Exceptional and Decent People: Mothering and School Choice in the Reproduction of Social Inequality

This article explores how primary school choice varies for differently situated mothers through an analysis of interviews with Czech middle- and working-class mothers. Combining Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, Foucault’s technologies of the self, and the concept of intensive parenting, we examine how school choice is becoming parents’ identity work in a diversified primary school system, guided by intensive parenting norms. We argue that school choice reinforces parental guidance of children towards a particular type of subjectivity (assertive and competitive, self-confident, or polite and fitting in) and contributes to the intergenerational reproduction of inequalities. We show how habitus rooted in social class influences primary school choice and explain major class-cultural differences associated with choices made by middle-class mothers. We also show how intergenerational transmission is disrupted, leaving room for mobility.