In many instances, researchers who have been most successful in soliciting input from respondents without relinquishing control over the published text were studying organizations and organizational policies. Often, work in these areas draws on stable data collected from written memoranda, published documents, and public records, as well as the more volatile evidence supplied by human subjects. Many researchers who study organizations strive for compromise, “toning down” their analyses to accommodate respondents’ concerns. This approach has costs, however. The portraits often become less sharply focused, particularly with respect to weaknesses or problems in an organization.33
Generally, organizational dynamics are more public, and certainly less personal, than child rearing. In studies of more private settings, it is easy for people to feel criticized, even when that is not the researcher’s intent. Ultimately, many decisions researchers make are dependent on the particular context as well as on the researchers’ own sensibilities. They cannot be mandated. In my case, I worried that showing a draft of the manuscript to the families would make the book hard to complete. I was not primarily concerned about issues of accuracy. The research assistants and I were in the homes frequently, and we took very detailed notes, sought disconfirming evidence, carried out in-depth interviews, and made every effort to make only claims that were buttressed with ample data. But if, as I anticipated, the families did object to how they were portrayed, I would feel deeply conflicted. I would want to stand by my analysis but also please the participants. The result would be paralysis; I would find myself unable to move the book to closure. (Researchers vary in how easy they find writing and/or wrapping up a project. I find both steps challenging.) What if some participants found their portrait so painful that they requested that I drop that chapter? What would I do then? For example, even now, the Yanellis continue to find their portrait quite painful. If I had shown it to them ahead of time, they would have demanded that it be removed from the book or that it be radically restructured to eliminate their sense that they had been made to look like child abusers. If I had taken out the chapter, the book would have been weaker. If I had dropped the discussion of discipline, the central argument of the chapter would have been gutted. If I had proceeded to publish despite the Yanellis’ intense objections, I would have severely damaged our relationship.34
Of course, in making choices, and in finding a balance that is “right for them,” researchers are not free agents.35 They need to meet certain critically important ethical obligations: they must inform people that they are being studied, get their explicit agreement to participate in the research, tell them in advance that the results will be published, and protect the confidentiality of information respondents would prefer to remain private.36 Following the Golden Rule, ethnographers should not ask study participants to do anything that they would not be willing to do themselves or have their own children do. Still, finding a balance that is “right for them” raises a quagmire of ethical challenges for researchers. All possible pathways have problems. In my own case, I have concluded that sharing research results with study participants in order to gain their approval should be optional. Since sharing research results has numerous drawbacks for all parties (despite some potential advantages), it should not be required any more than other researchers or journalists should be required to gain approval from their informants and participants before publication.37 In my view, for better or worse, a research project is controlled by the researcher. It is the researcher, not the research participants, who frames the research topic, asks the questions, figures out the probes, decides what information to record, selects what to analyze, chooses the quotes to highlight, and does the writing.38
TO EXPECT FORGIVENESS IS TO EXPECT TOO MUCH
It is exceedingly rare for researchers to give a finished book to research participants and then go back to them to learn how they feel about it, as I did. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who did the same, describes in her book Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland, the pain and anger her book caused in an Irish village. In her view, some of the pain was an inevitable and inextricable part of the project, given that ethnographic research requires the public exposure of personal warts: “Any ethnography ultimately stands or falls on the basis of whether or not it resonates: it should ring true, strike a familiar (even if occasionally painful) chord. It should not leave the ‘native’ reader cold and confused. Angry and hurt, perhaps, but not confused or perplexed.” Doing ethnography raises difficult ethical questions, as Scheper-Hughes further notes: “To whose advantage or for whose good do we cast what is so often a critical gaze on the contradictions and paradoxes implicit in the character of human relations, institutions, and organizations?”39 From Scheper-Hughes’s writings, and from my own experience, I reluctantly conclude that some of this anger and hurt is the “price of doing business” in writing ethnography and having the research participants read the results. For some, it is a high price to pay. To act as if there is no price—to act as if ethnographic research is “free”—is to be naïve. Indeed, some would say the failure to acknowledge to oneself the cost of research goes beyond naïveté and shades into ethically irresponsible behavior. Ethnographers must acknowledge the difficult, angst-inducing questions about whether the price is worth it.40
Accepting that there are costs for those who participate in a research project is only the first step. It is also important that ethnographers think carefully about how to reduce that price. If I were to do Unequal Childhoods again, before I asked potential participants to sign a consent form, I would explain in more detail what research entails. Notably, as Ms. Taylor said, it is not a “story” but an analysis. I would give individuals who expressed interest in participating in my study a book such as The Second Shift and encourage them to look it over carefully. I would say something like, “This is what my book is going to look like. Is this okay?”41 I would not promise participants a copy of my study’s published results, as I did with the Unequal Childhoods families. Instead, I would create a color brochure or newsletter that would include a prominent thank you to the research participants and would highlight project results that would be of interest to general readers. (The brochure could also be used as an informative handout for journalists, research groups, or other generalists.) This level of information is all most people really want; they are interested in whether the project came to a close and whether the research revealed anything significant. By giving each family a book, I was in a sense forcing the respondents to look at themselves from others’ perspectives. Some, such as the Yanellis, interpreted the way their lives were portrayed in the text as demeaning and false—a “slur.” Some readers, on the other hand, have told me that the Yanelli chapter made them understand how families who use corporal punishment could see the school as a threatening and powerful force. These readers said they found that insight truly helpful. But the fact that I, and some readers, may disagree with a family’s interpretation is irrelevant to the family and thus does nothing to lessen their pain.42 That is the key point.
There could be class differences in the likelihood of study participants seeking out the book on their own: middle-class respondents are likely to have the educational skills that would allow them to do so, and some may be more motivated to find the book than others. Still, the feelings that result from bringing study participants a copy of the book, and thus compelling them to consider a portrait of themselves that does not match their own self-vision, are likely to be more troublesome than those that arise after participants who actively sought out a copy of the research results read those results. If participants sought out and read the research report(s) and became very upset as a result, then, as with the families of Unequal Childhoods, I would try to engage them in a process in which we worked through the problems together. I would not withdraw from them (although, admittedly, this is a strong temptation). I would not ignore their feelings. Instead, I would directly and clearly interact with them about tho
se feelings—that is, if they were willing to continue to see me. I would drop by from time to time, bringing bakery cakes and perhaps some wine or beer, to say hello and to see how they were doing. Even if research participants are blisteringly angry, I believe that it is still possible, in some cases, to be engaged in conversation in a way that can lead to a diffusion of anger.43 If the respondents are willing to continue a relationship with the researcher, clearly acknowledging their position and doing so at repeated intervals may eventually lead to people’s anger subsiding. I also think it is fitting for a researcher to invest time and energy in return visits, given that she or he is the cause of the respondents’ anger.
With the Unequal Childhoods participants, my efforts were rewarded. Some participants’ anger did diffuse over time. I continue to send cards and little gifts to the Yanellis, I give them big hugs whenever I see them, and they in turn greet me warmly.44 Others have been less forgiving. To expect forgiveness is to expect too much.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In the appendix to his classic sociological study Street Corner Society, William F. Whyte describes the anger and sense of betrayal that many of the “boys” felt toward him after the publication of his book. “The trouble is, Bill, you caught people with their hair down,” one of the men tells him.45 The entire point of ethnography is to catch people in the routines of daily life, to reveal taken-for-granted aspects of their experience, and to make the background foreground. But researchers have often underestimated the level of anger and the sense of betrayal that can surface when they share their research results with participants. The dual process of seeking to reduce feelings of anger and pain while also accepting that such emotions may occur remains an enduring challenge.
CHAPTER 15
Unequal Childhoods
in Context
Results from a Quantitative Analysis
ANNETTE LAREAU, ELLIOT WEININGER,
DALTON CONLEY, AND MELISSA VELEZ
As social behavior shifts, new cultural forms arise. For example, many of the characteristics of the middle-class mothers described in the first edition of Unequal Childhoods had become so prevalent that as the research for that edition was underway, a new term—“soccer mom”—entered the national vocabulary. In addition to prompting the development of new terminology, changes in family life reverberate through the culture in other ways. In recent years, elaborate “mom organizer” calendars have flooded the marketplace. These calendars have columns available for entering each child’s schedule, color-coded schemes for keeping track of each family member’s commitments, and stickers representing (and differentiating among) children’s organized activities. Meanwhile, some recently published advice books now warn parents about the importance of scheduling free time for their children. Professionals caution against keeping children too busy.1 Cartoons that poke fun at contemporary family life are also a thriving industry. The Doonesbury cartoon strip reproduced here captures these broader cultural patterns that are an element of the study.
This chapter applies a more analytical approach to the broader context of Unequal Childhoods. Some readers of the first edition worried that the families described in the book might not be typical. I worried too. After the book was published, I carried out a research project with quantitatively skilled collaborators, who are the co-authors of this chapter, to investigate this issue. In that study, we used a quantitative analysis of a nationally representative sample to examine connections between social class and children’s time use, particularly organized activities. Those quantitative findings are summarized here. Because the quantitative investigation shifts the focus back to children, the summary does not follow smoothly from the discussions in Chapters 13 and 14, where young adults and their parents are the center of attention. Nevertheless, the quantitative work was important to carry out. In crucial ways, the quantitative findings corroborate the ethnographic data. As is often the case, however, there are also some interesting wrinkles that could lead to further research and reflection.
Doonesbury cartoon © 2003 by G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of Universal Uclick. All rights reserved.
Ethnographic studies like Unequal Childhoods look closely at real people as they go about their everyday lives. Ethnographers watch, listen, ask questions, and take notes as they join study participants in their daily activities. As the book reveals, gathering information this way requires a great deal of time, energy, and patience, so ethnographic researchers must limit their sample size. Some people find the results of ethnographic studies, including Unequal Childhoods, especially persuasive precisely because they draw on the carefully collected, intimate details of the social lives of a small number of carefully chosen people. Others, though, wonder whether such findings provide reliable information about people in general: what if the study participants are not typical?
The big-picture results achieved by analyzing data collected from surveys given to hundreds (or thousands) of people can—sometimes—help answer that question. But confirming findings from a small sample by undertaking a large-scale, representative survey is impractical. The costs would be overwhelming. Researchers usually have to rely on data that have been collected by someone else, for some other purpose. This is the case with our efforts to confirm the key conclusions of Unequal Childhoods.2 We turned to a nationally representative data set that is well regarded by social scientists: the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The PSID is a longitudinal data set containing information on a representative sample of families in the United States. It is known for having high-quality measures of economic and financial variables. A special module of the PSID, the Child Development Survey (CDS), contains detailed information on children who were part of PSID families in 1997—just a few years later than the original ethnographic data for Unequal Childhoods were collected. The CDS data on children can be linked to the economic and social information contained in the PSID, thus giving us a numbers-based, comprehensive window onto American family life. Our work draws on combined data of this type.3
The CDS is distinctive because it includes time diaries. These are lists of all the activities carried out by each child, from midnight to midnight (i.e., a 24-hour period), on a randomly chosen weekday and a randomly chosen weekend day. The diaries also include the starting and ending times of each activity. (Parents assisted their children in filling out the diaries, following careful instructions provided by the agency directing data collection.) Because the entries for each day must sum to 24 hours, time diaries are widely considered to be more accurate than questionnaire data. When people fill out questionnaires, they often overestimate how much time they normally spend doing activities that are considered socially desirable (exercising, for example, or reading). The structure of time diaries reduces this kind of inaccuracy.4
In conducting our analysis of the data, we began with a basic assumption, namely that children’s time diaries provide insight into what the children themselves do, as well as into their parents’ child-rearing strategies. Our analytical goal was to determine whether the PSID-CDS data exhibit patterns consistent with the concepts of concerted cultivation and natural growth reported in Unequal Childhoods. Therefore, using information on a subset of children in the CDS aged six to twelve, we constructed measures from the time diaries of the amount of time each child devoted to two key types of activities: organized activities and non-organized leisure (i.e., “hanging out”). We also measured the amount of time each child spent in the presence of extended kin. Each of these measures corresponds to a key finding from the ethnography. Once we had developed the measures, we looked to see what other characteristics of the sample they correlated with. For example, while we did not have a measure of occupational conditions available that conformed to the one used in the book, we did have various “proxy” measures—including family income, family wealth, and maternal educational attainment—which are often used by quantitative social scientists. As the ethnographic data in the first edition suggested, we fou
nd that each of these proxy measures is significantly associated with children’s time use. Children whose mothers have more education (i.e., middle-class children) spend more time in organized activities, less time hanging out, and less time with extended kin than children whose mothers have lower levels of education (i.e., working-class children). We obtained similar results for family income and wealth.
The final step of the analysis was to determine whether these associations persisted when we carried out multivariate regressions. This statistical procedure makes it possible to examine the association between a pair of variables (such as mother’s level of education and the amount of time children spend hanging out) while simultaneously holding constant (i.e., controlling for) other variables, such as age, race, or income. The goal here is to determine whether the association between the variables of interest exists among individuals who are also comparable to one another in other important respects. So, if we are concerned with the relationship between the amount of education mothers have and the amount of time their children spend hanging out, we would want to control for various factors that might also be related to hanging out—things such as age, gender, race, family structure (single-parent or two-parent), mother’s work status, and so forth. Essentially, multivariate regression analysis enables us to isolate the predictive power of mother’s education.
In the first of these analyses, we found that two of our proxy measures of social class—mother’s education and family income—remain powerful in predicting children’s participation in organized activities, despite the inclusion of numerous control variables. The accompanying figures indicate the magnitude of the relationships we found. For illustration, we present the predictions our statistical model makes for a hypothetical Black boy (Figure 1) and white girl (Figure 2). (To facilitate comparison, these hypothetical children are assumed to be identical in all other respects captured by the model—i.e., in terms of family structure, age, wealth, etc.) The patterns throughout the figures are quite similar. Indeed, we found that, with the control variables included, there is no discernable difference between Black and white children in participation in organized activities. These results confirm some of the central findings from Unequal Childhoods: participation in organized activities appears to be closely linked to social class, but not to race. Furthermore, while the effects revealed in the graphs are fairly substantial in magnitude, it is worth bearing in mind that income and education frequently “overlap” with one another—that is, families like the ones described as “middle-class” in Unequal Childhoods tend to have both high incomes and high levels of educational attainment. Thus the graphs should be viewed as conservative estimates of social class differences in organized activity participation.5
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