Maternalising Education:a Study Of New Generation Urban Women's Motherhood Practices ——The Case Of Mothers Of School-age Children In City S

Competitive educational consciousness has reinforced the role of education in class mobility and,as a result of the 'double reduction' policy,the field of cultural reproduction has been drawn back into the family.While mothers have long been seen as the best nurturers of children,the new generation growing up in an era of change has a unique life history,and the increasing competition for education,coupled with the shaping of refined parenting concepts,has once again shaped the current maternal roles and practices that emphasise education as a priority,deepening the inequality in the distribution of educational resources and the gender division of labour,and triggering class anxiety.Through in-depth interviews and participatory observations of new generation mothers of school-age children in S,this paper focuses on their educational practice strategies using cultural capital theory as an analytical framework.The study finds that: firstly,new generation mothers' practices present four states: managerial,growth-oriented,competitive and compromised.They internalise modern scientific and intensive parenting norms,actively use family resources and different capital combinations to reproduce cultural capital,and their educational practices are characterised by uniqueness,comprehensiveness and universality;secondly,particular upbringing leads individuals to form certain choice preferences and Shaping different role practices,facing a competitive academic environment with high inputs and expectations,new generation mothers' competition for educational resources exacerbates the uneven distribution of educational resources to a certain extent;Thirdly,the trend of feminisation of educational duties is reflected behind new generation motherhood practices,subject to multi-level structural constraints such as the solidification of gender division of labour,socio-cultural constraints,lack of care system and uneven distribution of educational resources,and in their own way,they play a certain subjectivity in their childcare practices: using workplace capital to enhance childcare efficiency,accumulating cultural capital to enhance educational discourse,using economic capital to accumulate educational advantages,and making use of maternal experience to recreate cultural capital,presenting a state of both restraint and control.Drawing on the established attempts of women and family social work in the family field,this paper attempts to propose intervention strategies in terms of individual perception,intra-family and social class,in order to reduce women's nurturing pressure,alleviate competition anxiety and promote gender division of labour equality within the family.