Educating the Future: Evangelical Motherhood and Competing Visions of Schooling in Texas

Decisions about how children should be raised and educated are an important arena of future negotiation. Drawing on ethnographic research with women at First Baptist Dallas, this paper examines how evangelical mothers envision the future through choices about their children’s schooling. Conversations about whether to homeschool, enroll in private Christian schools, or remain in public schools reveal concerns not only about moral formation and religious identity but also cultural authority and social change. Based on fieldwork conducted from 2018–2021, the paper analyzes how mothers frame schooling decisions as part of their responsibility to shape the moral future of the next generation. These everyday deliberations illuminate broader debates in Texas over the role of religion in public education, including legislation related to the Ten Commandments in classrooms and expanded scriptural references in state curricula. Mothers’ stories reveal how struggles over schooling are struggles over whose vision of the future will prevail.