Academic Involvement in Children’s Education: An Investigation into the Lives of Domestic Worker Parents of Kolkata

Abstract

Parenting holds tremendous significance in today’s world as quality parenting facilitates the development of social and emotional competence in a child. The present study explores the dual role of domestic workers as workers and parents. Domestic Workers work from dawn to dusk to take care of their employees’ families. The obvious question arises: who takes care of their children, back home? As a parent, Domestic workers with their odd working hours and low or no literacy rate are nowadays trying to overcome the socio-economic challenges as well as handicaps of the profession by getting involved in their children’s academics. This paper investigates the effects of the length of working hours and education levels of domestic worker parents on their academic involvement with the children. The present study uses a descriptive survey research design to find out the relationship between academic involvement and work hours. The data was subjected to appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics. The results indicate a negative relationship between work hours and academicinvolvement. It is also revealed that higher education level to be associated with better academic involvement. The study thus calls for further intervention by schools and the government to motivate parents. Parent-teacher meetings may be of help in this respect along with workshops and government-sponsored programs to educate the parents to support them to climb up the socio-economic ladder through their children.