This investigation aimed to understand the sense of family educational practices developed by parents of a low income neighborhood in São Paulo, Brazil, and to analyze those practices as part of the process of identity construction. Educational practices are shown as actions through which the process of socialization in the family is developed; they contribute for personal identity construction and reflect a man's and world's view, in a historical and social class context . It was a qualitative phenomenological research and its data were collected through interviews and group activities with families. Results indicated that the socializing sense of their family practices was directed to rear docile people, obedient to an authoritarian order, subjected to violent disciplinary practices that provided a context directed to the avoidance of a "negative" identity.
family and educational practices; family and identity; violent family practices and negative identity