Their family has capital too: Black female first-generation graduate students' Experiences of parent support

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Abstract

This narrative inquiry explores the lived experiences of first-generation Black female graduate students, a growing group in higher education. Three Black women reflected on how their parents influenced their academic success. In this context, I view graduate student status as a key element of academic achievement. Using Community Cultural Wealth Theory, a framework that helps understand the generational and communal values of communities of color, I thematically coded and categorized the reflections shared during individual interviews and a focus group session. I found that Black families of first-generation female students, especially graduate students, consistently support and encourage their daughters' aspirations, though to varying degrees. From Inshiya, who described how her dad encouraged her to pursue graduate school full-time when she was tempted to work for financial independence, to Cleo, who explained how her grandmother helped her reflect on her supervisor's thesis comments, and Roli, whose mother told her that her ‘brain is rotting’ when she initially didn’t apply to graduate school. These findings help us better understand the student population in graduate programs and the kinds of support they find helpful for achieving academic success. This knowledge offers guidance to higher education institutions on how to improve their mentoring and readiness programs to better prepare students for future academic careers.
What is the intellectual significance of this research? First-generation research often overlooks the family unit, considering it incapable of providing support due to a lack of experiential knowledge. The Community Cultural Wealth framework emphasizes the importance of family support for communities of color. We should not, this study underlines, forget the importance of the family unit in communities of colour. Using frameworks that specifically acknowledge communities of colour allowed me to identify the ways in which first-generation student parents provide support to their graduate daughters. The experiences of first-generation black female graduate students have little to no visibility in research.

Author

• Le-Anne Lezhaan Goliath, Stellenbosch University