Strategic mothering: Black Caribbean mothers’ narratives of involvement and strategy in their children’s educational success

For generations of Black Caribbean families in Britain, education has been understood as both personal aspiration and collective resistance. Yet Black Caribbean pupils continue to experience significant disadvantage, including disproportionate exclusion, lower attainment and underrepresentation in higher education. Drawing on narrative data from two generations of Black Caribbean women mothers and their daughters this paper introduces the concept of strategic mothering: the deliberate, purposeful and racially informed practices Black Caribbean mothers employ to secure educational success for their children. Strategic mothering encompasses private tuition, supplementary teaching within the home, school relocation and sustained advocacy. The paper demonstrates that strategic mothering is generationally produced and takes different forms according to mothers’ circumstances and resources. It makes an original contribution by theorising strategic mothering as a racialised and gendered practice of resistance, extending frameworks of parental involvement, emotion work and emotional capital.