ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
This article is part of the Research TopicLong-Term Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health and Well-Being in Education: Underlying Mechanisms and Intervention StrategiesView all 13 articles
Maternal homeschooling after abandonment and violence: understanding pedagogical experiences in Peru's soup kitchens
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universidad Cesar Vallejo, Trujillo, Peru
- 2Consorcio Universidad Cesar Vallejo, Lima District, Peru
- 3Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal, San Miguel, Peru
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We studied the critical stance of 25 Peruvian mothers from a soup kitchen for the extremely poor regarding their educational role at home without the support of the father in the household before, during, and after the pandemic. This qualitative research on an atypical case allowed us to characterize the participants by various social traits, recognizing abandonment, spousal abuse, lack of resources linked to low socioeconomic status, and lack of a formal workplace. This involved approaching soup kitchens in six districts of the city of Lima, whose members were encouraged to watch videos about the role of women during a month of work. The retrospective analysis methodology involved applying focus group techniques, interviews, and analysis of the children's academic performance as a measure of convergent analysis [2019-2023]. The critical debate among the mothers generated findings in which thematic codes associated with the categories of personal experiences, decisive experiences, and experiences of continuity in studies were found. From the perspective of mothers, the traces allowed for the interpretation of the role of maternal education [education by the mother] as useful empirical teaching in the home, without being contingent on the father's education in the home, based on emotional and behavioral regulation activities, the application of basic pedagogical activities, and the achievement of care in the face of the spread of certain diseases. These family conditions allowed mothers to continue their children's education and to live assertively in the face of the temporary changes caused by the pandemic in the economy and health.
Keywords: abandoned mothers, education provided by the mother, Family life, family education, Homeschooling
Received: 19 Aug 2025; Accepted: 28 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Holguin-Alvarez, Manrique-Alvarez and Ruiz-Salazar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jhon Holguin-Alvarez
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