Mothering Difference

Cultural maintenance is often understood as ‘women’s work’ to be carried out through the family and particularly, in relation to child rearing. Can this work be understood as anything more than complicity with patriarchy? In this paper I wish to explore the radical potential of work undertaken within minority families where parents, often women, mediate both minority and majority cultures. This has the potential to break down boundaries as much as it has the potential to promote boundary keeping. Particular attention will be given to women as targets for racism,  their role in formal and informal education and discursive constructions of them as lacking agency.