Family-school relations as presented in a political economy of education are critically examined. The ways in which the separation of family and work is reinforced and the distinction between male and female spheres is legitimated are analysed within three different relationships: between schools and the economy, schooling and work, and the family and school. New ways of understanding school experience are suggested through a review of new research on family cultures and the reproduction of female class relations. The paper concludes with a call to reintegrate family and work relations, to reassess our assumptions about the family and the formation of class and gender identities, and to develop a feminist perspective within a revised political economy of education.
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