Overall, these moments of interaction between parents and key actors in institutions are the life blood of the stratification process and need to be examined more in the future. Bourdieu does not show empirically how individuals draw on class-based cultural resources in their moments of interaction with institutions. Parents appear to have an uneven ability to customize their interactions with such institutions. Similarly, they have an unequal ability to persuade professionals to comply with their wishes.
In sum, we need to understand the individually insignificant but cumulatively important ways in which parents from the dominant classes actually facilitate their children’s progress through key social settings. This book is one effort to do just that.
APPENDIX C
Supporting Tables
TABLE C1. DISTRIBUTION OF CHILDREN IN THE STUDY BY SOCIAL CLASS AND RACE
TABLE C2. SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF CATCHMENT AREAS OF SCHOOLS IN THE STUDY
TABLE C3. FAMILY STRUCTURE BY SOCIAL CLASS AND RACE
TABLE C4. AVERAGE NUMBER OF ORGANIZED ACTIVITIES BY SOCIAL CLASS, RACE, AND CHILD’S GENDER1
TABLE C5. PARTICIPATION IN ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL: BOYS
TABLE C6. PARTICIPATION IN ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL: GIRLS
TABLE C7. PROPORTION WHO HAVE REQUESTED A TEACHER BY SOCIAL CLASS1
TABLE C8. PROPORTION WHO KNOW PROFESSIONALS BY SOCIAL CLASS1
TABLE C9. OVERVIEW OF DATA COLLECTION PROCESS
1989–90
Observation in two third-grade classrooms in Lawrenceville (midwestern town of 25,000); in-depth interviews separately with mothers, fathers, and guardians of 31 children, approximately one-half white and one-half Black; one observation of one white middle-class family one day; interviews with professionals working with children; work done primarily by Lareau with some assistance from an African American graduate student
1992–93
Receive grant from the Spencer Foundation
Study of third-grade class in an integrated public school in large urban school district “Lower Richmond,” which draws mostly white working-class and African American children from a low-income housing project in a northeastern city. Participant observation by Lareau from December to June in Ms. Green’s classroom; an undergraduate African-American woman also visits the classroom
Study of a public school in a small suburban district, “Swan,” which draws mostly white middle-class students with some white working-class and some Black (about ten percent are from middle-class African American families). Participant observation in Swan from April to June by Lareau of a third-grade classroom of Ms. DeColli
One half-time research assistant (RA) for help with library work and general project management (but not fieldwork)
Spring 1993: decide to hire RAs for fieldwork
1993–94
Hire five RAs (four white women and one Black woman)
Experienced RA from 1992–93 moves to Midwest but returns for retreats and acts as an advisor and consultant to remaining RAs
Spend one month training RAs
One RA visits Swan fourth grade of Ms. Nettles
Occasional visits to Lower Richmond fourth grades: Mr. Tier, Ms. Bernstein, and Ms. Stanton
RAs and Lareau carry out in-depth interviews for separate interviews with mothers, fathers, and guardians from Lower Richmond and Swan (equal numbers of white and Black children) of 40 families, mostly from classrooms where there have been observations (one RA quits in December)
November: choose 12 families for intensive visits
December/January: complete Carroll, Brindle, and Handlon. Plan to visit 12–14 times for two to three hours per visit and go with the families on outings (i.e., doctor, dentist, church); plan to carry out exit interviews with target child, siblings, mother, and father or guardian
January: revise plan to visit 20 times, usually in the space of one month, often daily, as well as interview
February-May: complete Driver, Irwin, and Yanelli; start Tallinger
June: RAs scatter (one quits grad school and moves to New York, one moves to LA, and two work on comprehensive exams)
Summer 1994
Hire two new research assistants (one white woman and one African American man)
Finish Tallinger, start and finish Mcallister and Taylor, and start Williams
Summer 1995
One research assistant returns (white woman; African American man has moved to Boston); hire three additional research assistants (a white woman, a white man, and a Black woman)
Start and finish Marshall and Greeley; finish Williams
Summer 1996
Read field notes, analyze data
Transcribe interviews; write papers
Spring and Summer 1997
Present results in several talks
Receive feedback; begin to revise approach
Recruit 17 additional families (mostly black middle-class families and white poor families) for interviews, bringing final sample to 88 families
Summer 1998
Continue data analysis, writing papers, and revise
Begin book
Spring, Summer, Fall 1999
Draft first chapters for the book
Receive writing grant for fall semester; released from teaching
2000
Complete draft of five chapters; begin review process
2001
Revise draft; cut length by one-half; add five more chapters
Finish complete copy of book; do second review
2002
Complete revisions
TABLE C10. OCCUPATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ADULT MEMBERS OF FAMILIES IN THE STUDY
APPENDIX D
Tables for the Second Edition
TABLE D1. SELECTED LIFE CHARACTERISTICS OF INTENSIVE STUDY CHILD PARTICIPANTS, AT AGE 20–21
TABLE D2. STATUS OF SIBLINGS OF THE INTENSIVE STUDY CHILD PARTICIPANTS, TEN YEARS AFTER ORIGINAL STUDY
TABLE D3. SELECTED LIFE CHARACTERISTICS OF PARENTS OF INTENSIVE STUDY CHILD PARTICIPANTS, TEN YEARS AFTER ORIGINAL STUDY
Notes
CHAPTER 1: CONCERTED CULTIVATION
1. Choosing words to describe social groups also becomes a source of worry, especially over the possibility of reinforcing negative stereotypes. I found the available terms to describe members of racial and ethnic groups to be problematic in one way or another. The families I visited uniformly described themselves as “Black.” Recognizing that some readers have strong views that Black should be capitalized, I have followed that convention, despite the lack of symmetry with the term white. In sum, this book alternates among the terms “Black,” “Black American,” “African American,” and “white,” with the understanding that “white” here refers to the subgroup of non-Hispanic whites.
2. Some readers have expressed concern that this phrase, “the accomplishment of natural growth,” underemphasizes all the labor that mothers and fathers do to take care of children. They correctly note that working-class and poor parents themselves would be unlikely to use such a term to describe the process of caring for children. These concerns are important. As I stress in the text (especially in the chapter on Katie Brindle, Chapter 5) it does take an enormous amount of work for parents, especially mothers, of all classes to take care of children. But poor and working-class mothers have fewer resources with which to negotiate these demands. Those whose lives the research assistants and I studied approached the task somewhat differently than did middle-class parents. They did not seem to view children’s leisure time as their responsibility; nor did they see themselves as responsible for assertively intervening in their children’s school experiences. Rather, the working-class and poor parents carried out their chores, drew boundaries and restrictions around their children, and then, within these limits, allowed their children to carry out their lives. It is in this sense that I use the term “the accomplishment of natural growth.”
3. I define a child-rearing conte
xt to include the routines of daily life, the dispositions of daily life, or the “habitus” of daily life. I focus on two contexts: concerted cultivation and the accomplishment of natural growth. In this book, I primarily use the concept of child rearing, but at times I also use the term socialization. Many sociologists have vigorously criticized this concept, noting that it suggests (inaccurately) that children are passive rather than active agents and that the relationship between parents and their children is unidirectional rather than reciprocal and dynamic. See, for example, William Corsaro, Sociology of Childhood; Barrie Thorne, Gender Play; and Glen Elder, “The Life Course as Development Theory.” Nonetheless, existing terms can, ideally, be revitalized to offer more sophisticated understandings of social processes. Child rearing and socialization have the virtue of being relatively succinct and less jargon laden than other alternatives. As a result, I use them.
4. For discussions of the role of professionals, see Eliot Freidson, Professional Powers; Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism; and, although quite old, the still valuable collection by Amitai Etzioni, The Semi-Professionals and Their Organizations. Of course, professional standards are always contested and are subject to change over time. I do not mean to suggest there are not pockets of resistance and contestation. At the most general level, however, there is virtually uniform support for the idea that parents should talk to children at length, read to children, and take a proactive, assertive role in medical care.
5. Sharon Hays, in her 1996 book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, studies the attitudes of middle-class and working-class mothers toward child rearing. She finds a shared commitment to “intensive mothering,” although there are some differences among the women in her study in their views of punishment (with middle-class mothers leaning toward reasoning and working-class women toward physical punishment). My study focused much more on behavior than attitudes. If I looked at attitudes, I saw fewer differences; for example, all exhibited the desire to be a good mother and to have their children grow and thrive. The differences I found, however, were significant in how parents enacted their visions of what it meant to be a good parent.
6. See Urie Bronfenbrenner’s article, “Socialization and Social Class through Time and Space.”
7. Katherine Newman, Declining Fortunes, as well as Donald Barlett and James B. Steele, America: What Went Wrong? See also Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, “A Century of Inequality.”
8. Some readers expressed the concern that the contrast to natural would be “unnatural,” but this is not the sense in which the term natural growth is used here. Rather, the contrast is with words such as cultivated, artificial, artifice, or manufactured. This contrast in the logic of child rearing is a heuristic device that should not be pushed too far since, as sociologists have shown, all social life is constructed in specific social contexts. Indeed, family life has varied dramatically over time. See Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood, Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death without Weeping.
9. Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street; see especially Chapter 2.
10. For a more extensive discussion of the work of Pierre Bourdieu see the theoretical appendix; see also David Swartz’s excellent book Culture and Power.
11. I did not study the full range of families in American society, including elite families of tremendous wealth, nor, at the other end of the spectrum, homeless families. In addition, I have a purposively drawn sample. Thus, I cannot state whether there are other forms of child rearing corresponding to other cultural logics. Still, data from quantitative studies based on nationally representative data support the patterns I observed. For differences by parents’ social class position and children’s time use, see especially Sandra Hofferth and John Sandberg, “Changes in American Children’s Time, 1981–1997.” Patterns of language use with children are harder to capture in national surveys, but the work of Melvin Kohn and Carmi Schooler, especially Work and Personality, shows differences in parents’ child-rearing values. Duane Alwin’s studies of parents’ desires are generally consistent with the results reported here. See Duane Alwin, “Trends in Parental Socialization Values.” For differences in interventions in institutions, there is extensive work showing social class differences in parent involvement in education. See the U. S. Department of Education, The Condition of Education, 2001, p.175.
12. In this book, unless otherwise noted, the statistics reported are from 1993 to 1995, which was when the data were collected. Similarly, unless otherwise noted, all monetary amounts are given in (unadjusted) dollars from 1994 to 1995. The figure reported here is from Everett Ladd, Thinking about America, pp. 21–22.
13. This quote is from President Bill Clinton’s 1993 speech to the Democratic Leadership Council. It is cited in Jennifer Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream, p. 18.
14. Paul Kingston, The Classless Society, p. 2.
15. As I explain in more detail in the methodological appendix, family structure is intertwined with class position in this sample. The Black and white middle-class children that we observed all resided with both of their biological parents. By contrast, although some of the poor children have regular contact with their fathers, none of the Black or white poor children in the intensive observations had their biological fathers at home. The working-class families were in between. This pattern raises questions such as whether, for example, the pattern of concerted cultivation depends on the presence of a two-parent marriage. The scope of the sample precludes a satisfactory answer.
16. As I explain in Appendix A, three of the twelve children came from sources outside of the schools.
17. Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift.
18. My concern here is the vast diversity in views among white Americans as well as Black Americans. The phrase “a white perspective” seems inaccurate. This is not to say that whites don’t experience considerable benefits from their race in our stratified society. They do. Whites benefit from racial discrimination in many ways, including their improved ability to secure housing loans and employment as well as relatively higher market values for their homes in racially segregated neighborhoods. There are also well-documented differences in street interaction, including the ability to secure a taxi on a busy street. Thus the question is not the amount of racial discrimination in our society. Instead the question is how much being a member of a dominant group, interested in studying racial differences in daily life, precludes one from “seeing” or “understanding” important dimensions of the phenomenon. See Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid; Kathleen Neckerman and Joleen Kirschenmann, “Hiring Strategies, Racial Bias, and Inner-City Workers”; and Elijah Anderson, Streetwise. Finally, there is an extensive literature on “whiteness” and the benefits that whites gain from their position of privilege. See, among others, Phil Cohen, “Laboring under Whiteness.”
19. See Julia Wrigley, “Do Young Children Need Intellectual Stimulation?” and Linda A. Pollock, Forgotten Children.
20. As I explain in more detail in Appendix A, some of the families in the study, including the Williamses, were upper–middle class. The project, however, was hampered by its small sample size and my desire to compare different racial and ethnic groups. As a result, the differences between middle-class and upper-middle-class families are not a major focus of the work. Within the scope of the sample of thirty-six middle-class families, however, clear differences did not emerge between the middle class and upper–middle class. As a result, in this book I use only the term middle class to encompass both.
CHAPTER 2: SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND DAILY LIFE
1. William Kornblum, Sociology: The Central Questions, p. 72.
2. Jepperson defines an institution as “a social order or pattern that has attained a certain state or property . . . . Put another way, institutions are those social patterns that, when chronically reproduced, owe their survival to relatively self-activating social processes.” Ronald
L. Jepperson, “Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalism,” p. 145.
3. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, p. 161.
4. Lower Richmond teachers also coordinate their classroom efforts with an after-school tutoring program that takes place at the local housing project, even though it is not a formal school-sponsored activity.
Unequal Childhoods Page 48