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76 who is a first - generation college student ? My dad’s [educational expectation] was the highest. I mean he wanted you to go as far as you could and achieve as much as you could. And my mother too but it just I don’t think the value that she put on education was as strong as my dad’s. . . . But my dad always knew that education would take you anywhere in life you wanted to go and, uh, that was his, uh, he wanted that for all of his kids . . . all seven of us. . . . I remember when I came out of high school, business administration [i.e., secretarial work] is something women sought after. Well this is just the generation I grew up in; I think all the neighborhoods felt the same way back then. Lena’s father and to some extent her mother believed that education would adequately prepare her and her siblings for the challenges of the world and provide a lifetime of employment. Similar to what the students in Freeman’s (2005) work had said about their parents, Lena’s working-class parents wanted her and her siblings to exceed their own highest level of education attainment (see Table 5.1). Kim’s mother understood that with more education came more oppor- tunity and a life with vocational options beyond the backbreaking jobs she held as a manual laborer in the cotton fields of Mississippi. Kim’s mother was well aware that the life she led was a consequence of her 3rd-grade edu- cation and her family’s dire economic condition, where every able-bodied person needed to work the cotton fields in order to keep a roof over their heads. Not wanting this future for her children, Kim’s mother moved the family to California and enrolled them into the state’s superior public K–12 system. All the while she insisted that Kim and her siblings earn high school TABLE 5.1 Educational Attainment of the Three and Their Parents Participant’s Name Participant’s Childhood Family Where Raised Participant’s Highest Level of Education Participant’s Parents’ Level of Education Kim 1 parent (mother) Urban, CA High school Diploma Third grade (mom) Lena 1 parent (mother) (father) Urban, CA High school Diploma Fifth grade (mom); 12th grade (dad) Kathy 1 parent (mother but dad still involved) Rural, IN High school Diploma Tenth grade (mom); third grade (dad)