“I don’t want them to forget their heritage”: afterlives of English-only schooling for single Mexican American mothers

Abstract This study examines how single Mexican American mothers sustain Spanish in their homes while navigating the legacies of Arizona’s English-only regime. Guided by Critical Race Theory and Transnational Feminism, I analyze testimonios from two mothers whose own childhoods under Proposition 203 and Structured English Immersion (SEI) shape how they now raise their children. One, a first-generation mother in a bilingual nursing fellowship, and the other, a second-generation mother pursuing a teaching certificate while raising two toddlers, reveal how race, gender, class, and single motherhood converge in family language policy. Their narratives illustrate that English-only schooling is not a relic of the past but an enduring structure whose afterlives reverberate into parenting, making Spanish maintenance fragile and precarious. Yet these mothers transform their wounds into strategies: enforcing Spanish-only routines, creating literacy rituals, planning immersion trips, or seeking dual language schooling as a protective resource. In doing so, they perform what scholars identify as motherwork or gendered linguistic labor that compensates for the state’s abandonment of bilingual education. Findings highlight both the trauma of English-only schooling and the resilience of mothers who refuse to let their children inherit those wounds. I conclude by calling for policies that expand access to dual language programs, reform restrictive assessment mechanisms, and recognize the gendered labor sustaining multilingualism as a collective right.