Investing in children’s future: Cross-cultural perspectives and ideologies on parental involvement in education

Drawing on two ethnographic studies of everyday middle-class family life in Los Angeles and Rome, this cross-cultural study examines parents’ practices of and beliefs about involvement in children’s education. It analyzes parents’ interviews and naturalistic video recordings of parent–child interactions at home to access parents’ perspectives on and ways of enacting involvement in school-related activities. Findings indicate that while the LA and Rome parents engaged in similar practices, their involvement in their children’s education was experienced differently and motivated by different assumptions. The article argues that differences in parents’ perceptions and practices reflect and reproduce marked cultural preferences and expectations within the local education systems and reveal distinct ideologies regarding childhood. Drawing on Hallden, the study proposes that LA parents tended to treat childhood as a period of ‘preparation’ for adulthood where there is more deliberate shaping of a child’s path, ...