Katya Williams

White Middle-Class Parents, Identities, Educational Choice and the Urban Comprehensive School: Dilemmas, Ambivalence and Moral Ambiguity.

At a time when the public sector and state education (in the United Kingdom) is under threat from the encroaching marketisation policy and private finance initiatives, our research reveals white middle‐class parents who in spite of having the financial opportunity to turn their backs on the state system are choosing to assert their commitment to the urban state‐run comprehensive school. Our analysis examines the processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’, and demonstrates the nature of the commitment the parents make to the local comprehensive school. However, it also shows the parents’ perceptions of the risk involved and their anxieties that these give rise to. The middle‐class parents are thus caught in a web of moral ambiguity, dilemmas and ambivalence, trying to perform ‘the good/ethical self’ while ensuring the ‘best’ for their children.

Re-invigorating democracy? : White middle class identities and comprehensive schooling

Recent research on social class and whiteness points to disquieting and exclusive aspects of white middle class identities. This paper focuses on whether ‘alternative’ middle class identities might work against, and disrupt, normative views of what it means to be ‘middle class’ at the beginning of the 21st Century. Drawing on data from those middle classes who choose to send their children to urban comprehensives, we examine processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’ in order to uncover some of the commitments and investments that might make for a renewed and reinvigorated democratic citizenry. The difficulties of turning these commitments and investments into more equitable ways of interacting with class and ethnic others which emerge as real challenges for this left leaning, pro-welfare segment of the middle classes. Within a contemporary era of neo-liberalism that valorises competition, individualism and the market even these white middle classes who express a strong commitment to community and social mixing struggle to convert inclinations into actions.

Constructions of the Working-Class "Other" among Urban, White, Middle-Class Youth: "Chavs", Subculture and the Valuing of Education.

In the context of a ‘death’ of class in popular and policy discourse, this paper argues that social class is still a major force at work in young peoples lives, particularly in the context of schooling. We argue that young peoples subcultural groups are classed, in the way in which they are constructed in discourse. Drawing on a data set of 68 interviews with white, middle-class young people in three different cities in England, we argue that class can be seen and felt in young peoples constructions of the ‘chav’, where white, working-class young peoples ways of being and doing in the context of schooling, stand in stark contrast to the normative middle-class subject, and become pathologized.

Neoliberal policy and the meaning of counterintuitive middle-class school choices

This article considers how the nature and effects of neoliberal policy in education are illuminated by the outcomes of a study of white middle-class families choosing ordinary state secondary schools in England. Having described the main features of the study and some of its findings, consideration is given to specific ‘global’ dimensions — one in terms of parental perceptions and the other drawing upon analysis of the global effects of neoliberalism, an example of which is illustrated with reference to an influential UK policy. The article concludes that the conditions so generated not only provide advantages to those making conventional choices in keeping with a marketized service, but that they may also bring advantages to middle-class families making ‘counterintuitive’ choices as well.

Multicultural Mixing or Middle-class Reproduction? The White Middle Classes in London Comprehensive Schools

Drawing on interviews with White middle-class families who choose to send their children to London comprehensive schools, this paper focuses on the construction of Whiteness and middle classness as privileged identities. The paper explores the contradiction between parents’ desire for multiethnic ‘mixed’ environments for their childrens schooling and their fear and ambivalence about their children being ‘out of place’ in these contexts. It examines how various practices and processes set these children apart and result in a reification of Whiteness and middle classness as normative. The paper concludes that comprehensive schooling can do little to dismantle privilege in a wider system of structural inequality.

‘He was a bit of a delicate thing’: white middle‐class boys, gender, school choice and parental anxiety

This paper examines the impact of gender on white middle‐class parents’ anxiety about choosing inner‐city comprehensives and their children’s subsequent experiences within school, particularly in relation to social mixing. Drawing on interview data from an ESRC funded study of white middle‐class parents whose children attend inner‐city comprehensives, we find that parents have higher levels of anxiety about their choice for boys than for girls, expressly due to fears about their sons’ ability to cope and maintain social reproduction in socially and ethnically mixed environments. These parents construct white middle‐class boys as ‘sensitive’ and the inner‐city school as the source of a problematic masculinity that is both threatening and antagonistic to academic success. These classed and racialised anxieties increase the pressure on boys and we find that boys appear to mix less freely than girls. Parental focus on boys also obscures the problems that girls face.

Challenges in theorising ‘Black middle‐class’ women: education, experience and authenticity

This viewpoint draws on discussions at two seminars to consider ambivalent attitudes amongst a group of Black women towards considering themselves and/or other Black people as ‘middle class’. The first seminar highlighted the experiences of a group of Black ‘middle‐class’ parents and the second, which was organised as a result of the reaction the first seminar received, sought to explore attendees views as to whether they thought Black people could be Black and ‘middle class’. The viewpoint contends that the concept ‘Black middle class’ is incompatible with some Black women’s notions of self, and that their ambivalence about the ‘Black middle classes’ is partly rooted in an emotional need to remain connected to the wider Black community. Whilst these women’s understandings of the ‘Black middle classes’ are informed by their gendered and racialised experiences, there is also evidence of a denial of (class) privilege.

White Middle-Class Identity Work Through ‘Against the Grain’ School Choices

James, David and Reay, Diane and Crozier, Gill and Beedell, Phoebe and Jamieson, Fiona and Williams, Katya and Hollingworth , Sumi, White Middle?Class Identity?Work Through ?Against the Grain? School Choices, (2009), Palgrave Macmillan, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. This extract is taken from the author’s original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive version of this piece may be found in Identity in the 21st Century edited by Margaret Wetherell which can be purchased from www.palgrave.com

Mother’s pride: parenting against the grain

Motherhood is an interesting area for academic study, as it remains the focus of anxieties about the family, society and the future generation. In an academic context motherhood raises questions about gender equality and its inroads into family life in ‘post-feminist’ societies. Motherhood and the assumptions that underpin it (that women will take on much of the day-to-day work of child rearing) often remain unchallenged. For many women motherhood marks a profound change not only in their emotional and family circumstances but a shift in their place in society. The role of mother though often celebrated is also one filled with guilt and criticism and cannot be separated from gendered, classed and raced assumptions about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting. Motherhood as sacrifice forms a key part of the construction of ‘good’ mothering and is present in societal ambivalence about mothers working outside the home. In popular discourse the married stay-at-home mother with husband in employment is celebrated for her commitment to her children; however, mothers who stay at home on state assistance are vilified as ‘lazy’ and ‘scroungers’ who are unfit to care for their children. The concept of the good and bad mother weaves its way through both Gillies’ and Pillay’s books on motherhood and mothering. Both books seek to understand how women manage their mothering in the contexts of financial and institutional constraints and how they narrate their stories of hardship, loss and judgement. These books demonstrate how women carve out the spaces to be mothers in difficult contexts. Gillies draws on research from two studies looking at social class and parenting: the Resources in Parenting study and the Families & Social Capital project looking at mother’s subjectivities and the resources they draw on for parenting support (financial, emotional and social). Although she draws on some of the data relating to middle-class families, her book focuses on the experiences of working-class mothers.