Parenting education programs aim to teach parents, often low-income mothers, a set of skills, behaviors, and attitudes believed to promote improved opportunities for their children. Parenting programs are often offered in schools, with instructors teaching pregnant or parenting teens about child development, attachment, and discipline strategies. Despite the large numbers of participants and significant public and private funding going to parenting education, sociologists of education in the United States have paid little attention to the topic. Existing research, by scholars in other disciplines, has found parenting education to be a relatively weak intervention. Yet this research focuses exclusively on individual-level processes, paying little attention to social context or other factors. This study uses extensive observational and interview data from parenting education programs in two schools and one social service organization to examine what is taught, what is not, and the intersections between program content and the structural realities shaping parents’ lives. The results show that although they were designed for low-income mothers, the classes were silent on the issue of poverty, treating poverty-related concerns as irrelevant to the task of parenting. Furthermore, when such topics did emerge, instructors redirected the conversations to personal behaviors and characteristics. Thus, the ‘‘hidden curriculum’’ of parenting education conveyed the message that good parenting should be unaffected by the challenges of poverty. The mothers, however, struggled to provide for their children in conditions of extreme scarcity, making it difficult for them to focus on other parenting issues.

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“我只需要一份工作！”行为解决方案，结构性问题和育儿教育的隐性课程

育儿教育计划旨在教父母（通常是低收入母亲）一系列技能，行为和态度，这些观念，行为和态度被认为可以促进子女获得更多的机会。在学校通常会提供育儿计划，教员会教怀孕或育儿的青少年关于儿童发育，依恋和纪律策略的知识。尽管参加育儿教育的参与者众多，并且有大量的公共和私人资金投入，但美国的教育社会学家很少对此话题给予关注。其他学科的学者进行的现有研究发现，育儿教育相对较弱。然而，这项研究仅专注于个人层面的过程，很少关注社会背景或其他因素。这项研究使用来自两所学校和一个社会服务组织的育儿教育计划的大量观察和访谈数据，来研究所教的内容，不教的内容以及计划内容与塑造父母生活的结构现实之间的交集。结果表明，尽管这些课程是为低收入母亲设计的，但他们对贫困问题保持沉默，将与贫困相关的问题视为与育儿任务无关。此外，当确实出现此类话题时，讲师会将对话重定向到个人行为和特征。因此，育儿教育的“隐藏课程”传达了这样的信息，即良好的育儿不应受到贫困挑战的影响。但是，母亲们在极端匮乏的条件下努力地养育自己的孩子，