Background/Context: Recent trends suggest that middle-class parents may be a growing constituency in urban public schools and districts. Within the burgeoning literature on the middle class in urban public schools, most scholars have focused on parents' goals and orientations and/or the consequences of parental involvement in classroom and school…

Life history interview tracked the movement of five middle-class women attending classes through a continuing education center for women. The center facilitated their movement through developmental stages but hampered their movement between stages, their abandonment of old social roles, and their construction of new roles. (BJV)