diff --git a/pkgs/development/compilers/mono/4.4.nix b/pkgs/development/compilers/mono/4.4.nix
index 1ec679e6e41..b9cf7d94953 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/compilers/mono/4.4.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/compilers/mono/4.4.nix
@@ -4,4 +4,5 @@ callPackage ./generic.nix (rec {
   inherit Foundation libobjc;
   version = "4.4.2.11";
   sha256 = "0cxnypw1j7s253wr5hy05k42ghgg2s9qibp10kndwnp5bv12q34h";
+  buildParallel = false; # see #32386 -- parallel building broken on 4.4
 })
diff --git a/pkgs/development/compilers/mono/generic.nix b/pkgs/development/compilers/mono/generic.nix
index 367b05bef5b..f067cc2b8bf 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/compilers/mono/generic.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/compilers/mono/generic.nix
@@ -1,4 +1,11 @@
-{ stdenv, fetchurl, bison, pkgconfig, glib, gettext, perl, libgdiplus, libX11, callPackage, ncurses, zlib, withLLVM ? false, cacert, Foundation, libobjc, python, version, sha256 }:
+{ stdenv, fetchurl, bison, pkgconfig, glib, gettext, perl, libgdiplus, libX11
+, callPackage, ncurses, zlib
+, cacert, Foundation, libobjc, python
+
+, version, sha256
+, withLLVM ? false
+, buildParallel ? true
+}:
 
 let
   llvm     = callPackage ./llvm.nix { };
@@ -40,7 +47,7 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
   # The file /nix/store/xxx-mono-2.4.2.1/lib/mscorlib.dll is an invalid CIL image
   dontStrip = true;
 
-  enableParallelBuilding = true;
+  enableParallelBuilding = buildParallel;
 
   # We want pkg-config to take priority over the dlls in the Mono framework and the GAC
   # because we control pkg-config