What are the implications of this evidence of persisting patterns? For research on social stratification, the follow-up study results suggest a need to broaden and reconceptualize our analysis of how social class does, and does not, matter in daily life. Researchers need to pay more attention to the crucial role of middle-class parents’ informal knowledge of how institutions work; the educational, economic, and social resources they bring to bear in order to realize their goals; and the countless individually insignificant but cumulatively advantageous interventions on behalf of their children these parents make over time.59
For example, beyond an aspiration or a desire to see Stacey succeed, Ms. Marshall drew on many different class resources as she sought to prepare her daughter for college. Recall Ms. Marshall’s insistence that her daughter enroll in a summer algebra course. In taking this action, Ms. Marshall defined herself as capable of assessing her daughter’s educational needs; unlike Ms. Yanelli, she did not need to depend on someone “educated” to tell her what to do. Ms. Marshall also determined a customized plan of action to shore up the weakness she perceived in Stacey’s school performance. Unlike Ms. Driver, she did not accept the generic academic plan offered to her daughter. Instead, she devised an approach that would strengthen Stacey’s math skills before any serious problems developed. In so doing, Ms. Marshall drew on a formidable amount of informal knowledge about how educational institutions function. This informal knowledge was linked to her own educational and occupational experiences; it was not routinely available to all parents. In addition, Ms. Marshall’s plan of action was molded to match her daughter’s temperament and needs. The impact of parental interventions that have this level of complexity—involving both customized action and long-term planning—is very difficult for researchers to isolate and measure. Indeed, in studies based on surveys, Stacey’s strong math performance in high school would likely be interpreted as a matter of her own ability or her level of educational attainment. The role this middle-class mother played in “boosting” and managing her daughter’s math skills vanishes. It is hidden beneath unexamined assumptions regarding the effects of students’ natural ability or hard work.60
Another area that deserves greater attention from social scientists is the drawbacks of middle-class family life. (Likewise, there should be more studies of the potential advantages of the cultural repertoires of working-class and poor families.) For example, high-achieving middle-class high school students often juggle demanding academic work and multiple extracurricular activities, leaving them with little or no free time. While many enjoy the fast pace and pressures, others are left joyless and alienated by the constant quest to succeed.61 There are other costs too. Parents complain of spending hundreds of hours helping their children through the college search process. Applying and getting into college has become a family affair. Since some youths resent parents’ “interference,” the often intense and prolonged focus on college-related matters can produce considerable family conflict.62 Some middle-class parents, such as Ms. Handlon, also experience shame and humiliation when their children do not succeed academically. Parents feel responsible for their children’s mistakes.63
The emergence and popularity of such trade books as Not Everyone Gets a Trophy signal a growing dissatisfaction over the sense of entitlement displayed by middle-class youth.64 Similarly, working-class parents, such as Ms. Brindle, often do not mince words when describing middle-class youth:
The people . . . who I clean for have some really spoiled kids. I never in my life seen kids that have everything you could possibly think of—yet be the biggest slobs in the world and disrespectful to their mothers and fathers.
Yet scholarly inquiry remains focused on searching out deficits in the child rearing of working-class and poor families, rather than probing the limits of middle-class cultural practices.65 The logic and legitimacy of working-class and poor parents’ dependence on educators also need systematic attention. Many middle-class parents feel comfortable supervising teachers and intervening in the educational process. But if these same parents’ children needed surgery, they would be likely to turn over responsibility to the attending surgeon.66 Working-class and poor parents generally look up the status hierarchy to all “educated people.” Teachers and surgeons appear to be in the same category—both are experts in their respective fields. From this perspective, depending fully on such professionals to do what they have been trained to do is both logical and sensible. And, when working-class and poor parents accord educators and surgeons a similar status, teachers reap vastly more respect and deference than they frequently receive from middle-class parents. The latter routinely intervene in schooling, requesting that teachers “round up” their children’s grades or demanding that their children, despite failing to meet the qualifying criteria, be placed in a gifted program, or threatening legal action if educators appear hesitant to comply with these or other demands.
Class differences in how parents manage youths’ institutional lives are a crucial, understudied piece in the larger puzzle of unequal life outcomes. But, as many studies have shown, there are other important factors as well. The youth I studied were embedded in multiple social contexts. Different aspects of these contexts loomed large as the children traveled the path to adulthood. The interviews revealed some of the ways in which race has impacted their lives as they have grown older. For example, as others have shown, friendship patterns and dating choices were often racially stratified.67 Racial profiling was common. Alexander’s Ivy League admission and high SAT scores did not protect him from being monitored by store clerks as he shopped. And, although their families differed greatly, he and Harold shared very similar levels of deep resignation that race-based harassment was inevitable. White working-class and poor young men also reported being harassed by the police but, strikingly, middle-class white youth did not, a pattern echoed in national data. Given the racially stratified nature of American society, it is not surprising that the young adults reported racial dynamics surfacing in many of their rituals of daily life. Nevertheless, I did not observe race-based patterns in parents’ institutional knowledge or in their management of their children’s experiences within institutions.68 In these realms, the patterns that emerged fell along lines of social class, not race.69
Much as when they were youngsters, class position shaped the young adults’ relationships with their extended families. Among the working-class and poor young adults, there were palpably deep connections and tight interweavings of kinship and family life that were not apparent among the middle-class youths. To be sure, the latter were close to their families—in fact, growing older seemed to have improved the relationship among siblings. Both Garret and Stacey reported that they got along “better” with their siblings than they had when they were younger. Still, middle-class young adults seemed comfortable maintaining more physical and emotional distance from their families than was common among their working-class and poor counterparts. Harold shared an apartment with his older brother and his family. Katie left her daughter in her older sister Jenna’s care while she sorted things out. Katie’s relationship with her mother was more openly troubled than it had been when she was in elementary school (in part because Ms. Brindle’s drinking had escalated, as had her tendency to be verbally abusive when drunk). Still, Katie continued to see her mother regularly, socializing with her as well as with Jenna and Jenna’s family. Wendy also came home often in order to socialize with her family. Regularly interacting with family members provided bonds of support that were particularly valuable in helping working-class and poor youths meet child care needs and cope with other life challenges.
However, class-based cultural repertoires, interwoven with economic resources, continued to matter. Even as the youth grew into adulthood and became more autonomous, class remained important. Middle-class parents and their children had much deeper and more detailed knowledge of the inner workings of key institutional structures, such as high school curricula, college admiss
ion processes, and professional job opportunities, than did working-class and poor parents and their children. Middle-class parents and kids also had more knowledge about and detailed understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their specific “case,” and of the options available, given their individual situation. While all parents helped their children in many ways, middle-class parents adopted a concerted cultivation stance that included close monitoring of their young adults’ circumstances as well as many interventions. Some of the working-class and poor parents also sought to intervene, but these efforts were less frequent and less successful.
SECTION 5. SUMMING UP: CLASS AND THE TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD
When they were ten years old, the middle-class youth seemed worldly, blasé, and hard to impress. For them, pizza parties were very common and thus no special treat. Spring concerts drew shrugs. Kids readily complained to their parents about being bored when they were not occupied by an organized activity. Although the working-class and poor children were the same age as the middle-class children, they seemed younger, bouncier, and more childlike. They smiled broadly while on stage for the spring concert, were ecstatic over a pizza party, and entertained themselves for hours on weekends and evenings. Ten years later, the pattern had reversed: it was the middle-class youth who seemed younger. Now college students, they were excited about the way the world was opening up for them. They had dreams of traveling and visions of many different possible pathways. To be sure, most had experienced setbacks. Garrett had his heart broken by a girl, Stacey was told that she would never compete in collegiate gymnastics, and Melanie was disappointed when a plan to live with a friend fell through. Still, the middle-class youth seemed young and upbeat. By contrast, the working-class and poor youth were generally working full-time in jobs they did not like, and they had various pressing responsibilities such as raising children, paying for food and board, and making monthly car payments. Unlike the middle-class kids, who tended to have worked only at summer jobs, youths who had dropped out of school, such as Harold, had already spent many years in the labor force. There were many wonderful features about the lives of working-class and poor youth. Wendy loved being a mother. Billy was very excited about owning a car. Harold enjoyed hanging out with his brother and watching sports on their large-screen television. The working-class and poor youth remained optimistic—they still had hopes and dreams—but they had struggled in a way that the middle-class youth had not.
Moreover, as the children moved from fourth grade into adulthood, the power of class pushed their lives in such different directions that I could not pose the same interview questions to the group as a whole. Middle-class youths’ interviews were filled with questions about their college preparation classes, college searches, college choice, and college adjustment. As these young people told their stories, additional probing revealed that their parents had been an integral part of their transition to college. Working-class and poor youths’ interviews were filled with discussions of their difficulties in high school, challenges at work, and uncertain future goals. Some working-class and poor youth had undertaken college searches and enrolled in community college courses, but they had done so mainly on their own or with heavy involvement by teachers. Their parents had more circumscribed roles. The follow-up study suggests that over time the gap that existed between the families when the children were ten widened rather than narrowed.
Of course, there is significant variation among the members of all social classes. Some middle-class youth, like Melanie, have learning disabilities or other issues that lead them to not attend college. This in turn may limit their career chances and result in downward mobility—meaning that these individuals wind up in jobs that have lower prestige and lower pay than the ones held by their parents.70 Some working-class and poor youth, often with the assistance of an influential teacher, become first-generation college students. Armed with college degrees, they are able to defy the odds and become upwardly mobile. What is crucial to keep in mind, however, is that these are examples of variations. They tell us about what sometimes happens, not about the norm. As the lives of the families in Unequal Childhoods show, social class origins have effects that are powerful and long lasting. Middle-class families’ cultural practices, including their approach to child rearing, are closely aligned with the standards and expectations—the rules of the game—of key institutions in society. By contrast, relying on professionals to manage their children’s careers is an eminently reasonable decision for working-class and poor parents who have never been to college. But a reasonable decision is not necessarily an advantageous one. In schools especially, today’s institutional rules of the game require parents to be actively involved in order to maximize opportunities for their children. Despite their love for their children, it is harder for working-class and poor families, whose cultural practices and approaches to child rearing are not fully in sync with the institutional standards of schools, to comply with those standards. Finally, it is important to recognize that in American society, people who are blessed with class advantages tend to be unaware of these benefits and privileges. Instead, drawing on the American belief in individualism, they stress their own hard work and talent. They downplay, or do not even notice, the social class benefits bestowed upon them. Americans have, haltingly, developed a rudimentary language that allows us to “see” and discuss racial and ethnic inequalities. But with respect to social class inequalities, which are equally powerful, we remain largely blind and nearly mute.71
CHAPTER 14
Reflections on Longitudinal
Ethnography and the
Families’ Reactions to
Unequal Childhoods
You slurred us, Annette; you made us look like poor
white trash. (Mr. Yanelli’s reaction to reading Unequal Childhoods)
In qualitative research, the way the researcher acts in the field is inextricably connected to data quality. Thus, by tradition qualitative researchers often share the “story behind the story.”1 Throughout my career, I have contributed to this tradition by sharing the missteps that are inevitable in a research project.2 As part of the second edition, I once again share some of the more problematic details, which otherwise would remain private, of my methodological decisions and my experience conducting the longitudinal research. I also summarize and discuss the reactions of the families to the book.
I present this information for three reasons. First, it may help readers assess the quality, and limits, of these data. Second, it may relieve novice researchers to know that seasoned researchers make mistakes in the field; such knowledge may spur them to develop a more realistic view of field work. Third, I seek to use my experience as a springboard to reflect on broader methodological issues that confront many researchers. For example, the topic of longitudinal ethnography is relatively recent in the literature.3 I take up some of the problems that surface in longitudinal ethnography that, I believe, have not been sufficiently acknowledged. In particular, the follow-up to an ethnographic study is likely to rely much more on interviews than on observations; this form of data collection is severely limited. Also, ethnographic studies that are large and ambitious face more complications in a follow-up than do ethnographic studies that are more manageable in size.
Another area I address involves relations between the researcher and research participants. There is an extensive body of methodological writings on this topic.4 But little attention has been paid to the issue of sharing research results with research participants. Participants seem frequently to feel angry and betrayed when they read research results.5 This response needs stronger emphasis and more sustained discussion in methodological writings. As I explain below, I think conducting ethnographic research is important, and researchers should do everything possible to forewarn and protect study participants, including offering them assistance as they respond to social-science portrayals of their lives. But researchers also need to retain control over key aspects of their projects. It is a delicate pro
cess to forge meaningful relationships with research participants while simultaneously maintaining the critical analytic framework necessary to undergird an argument. There are neither easy answers nor one-size-fits-all guidelines. An essential first step for researchers, however, is to more directly acknowledge the emotional cost of ethnographic work for study participants.
THE LIMITS OF THE LONGITUDINAL FOLLOW-UP TO
UNEQUAL CHILDHOODS
As noted, I kept in touch with the children over the years by sending an annual holiday card with five dollars tucked into the envelope. When, approximately ten years after the start of the original study, I decided to do a follow-up, some of the families were easy to reach.6 Others, particularly the McAllisters, were extremely difficult to find. Still, the many hours spent searching paid off: I tracked down everyone. I began reinterviewing the families in the spring and summer of 2003. I generally just called the house, spoke with the mother, and requested her son’s or daughter’s cell phone number and e-mail address. I contacted the young adults directly; now that they were older, they could decide for themselves if they wanted to be interviewed. I offered the youths a hefty honorarium ($75), since I felt it was critical that each one agree to participate in the follow-up. I also offered an honorarium of $50 to each of the other family members who agreed to an interview. In each family, I completed the family-member interviews after I had interviewed the youth. My sense is that all of the young people and family members would have participated in the follow-up without the incentive of an honorarium, but I cannot be certain of that. Since the book was not published until the early fall of 2003, the families had not read it at the time I first reestablished contact. Most seemed glad to hear from me. Some had given up on the possibility that a book would ever appear; they were pleased to hear it was coming out. Generally, people greeted me warmly, as if I were an old friend. However, as I explain below, after they had read their description in the book, some families’ feelings changed.7
Unequal Childhoods Page 41