1987:35). In a given institution, texts are structured to coordinate with other texts in a discursive field--for example the intersection of child psychology and curriculum within the institution of education (Griffith, 1984; Walkerdine, 1984). Textually-organized discourses are both dominant and partial, shaping knowledge but always contested by other ways of understanding.

Textually-organized discourses also act to organize relations between people and to shape action. It is not enough to 'offer' discourses to individuals, they must actually take them up as everyday activities. The concept of textually-organized discourse used in this paper, then:

"... goes beyond Foucault's conception of discourse as a conversation mediated by texts, to include how actual people take them up, the practices and courses of actions ordered by them, how they coordinate the activities of one with those of another or others. People enter into practices ordered by the texts of the T-discourse [discourses that are mediated by texts] and are active participants in its relations." (1993:51)

Attention to the textually-organized discourses embedded in talk about mothering and schooling brings into view the activities which enact, coordinate and contest the textually-organized discourses of schooling.

Understanding Families through Schools

The literature on families and schools is diverse but two lines of research dominate. One strand takes up the issue of parental involvement in education (for example, Comer, 1986, 1988; Dauber & Epstein, 1993; Chavkin, 1993). These researchers note the strong achievement (for example, Henderson, 1987) and recommend a closer relationship between families and schools (especially minority and working class families whose children have traditionally been less "successful" at school). This focus dominates the education literature on families and schools. While changes in school organization are recommended in order to make them more welcoming to parents, this literature is not strongly critical of the schooling process. Rather, the research attention spotlights changes in family and school activities that will bring the two into closer conformity.

The second strand is more critical of schooling and raises questions about the social organization of inequality inherent in schooling. For example, Connell et al. (1982) explored the gender and class inequalities that construct the family/school relation in Australia. In this social relation, schooling structures unequal educational outcomes. Fine (1991) argues that the policies and practices of American comprehensive high schools work actively to produce school failure and to silence students' and parents' critique of schooling. David (1980) argues that schooling is implicated in the ongoing inequality of women--it is an integral part of the family-school nexus. Walkerdine (1984) brings into view the discursive links between education and psychology that shape our knowledge of children's maturation.

The literature regarding families and schools shares a common methodological understanding: The research and analysis begins in the school (or the state) and moves to the family. Children are viewed first as students and later as family members. I contend that this research strategy has implications for our knowledge about the family-school relation. Indeed, this research strategy, while practical and understandable as a locally-organized research practice, shapes the research within the discursive field of education. When research and theorizing begins in the school the textually-organized discourses of schooling permeate the research question, data collection processes and analysis.

Lareau's (1989) study of the family activities through which cultural capital is invested in children's schooling is an interesting example of the discursive shaping of research practices. She describes the interconnectedness between families and schools relating the extensive work of mothers and fathers who organize, manage and activate their family's cultural capital for their child's participation in schooling. As she notes, this particularistic work is linked to the resources available to the family -- the social relations of class. She examines the school-oriented activities of middle class mothers but which are unusual in working class families and finds "... the density between parents and schools differs by class" (1989:169). Most middle class families know how to coordinate their information and resources with the activities of the school producing an "interconnectedness between family life and educational institutions" (1989:10) that is not present in the working class families she interviewed.

Lareau's research on families and schools is exemplary. However, as is typical of research in this area, her research design began in the school and provided for her entry into the lives of the families she interviewed. She selected these families based on her knowledge of their children in the classroom. Her research design situates the families in the discursive organization of schooling. Her participant observation in two schools shaped her selection of informants and reaffirmed her focus on the family's construction of cultural capital, leaving unexplicated the discursive construction of schooling as an institution in which culture can be capitalized. Consequently, there is a dimension of mothering work that Lareau does not address. We cannot see the ways that parents contest and negotiate the discursively organized knowledge about their children constructed in the school through categories such as gifted, slow, a middle child, and so on.

Methodology: The Standpoint of Mothering

In our research, we began in the family, in the mothering work that constructs the links between families and their schools. Our "institutional ethnography" (Smith, 1987) explored the social relations of schooling from the standpoint of mothers whose children were attending primary school2. We began in the "standpoint of women" (Smith, 1987)--in this instance, the standpoint of the mothers whose experience gave us our entry to the social relations of the family/education nexus. We were concerned to develop a research process that would illuminate the everyday/everynight experience of mothering. We conceived of mothering as involving caring, intentionality, time, energy; as situated in the particular histories of the women who talked to us; and as a unique experience which has, nonetheless, a social basis which would allow us to have an interview conversation about mothering work. Shaping the research to bring into view the experience and work organization of mothering was a strong theoretical and methodological focus.

Our research design ethnographically explored the links between the work of mothers in the family and the textually organized discourse of schooling. We began in our experiences as single parent mothers, exploring particularly those areas in which we could see that our mothering work had been organized by the daily requirements of schooling. We took the interview topics we had found in our experience and began to interview other women about their mothering work. As we constructed the interview narratives with the mothers, the interview topics shifted, expanded and contracted (Mishler, 1986).

Only when we had finished talking to the mothers did we begin the second level interviewing at the schools. We deliberately structured the school interviews to reflect the issues raised in the mothers' narratives. In other words, the research was organized the discover the social organization of mothering, not the perspective of the school on mothering. Tracing the social relations that shape women's experiences of mothering but which do not necessarily originate in her experience was the focus of our study.

We interviewed women in two cities in Ontario. Our first interviews in Steeltown were lengthy, ranging from two hours to six hours. Three mothers were working class--the family income was derived, in part, from hourly wages; the parents education ranged from high school to college completion; the neighborhood was well-established, close to the major city industries, the houses were small; the neighborhood school was characterized by the Board of Education as serving low socioeconomic status families. Three mothers were middle class--the family income came from salaried, professional employment; the parents education ranged from a few years of college to post-baccalaureate degrees; the neighborhood was removed from the city's industries and was well established, the houses were large and expensive; the local school was characterized as one attended by children from middle class families. The narratives resulting from those interviews are accounts of complex interactions between their families and the schools. Unfortunately, we were unable to complete our research design in this community because the Board of Education refused us permission to interview their teachers and principals. Nonetheless, the interviews are a rich source of knowledge about mothering for schooling (Griffith & Smith, 1987, 1990; Smith & Griffith, 1990).

The second group of interviews were conducted in Motortown; a city with a similar history, population and industrial base. Again, we selected two schools in neighborhoods that, according to Canadian Census and Board of Education records, varied by social class. Border Elementary is located in a well-established, middle class, professional neighborhood. Downtown School is located in the inner city and serves a well- established working class neighborhood as well as the hostels for homeless families. We interviewed 12 mothers (six mothers in the working class neighborhood and six in the middle class professional neighborhood) as well as the principals and primary-level teachers in the two schools and assistant superintendents in central office. These second interviews were shorter (one and one-half to two hours).

Interviews from the two research sites (conducted between 1985 and 1987) opened the interactive processes between families and schools for our inquiry.

Mothering Work

When we look at mothering work, we see that it takes a variety of forms that encompass the range of possibilities for mothering in our society. Each family negotiates the form that work will take based on the particular biography of family members and the links constructed between the family and the larger society. For example, a family that includes a mother that is a clerical worker and a father that works on the line in automobile manufacturing will have a family work organization that is different than one in which the mother works exclusively in the home and the father is a mid-level manager. Nonetheless, each family, typically through the work of the mother, constructs from its own biography and social location (gender, race and class positioning) the linkages that coordinate her child(ren) with mass compulsory schooling. The challenge, then, is to discover ways of describing the variety of family work organizations while recognizing that they are not infinitely various but simply variations on the possible themes socially recognizable as mothering for schooling. Our focus is the mother's work of articulating her unique family to the discursively-organized school processes--mothering for schooling.

Textually-Organized Schooling

Schools are work places organized textually. Think for a moment about curriculum: in Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and some school systems in the United States, primary-level curriculum is described as child-centered (Walkerdine, 1984). This is an organization of knowledge about childrens' maturation that coordinates curriculum with their cognitive, physical, social and emotional stages of development (Griffith, in press). Curriculum in the classroom has already been structured and shaped by a number of people in a number of different places. For example, research on children's development is reported in journals and taught in education and psychology courses in teacher training programs. Textbook authors draw from that research in their writing. Curriculum consultants at Boards of Education review textbooks, make recommendations for adoption and perhaps work with educators to implement the curriculum guidelines (Apple, 1993). In this example, we can see classroom curriculum as a textually-organized discourse that configures the work of teachers, curriculum consultants, textbook authors, psychological researchers and students.

Textually-organized discourses shape both the limits and the possibilities of our knowledge about children's education (Walkerdine, 1984). It also frames our understandings about families and the work of mothers in families (Griffith, in press). In seeming contradiction, schools and classrooms are different one from the other and yet all teach to a standardized curriculum. As we saw above, textually- organized discourses are both dominant and partial. Weedon notes:

"The most powerful discourses in our society have firm institutional bases, in the law, for example, or in medicine, social welfare, education and in the organization of the family and work. Yet these institutional locations are themselves sites of contest and the dominant discourses governing the organization and practices of social institutions are under constant challenge."(1987:109)

Each mother, child/student and teacher acts in relation to the range of possibilities available within a schooling process organized discursively.

Constructing the Family/School Relation

Mothering work constructs the family's relation with the textually-organized discourse of schooling in a number of ways. We might visualize it as a tapestry made up of a number of threads woven between the school and the family. For some families, the tapestry is thick and lush as the mother coordinates the activities and organization of the family with that of the school--getting the child to school on time, going to report card conferences, monitoring the child's school progress and so on. In others, the tapestry is threadbare and the teachers and principal may wonder if the mother really cares about the child--getting the child to school after the bell but before the lessons actually start, missing report card conferences, waiting for the teachers to telephone before attending to the child's school performance. In the family, the tapestry woven by the mother will be unique to her biography and circumstance. But where the threads connect to the school, there will be more similarities than differences in the mothers' work.

Mothers' coordinative work brings the distinctiveness of the family into relation with the textually-organized discourse of mass compulsory schooling. The following instances from our data will illustrate the coordination and contestation of mothering work. These narratives were selected from our data as exemplars (Mishler, 1990) of the range of distinctive mothering practices that coordinate families and schools.

Ms. Kelly: Ms. Kelly lives in a middle-class professional neighborhood and her children go to Border Elementary. She works full time in the home caring for her five children and her husband, a middle manager in the industrial plant that is the economic base of the city. Her husband works long hours and she does most of the work to connect her children with the school. For Ms. Kelly and the other mothers we spoke with, each of her children are unique; individuals with particular likes and dislikes, preferences and talents (see also DeVault, 1991).

Ms. Kelly monitors the school work of each child carefully to ensure they are doing as well as they can and that their particular talents are being developed. One of her sons was having difficulty and, during a report card conference, she and her husband discussed the problem with the teacher:

"Well, I guess, we brought up--that particular son is left-handed and we brought up that subject at that time because we felt he wasn't bringing home enough work to give us an idea what he was doing in school. And we found out that he really wasn't doing work at school. He was avoiding a lot of the things, particularly the written work. And at that time, we brought up the subject of him being left-handed and we honestly felt that was a good share of his problems. And we got back at us that he was probably a typically middle child, second child. And we didn't feel that way because when you have five children, I don't think that you get into that middle child business as much. And, I guess, the solution at the end was that we wanted him to do more school. And if it wasn't done at school, we wanted it sent home. And, like, she did do that."

There are two aspects of this narrative to which I want to draw your attention. First, Ms. Kelly monitors her children's school participation carefully. When she was unable to keep herself informed of her second child's school activities adequately, she and her husband spoke with the teacher. As a result of this discussion, her son brought more schoolwork home which allowed Ms. Kelly to monitor his school progress. This is an example of the interconnectedness (Lareau, 1987) between middle class families and schools that is organized through the work of mothers.

Second, Ms. Kelly has theorized the basis for her son's difficulty in school as "being left-handed." Ms. Kelly had read up on children who are left-handed and concluded that her son's problems could be attributed to the relation between learning styles and left-handedness. This is a different conceptual understanding of children than that of the teacher who claimed: "he was probably typically a middle child" which is a family-based explanation. Neither Ms. Kelly nor the teacher came to appreciate the other's argument.

The solution Ms. Kelly adopted was that the teacher would provide school work for Ms. Kelly's son to complete at home. This monitoring-repair sequence (Smith & Griffith, 1990) coordinated Ms. Kelly's work process in the family with the discourse of schooling. She also challenged the attributions about family background that are part of schooling discourse (Manicom, 1987). Ms. Kelly's challenge brings research and popular publications from psychology on the effect of right or left brain dominance on learning into competition with the conceptions of family background that permeate education. Thus, Ms. Kelly brings the school's attention to the unique requirements of her children. This is one way mothers coordinate and challenge or contest the discourses that coalesce in education.

Ms. Arthur. Ms. Arthur lives in a newly-built neighborhood across a busy road from Border Elementary. The school had, until recently, drawn only from an established neighborhood of middle class professional families. The new neighborhood includes a wide range of families. Ms. Arthur worked briefly as a secretary before her children were born and now works at home full time. Mr. Arthur is a city policeman. They have two children, a girl and a boy.

Ms. Arthur describes her children as being very different from each other.

"Well, I feel that Joey could use the extra - like I guess I didn't do it with her because she was outgoing and she has got a good bubbly personality. If she doesn't get the information, she will get it, you know. She'll have her hand up and she'll ask questions and she questions everything. But Joey is shy and he's within himself a lot and I thought, well, if I did more with him so that when he came to kindergarten he's not going to stick and shake and he's not going to be like this.... Then at least he'll know how to go about it. He won't be bewildered and upset inside over not doing it."

Ms. Arthur is describing the different kinds of mothering work she does preparing her children for school. According to Ms. Arthur, her son's unique ways of acting in the world place him at a disadvantage in the classroom. Thus, she is preparing and monitoring her son's participation in the school more carefully than that of her daughter. Ms. Arthur's mothering for schooling has actively organized different school relationships for her daughter and her son. Interestingly, her mothering work is organized in relation to a schooling process that is seen to be the 'same' process to which each unique child must connect.

Ms. Arthur and the other mothers we interviewed reflected on their mothering work while they monitored their children's participation in schooling. Where necessary, they adjusted their mothering work to coordinate with the schooling discourse.

"M: I didn't do it with her so much. She knew most of her alphabet and different things so I didn't go into her upper case and lower case. I didn't think it was any ... and counting and all of that. But then when she hit kindergarten I realized well maybe I hadn't done enough.

A: How did you realize that? In what way?

M: Because she was capable of doing more than she did. I realized she wasn't just average, she was kind of above average. I should have been giving her more to occupy her."

However, she expressed ambivalence at this structuring of her interaction with her children:

"I think that we have to do too much at home to keep them going at school. She is in a mixed grade, grades one and two and I think it's quite a bit to expect grade one to come home and read every night and go over word lists and she has a test once a week. Every Monday she has a test. She comes home sometimes on a Wednesday with a new word list and on Monday she has a test. She has to know the thirty new words."

This ambivalence does not appear in Ms. Kelly's interview although their children attend the same school.

Ms. Arthur coordinates her mothering work with the requirements of the school, but does so with some dissatisfaction. Ms. Arthur contests the coordination of her family with the textually-organized discourse of schooling when she asserts that the school's expectations overly-structure her daughter's time leaving little for other activities Ms. Arthur considers important to her daughter's development.

In the interview, Ms. Arthur does not describe taking the issue of having to do "too much at home to keep them going at school". Indeed, there is a separation between family and school in the Arthur narrative. Thus, we can begin to see the different ways mothers organize their work with the same school, coordinating and contesting the textually-organized discourses through their everyday activities.

Ms. Vernon. Ms. Vernon lives in a working class neighborhood and works in the home full time. Her husband is an engineer who commutes to the large city nearby to work. The neighborhood school, Downtown School, is described by its staff as an "inner city school" meaning that families who live in the neighborhood have few social, economic and educational resources to bring to their childrens' schooling.

Ms. Vernon, like Ms. Kelly and Ms. Arthur, has worked actively to coordinate her mothering work with that of the school. She describes one incident as follows:

"... she was so scared to go to school. And I found out afterwards it was because she thought she would get a harsh word from this new teacher or get disciplined or something. Cause she has seen some of the kids [in her classroom] already going into the corner, or whatever they have to do. She didn't tell me that at the time what it was.... And I talked to the teacher the next time I was there and I told her that she was going through an adjustment time. She missed the kindergarten room. And she said that the day that she did come in late, the teacher had said to her: 'Rhonda, don't worry. You're not really late.' .... Ever since that she was fine. She never had that problem. But that's what I found helped because then I was able to find out from the teacher as well what had happened and what kind of discipline was being used."

In this coordinative instance, Ms. Vernon speaks within the discursive framework of primary schooling and brings that to bear on her understanding of the unique qualities possessed by her daughter. She talks about Rhonda as "going through an adjustment time". She checks Rhonda's story with the teacher and adjusts her own behavior to fit with the kind of discipline being used at the school.

Ms. Vernon also uses coordinative mothering strategies in monitoring her daughter's progress through the standardized curriculum:

"When we had the [report card] interview, the teacher was explaining how she did in all of the areas. And she said that her hope for all the children is it doesn't matter what mark they get if each child does their best and enjoys it.... As far as her improvement, she has a tendency--its not in marks or in any one area--she has a tendency to be a bit of a diddler sometimes. Like putting on her clothes in the morning, all of a sudden she sees the cat or something. and she goes off and starts playing and you have to remind her--that sort of thing. The teacher said that in one area she is a bit slow, not that she is not doing well, but because she tries to do so well. Her printing, she got a very good mark in and it doesn't look like--but she tries to do her work so well that it does take time so she's a bit slow that way."

Ms. Vernon's narrative constantly links her daughter as a unique person to her participation in the classroom. She speaks of her daughter's home activities in relation to those she has discovered to be important in her daughter's classroom.

The teacher's comment that it "doesn't matter what mark" her students get as long as they are happy is not a remark you would be likely to hear in a school located in a middle class professional neighborhood. In fact, it does matter what "mark" children get and enjoyment is only one part of the school experience. Those who receive consistently poor marks are more likely to drop out of school before matriculating and to stop participating long before (Fine, 1991). This kind of comment, whatever the teacher's intention, deflects Ms. Vernon's attention to her daughter's emotional experience of school and away from the cognitive skills on which middle class mothers such as Ms. Kelly insist.

Ms. Vernon's coordination between school and home is not without its dissonances. Her family belongs to a Christian fundamentalist church whose teachings at times contradict those of the school. Ms. Vernon is critical of the school for not teaching Christian principles in the classroom. For her, the school is simply inadequate to the task of teaching her children. She spends time each day teaching her children the skills required by the school from books that support her religious practices. While she is very supportive of the school, spending many days helping in the classroom, she is also very critical of the school for the lack of religious instruction available to her daughter. Her coordinative work, then, is one which links the textually organized discourses of education and religion through her mothering work in the family.

Coordinating Families and Schools

Working class and middle class mothers not only coordinate their family activities with the school's discursive organization, they also contest the conceptual frameworks that are part of that discourse by linking their child's particularities to other possible explanations, other discourses.

But some discourses are more powerful than others (Weedon, 1987). Those mothers, such as Ms. Kelly, who are familiar with textually-organized discourses, such as psychology, that are already coordinated with schooling are able to use them to contest the school's explanations of and work with their children. We have found that, typically, these are middle class families able to bring extensive educational and economic resources to their children's education. Their activities with their children and with the school weave thick, lush tapestries linking home and school.

Other mothers may be familiar with the discourses of schooling but choose to construct their children's education differently. Their family values do not necessarily coincide with those embedded in schooling discourse. For example, Ms. Arthur's concern that her daughter is spending too much time on school work does not support the strong focus of Border Elementary on high academic achievement. Nor do the Arthurs have the same level of educational and economic resources to bring to their children's education as do the Kellys. Neither Mr. nor Ms. Arthur enjoyed their own schooling and they have coordinated their family life to include activities such as hunting and fishing. These family activities are outside the academic focus of Border Elementary.

Ms. Vernon's mothering work has strong similarities to that described by Ms. Kelly and Ms. Arthur. She is very involved in her child's schooling, she visits her daughter's classroom and is friendly with her daughter's teacher. She has come to understand her child's school needs notably through her discussions with her child's teacher. This is a different level of discursive knowledge about schooling than that of Ms. Kelly. Ms. Vernon is very involved with her church. Indeed, most of the books and magazines in her home are church publications. They provide the ground of Ms. Vernon's criticism of schooling but address issues of religious not academic practice.

Ms. Vernon's coordination and contestation of the family/school relation occurs in a different class context than that of Ms. Kelly and Ms. Arthur. The families whose children attend Downtown school have fewer social, economic and educational resources to bring to their schooling than do those of Border Elementary. Although both schools are accountable to the same textually-organized discourse of schooling, the different resource levels have consequences for the kind of teaching and learning that occurs in the school. Indeed, the teachers and school administration describe lower expectations for Downtown School students than do the educational staff at Border Elementary.

Concluding Comments

In contrast to other research in this area, our research was designed to begin in the work organization of mothering for schooling. From this "standpoint", we have been able to explore the coordination and contestation of the textually-organized discourses that shape the work of mothering for schooling.

Thus, we can see mothering and schooling as a relation between families and schools that constructs the limits and possibilities for their child's participation in schooling. From the perspective of the schools, Ms. Kelly weaves a strong relationship between her family and their school. Ms. Arthur's coordination of her family with the school is weaker, contested by emphases on non-academic concerns. Ms. Vernon's involvement in her child's schooling follows the practices of the classroom while supporting the child's emotional involvement in schooling. This is a relationship particular to Downtown School, one which would be contested at Border Elementary. From the perspective of the mothers, the tapestries they weave are thick and lush, filled with religious activity; hunting and fishing; children who are left-handed. Their interaction with the school draws on complementary and competing discourses that may support as well as oppose schooling. Thus, mothering work constructs families that are differently connected to schools--a connection strongly shaped by and constitutive of social class.

Notes:

1. This research was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada [#410-84-0450] and a Spencer Foundation Mini-Grant.

2. Our experience as mothers and researchers is shaped by the same textually-organized discourses we are exploring. In a reflection on our research design and interview process, Smith (1993) has discovered a textually-organized discourse that permeated our practices in this research project. Her recognition of the interpellation of the SNAF (Standard North American Family) discourse in our research activities brought into view for us the interpellation of mothering work with the textually-organized discourses that coalesce in the activities of schooling.

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