There are material implications for the coordination of mothering with the activities of the school. Griffith and Smith argued that “schools take for granted middle-class family knowledge, time and resources” (p. 93). This assumption has consequences for the academic success (or lack there-of) of non-mainstream children. For example, lone mothers working full-time face scheduling difficulties (and other class and cultural barriers) that make advocating on behalf of their children for better or alternative teachers and schooling options almost impossible, even when such activities are deemed an integral role and responsibility of mothers to ensure their children’s academic success. This also leads to assumptions by many teachers and administrators about the interests and motivations of parents, and the support they provide their children.

Further reflections on their research led Smith (1993) to introduce the concept of SNAF (The Standard North American Family) as an ideological code that permeated the research described above, as well as other research on the family and education. Using the analogy of a genetic code, Smith argued that an ideological code “is a schema that replicates its organization in multiple and various sites” (1993, p. 51). SNAF, in its privileging of the model of the two-parent, heterosexual, nuclear family, is so embedded in Western cultural models, so normalized, that researchers do not notice the ways in which this code orders their research designs, shapes the interpretations they lend to their data, and the policy implications they draw. SNAF is in operation when we speak of “single mothers,” “lone fathers” or “alternate families,” and thus compare these families to a “norm” that rarely exists. According to Smith, SNAF,

was and is actively fed by research and thinking produced by psychologists and specialists in child development and is popularly disseminated in women’s magazines, television magazines and other popular media. An important aspect of SNAF is its influence in “managing” women’s relations to their children’s schooling and enlisting their work and thought in support of the public education system. (Smith, 1993, p. 54)

Smith’s claims are supported by the work of Nakagawa (2000), who explored the discursive construction of the “involved parent” and analyzed the discourses of contractual agreements between parents and schools that came into vogue in the 1990s. She argued that a parental involvement discourse “creates particular representations of parents; these representations are intimately connected to larger ideological debates about public-school funding, school curriculum, and the rights of children” (p. 444). These debates revolve largely around the increasing obligations of families to schools, particularly in the context of diminishing educational resources. As Nakagawa argued, these obligations are shouldered mainly by mothers, whose own work and personal needs are placed in conflict with the ever-increasing needs of schools, and of the “ideal” child who is supported scholastically in the home.