Government policy in England has for many years encouraged parental involvement in their children's education. In response, most primary schools have developed a range of strategies designed to assist parents in supporting their children's learning at home, particularly in learning to read. However, it is a common assumption that parents from some social and ethnic groups are “harder to reach” than others and — indeed — that some are even not interested in their children's education. There is also confusion among teachers about how a parent who herself does not speak English could possibly help her child to learn to read and write in English. These views, it can be argued, are based on simplistic notions of the roles that parents can take, and on a “one-way” model of involvement, which invests all the knowledge and skills with the school.  In this article, using evidence from a small-scale, qualitative research project with parents of South Asian heritage in a multilingual city in the north of England, we show the complexity of the issues involved in recognising the diversity of ways in which families do and can support children's learning out of school, the importance of understanding the family contexts themselves, and the ways in which parents construct their identities in relation to their children's school experiences.