Reframing Family-School Relations: From Parents’ Involvement in Schools to Schools’ Involvement in Parenting

Kelley Fong

As families and schools are primary institutions in children's lives, understanding how these domains intersect is central to promoting child development and well-being. Although considerable research has examined parental involvement in education, this provides only a partial picture. This project shifts the focus to study schools' interventions in parenting and home conditions, from offering childrearing workshops to calling child protection authorities. Educators' parenting suggestions, corrections, threats, and referrals constitute a critical yet understudied component of family-school relations, with implications for families' engagement with schools. Drawing on interviews with educators in diverse school contexts, I will develop a typology of activities schools undertake to influence parenting and examine how educators understand parenting interventions, with particular attention to inequality in the form, content, and goals of these interventions. Analyzing this "other side" of family-school relations is poised to open up new directions for scholars regarding how, why, and for whom schools reach beyond the curricular. The study also aims to inform policy and practice efforts to cultivate positive, equitable family-school relations.

About Kelley Fong

Kelley Fong is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where she studies how families engage with social policies and social service systems. She is the author of Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services (Princeton University Press, 2023), which draws on in-depth, multi-method research that she conducted on child welfare investigations. Investigating Families shows how our reliance on Child Protective Services as a state response to families facing adversity makes motherhood precarious for those already marginalized; it received awards from the Law and Society Association as well as multiple sections of the American Sociological Association. Fong has published her research on child welfare, school choice, and residential decision-making in outlets such as the American Sociological Review, Children and Youth Services Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, and Sociology of Education. She received her Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University and was previously assistant professor of sociology at Georgia Tech.