Lesson 8: Unequal Childhoods

1. Lesson 8: Unequal Childhoods Social Problems Robert Wonser

2. Unequal Childhoods • Study of 88 African American and white families (of which only 12 discussed in the book) to understand the impact of how social class makes a difference in family life, more specifically in children's lives. • The book argues that regardless of race, social economic class will determine how children cultivate skills they will use in the future.

3. Class-Based Parenting Styles • Annette Lareau distinguishes between two different parenting styles which facilitate the transmission of class position: • Concerted Cultivation and • the Accomplishment of Natural Growth.

4. Accomplishment of Natural Growth • Accomplishment of Natural Growth: The parenting style, favored by working-class and lower-class families, in which parents issue directives to their children rather than negotiations, encourage the following and trusting of people in authority positions, and do not structure their children's daily activities, but rather let the children play on their own.

5. Natural Growth • This method has benefits that prepare the children for a job in the "working" or "poor-class" jobs, teaches the children to respect and take the advice of people in authority, and allows the children to become independent at a younger age.

6. Concerted Cultivation • Concerted Cultivation: The parenting style, favored by middle-class families, in which parents encourage negotiation and discussion and the questioning of authority, and enroll their children in extensive organized activity participation.

7. Concerted Cultivation • This style helps children in middle-class careers, teaches them to question people in authority, develops a large vocabulary, and makes them comfortable in discussions with people of authority. However, it gives the children a sense of entitlement.

8. The Working Class Families Years Later • When she followed up with the families years later: • The majority of the poorer, working class participants had either dropped out of high school or not attended post-secondary institutions, or if they had, had not completed their courses. • Many were working in jobs that did not require a college degree and had already been working full-time for several years, some had children and car payments to support. • Some even gave money back to their parents as rent, for example, if they still lived at home

9. This made them appear older than the middle class participants who generally had less work experience, and the majority of whom had attended college after going through an extensive preparatory process of investigating various institutions and receiving much greater support and involvement of their parents in making their decision, both about the college to attend and the courses to take. • The middle class youth were more likely to be in courses that would lead to professional type occupations like business, medicine and law.

10. Lareau comments in a lecture here that, “their lives had diverged in a profound way.” Unequal Childhoods encourages us to better understand the impact social class has on our educational and life choices as such decisions as who we will marry, where we will live and how we find jobs are influenced by social class and the advantages it may or may not bring.