Mothers' Work in Schooling Children: Perspectives from Immigrant Asian-Indian 
Mothers

Babu, Sudha G.

Mothers' Work in Schooling Children: Perspectives from Immigrant Asian-Indian Mothers

Open Access

Author:: Babu, Sudha G.
Graduate Program:: Curriculum and Instruction
Degree:: Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:: Dissertation
Date of Defense:: March 13, 2006
Committee Members:: James Ewald Johnson, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Marnina K Gonick, Committee Member
Debra M Freedman, Committee Member
Madhu Suri Prakash, Committee Member
Keywords:: immigrant mothers
Asian-Indian
mothering
schooling
cultural differences
family/school (dis)connections
Abstract:: The task of educating children to meet the demands of the twenty-first century has become a huge challenge for parents and teachers in the United States. For many immigrant parents who for better economic opportunities come “voluntarily” (Ogbu, 1991a) to the United States, their children’s schooling becomes of primary importance to them. In the case of immigrant parents from non-western countries, e.g. from Asia, many of whom are viewed as “minorities” in the United States, cultural differences between themselves and mostly white American school personnel often create stress and anxiety for parents as they become concerned about their children’s schooling. For many immigrant mothers, unfamiliarity with the American educational system may raise concerns about the effectiveness of their role as mothers, causing them to worry about their “mothering for schooling” (Griffith, 1995; Griffith & Smith, 2005) work and about how to help their children adjust between culturally divergent home and school environments. As an immigrant, minority Asian-Indian mother, and early childhood educator, I can personally relate to such a transitional and cultural dilemma. In the United States, public schools and other educational institutions have not been adequately prepared to provide culturally responsive environments to accommodate parents and children of divergent backgrounds. Unsettling tensions about “public” schooling continue to persist between mostly white American educators and parents of non-mainstream cultural groups. In a country of innumerable minority and immigrant cultures, strategic considerations regarding “culturally responsive teaching” (Gay, 2000) practices within public schools have been rather slow. In addition, many schools have not been able to adequately involve immigrant minority parents to negotiate cultural differences between their home and their children’s school. Even definitions and meanings of childhood as understood in majority schools create barriers and limitations for alternative expressions, thus enforcing a code of silence among immigrant, minority children and parents. Following the implementation of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, several professionals from India began to migrate to the United States. However, despite their good English language skills, many Asian-Indian immigrants found their social interaction patterns different from the mainstream white American cultural norms. Regarding children’s schooling, Asian-Indian immigrant parents, including the mothers of this study often find themselves unprepared, not so much with the academic aspects of schooling, but more with the social aspects of white American schools. Many mothers may find themselves spending more time and energy teaching their children about ethnic pride, cultural heritage, language, food, family structure etc. There are not enough studies focusing on immigrant minority women, and even less on those pertaining to immigrant Asian-Indian women, who are the focus of this study. Despite the fact that they are considered to be part of a `model minority’ immigrant group, adequate attention has not been bestowed upon their mothering for schooling work. Based on my own experiences as a voluntary immigrant, minority Asian-Indian mother, the frustration of keeping up with one’s own cultural and family goals, while simultaneously staying connected to unfamiliar white American schools, can be very taxing on the mothers. More so, in cases when the mothers find that their children’s schooling experience and educational success largely rests upon their work as primary care givers. Using a feminist lens, supported by focus group and follow up interviews, this study examines and analyzes Asian-Indian mothers’ everyday challenges of schooling children as they navigate themselves between culturally divergent contexts; their home, children’s white American school and communities at large. In addition, this study also highlights Asian-Indian mothers’ creative responses to their everyday social, emotional and cultural tensions in schooling children, which are greatly shaped by their gender, culture, social-class and immigrant minority status. More importantly, my collaborations as an insider within this group, and some previous pilot research study that I have done, forms an important background context for this dissertation. This qualitatively designed study is geared to be subjective in nature, facilitating interpretation of the multiple realities of immigrant Asian Indian women’s mothering for schooling experiences, while allowing me, the researcher to be part of the emerging study. Feminist interview research as a method of investigation has provided strategies to theorize the lived reality and highlight the emerging thoughts, ideas and behaviors, which shaped Asian-Indian women’s mothering for schooling process. Exploring Asian-Indian women’s mothering for schooling experiences from a feminist perspective helps developing understanding of their everyday mothering for schooling work lives, alongside addresses issues of gender, culture social class and immigrant status. In addition, feminist theoretical explorations while highlighting women’s oppression, seeks to analyze and create awareness about the conditions that shape women’s lives. This study is not meant for comparing immigrant minority Asian-Indian mothers with other women belonging to minority or majority groups. Instead, it is designed to facilitate mothers to share their stories and in the process bring to the forefront mothers’ often taken for granted voices, vulnerabilities, strengths, weakness as well as experiential and situated knowledge. Last but not least, the ultimate purpose of this study is to create understanding about Asian-Indian mothers and their work in schooling children. Focus group interviews and follow-up interviews served as data generating method for use within this qualitative design. It involved two groups, one consisting of six mothers and the other consisting of four mothers. Mothers in both the groups were familiar with each other as well as the subject matter. The group participation which defines focus-group interviews is a highly efficient data collection procedure, and helped in gathering more information in a short period of time. Focus group interviews were followed by additional one on one in-depth interview, in which two mothers from each group were selected to participate. The four mothers were selected for follow-up interviews because of the choices they made in response to their mothering for schooling work and for the kind of changes they made for themselves. I was drawn to this method of inquiry, because of its interpretive qualities, that emphasized the process, rather than the product. Although attention was directed to the strengths and weaknesses of a life experiences, unlike the nature of developmental theories, issues of incorporating validity and reliability were less emphasized. Since issues of subjectivity and reflexivity are on going, fragmented and interrupted, this study does not focus on the “fixed” truths. All of the mothers who participated in the focus group interviews were married and resided in a small rural campus town in Mid-Atlantic section of the United States of America. Mothers who participated in this study came from two-parent, Hindu, middle and upper middle class families in India, except for one mother who hails from Sri Lanka but in every sense like a South Indian woman. They come from diverse families, from different parts of India. Besides English they speak multiple languages, representing many states in India. They are part of a growing Asian-Indian community consisting of nearly hundred families, spanning a wide age range, from senior citizens to small babies. The community has been spread out, families live in several areas of town and majority of their children attended their local community public schools. Majority of the adults in the community, mostly spouses, are associated with the local university as professionals, in academic, administrative and research capacities. Each focus group interview was divided into four phases. Phase one was centered on Asian-Indian mothers’ childhood and early schooling experiences in India. Phase two was centered on their mothering for schooling experiences. In Phase three, mothers focused on the future. Finally, in Phase four, mothers made their concluding remarks and reiterated their mothering for schooling beliefs and opinions. However, the boundaries between the four phases were fluid, in the sense they did impose any restrictions or limitations in mothers’ participation. In other words, the boundaries between the four phases were loose, and in many ways proved to be quite purposeful in extrapolating the mothering for schooling phenomena. Fluid boundaries were beneficial to everyone in sharing their stories, for the participants as well as for me, the researcher, and helped us stay focused, without getting sidetracked from the research topic. Many of these stories are presented in this thesis. By narrating their stories, mothers of this study, were able to interpret their mothering for schooling experiences and transmit their ideas based on those experiences. Being voluntary immigrants meant rethinking their mothering for schooling agenda as well as redefining their ethnic understandings of mothering, schooling and mothering for schooling work. As first generation immigrants and educated women, who had their early and elementary education in their country of origin; unfamiliarity with the American educational system raised concerns about schooling rituals, teaching/learning philosophies, and organizational priorities prevalent among American public schools in their local community. Unlike mainstream white American mothers, whose culture in general parallels with that of the public schools, first generation immigrants many who came as adults, found themselves faced with misunderstanding and confusion about their children’s schooling. While trying to get adjusted to new social and cultural environments, many mothers also worried about the impositions of the school culture on their mothering work as well as on their children’s personality development. Hence the frustration of keeping up with one’s own cultural and family goals, while simultaneously staying connected to unfamiliar white American schools, made their work very taxing. In addition, differences in terms of their color, ethnicity, language, food, religion, values beliefs and family structure etc. forced them to overcome cultural barriers and also negotiate cultural differences. Mothers found that their perceptions about schools and schooling as experienced in the past were very different, quite unlike their perceptions about American public schools and schooling rituals. In order to adequately respond to their present mothering for schooling experiences, they found themselves reflecting on their past schooling experiences to make sense of their present experiences. They used their past experiences as a resource to sustain themselves with their everyday challenges of mothering work. Through retrospection mothers negotiated the past with the present and even reinvented the wheel. The study revealed mothers became learners again, to find that their mothering for schooling work is subject to time, space and circumstance. Hence, they used their past experiences as a resource, to integrate their past with their present and future lives in America. Mothers’ stories revealed that contextual and cultural differences between home and school compelled them to formulate their mothering for schooling work as a mediated process. Mothers found themselves doing supplementary mothering for schooling work, to make up for the deficits created within culturally defined environments, like their children’s American schools, as well as their Indian homes. In addition, it also meant, mothers investing more time and physical energy, extending themselves beyond their homes, into schools, local communities, mainstream community as well as their own ethnic community.

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