Capitalising on Musical Mothering

Abstract

This chapter is the first of four that portray the musical life stories of the choirboys and the significant characters in their lives. We begin looking at the role of music in making young masculinities with the seldom-heard vantage point of mothers’ stories of their sons’ early lives. I examine the mothers’ involvement in their children’s music education against the backdrop of current sociological debates about intensive mothering practices and the concerted cultivation involved in middle-class parenting. Using feminist rereadings of Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts, I focus on the dispositions that are fostered in early childhood through the mothers’ musical practices that I refer to as their musical mothering, which form the foundation of the boys’ musical habitus.