Parental involvement in children's learning: mothers' fourth shift, social class, and the growth of state intervention in family life

Nation states across the global North are restructuring their education systems. This process has changed the relationship between school and home, with an increasing onus being placed on parents to involve themselves in their children's education. The article explores what mothers with different social class positions think about state attempts to enrol them in the education of their primary-aged children (ages 4-11), and considers their experience of school curriculum events designed to encourage and guide their help for children's learning within the home. Mothers' support for this form of educational restructuring is widespread, but motivations for, and experiences of, involvement vary significantly between higher-, middle- and low-income schools. This matters as parental involvement not only increases mothers' workloads - adding a fourth shift to the existing demands of paid labour, domestic work, and their own education/training - but also risks widening social inequality as middle-class children potentially benefit more than their working class counterparts. In conclusion, the article emphasizes the need for geographies of education to: explore parents' gendered and classed engagement with education; trace the sectors' changing spatiality in the context of growing links between different sites of learning; and produce geographies that look both inward into the education system and outward at its importance in wider society.