“You Were Going to Go to College”: The Role of Chicano Fathers’ Involvement in Chicana Daughters’ College Choice

Using pláticas, the sharing of cultural teachings through intimate and informal conversations, this article analyzes the personal college choice processes of Chicanas by examining the impact of being raised by Chicano college-educated fathers. Drawing on two theoretical frameworks, college-conocimiento, a Latinx college choice conceptual framework, and critical raced-gendered epistemologies, this research demonstrates how intimate and informal conversations occur within Chicana/o daughter-father relationships in negotiating higher education and household contexts. The analysis responds to the need to explore daughter-father relationships in higher education research. This work expands the college choice scholarship by moving beyond traditional models to examine the gendered and raced experiences of families of color, particularly focusing on how father involvement is associated with the college choice of daughters.