Child outcomes in Unequal Childhoods (all the names are pseudonymous, and these kids ranged from 19 to 21 years old when these outcomes were recorded):
1. Melanie Handlon (white, middle-class): her learning disability was finally diagnosed in 8th grade. She became a high school cheerleader, which she loved. After graduation, she enrolled in a nearby community college but failed out in less than a semester. Unemployed and single at the time of the interview, she stated that her hope is "to be a stay-at-home mom until my kids are in school."
2. Stacey Marshall (black, middle-class): switched from gymnastics to basketball after a growth spurt made her too tall to compete seriously in gymnastics. Was recruited by Columbia, but her parents wouldn't let her take on that level of debt load given that she wanted to go on to med school, so instead she took a four-year full basketball scholarship to the University of Maryland. At the time of the interview she was working two summer jobs, had no immediate plans for marriage or kids, and wanted to get her career established before trying for a family.
3. Garrett Tallinger (white, middle-class): switched from soccer to basketball when his family moved to an area where soccer wasn't a serious sport. Took a full four-year basketball scholarship to Villanova, where his team made it several rounds into March Madness. Picked a business major, opting not to become a teacher because his dad told him he wouldn't earn enough money. Hopes to marry and have a family sometime after 25; also hopes to play basketball a few years in Europe after graduating.
4. Alexander Williams (black, middle-class): Pursuing a combined undergrad-and-med-school eight-year program at Columbia, where he was doing well. Noted to the researcher that he had less difficulty transitioning to Columbia than some of his peers from all-black schools did, because he was already accustomed to navigating predominantly white institutions. At the time of the interview, was excited about traveling to California to visit his girlfriend there, and seemed "content and optimistic about his future."
5. Wendy Driver (white, working-class): when interviewed at 20, had an 18-month-old daughter and was pregnant with her second kid. Graduated from high school and was accepted to a small local college but opted not to attend because "she was afraid she would be unable to do college-level work." Married a Navy guy whom she described as "a nice guy" who was "really shy," had a "troubled" past, and "used to drink a lot." Became a stay-at-home mom, though she noted that she hoped to "take night classes" someday and open a home-based day care business.
6. Tyrec Taylor (black, working-class): went from a decent middle school to a poorly performing city high school, which caused him to get mixed up with "the wrong people" and "g[e]t locked up." His mom stretched financially to get him into private high school for a year, which helped him straighten out. Graduated high school, went to community college for two semesters, at the time of the interview was working a good construction job in lead abatement. His main preoccupation, though, was "simple survival": two of his good friends had been killed by street violence in recent years.
7. Billy Yanelli (white, working-class): dropped out of high school as a sophomore, later got his GED. Was living at home with his parents at the time of the interview and trying to make it into the painters' union (where his father got him an in), but was continually being undermined by behavioral problems and drug use; at the time of the interview, he was on probation and down to his last strike.
8. Katie Brindle (white, poor): dropped out of high school after struggling with drinking, drug use, and fighting. Got pregnant the summer after her sophomore year; having a baby stabilized her but didn't fully resolve her problems, and she ultimately gave the child to her sister to raise. She was briefly married (to a different man than the baby's father) but they divorced before the child was three years old. At the time of the interview, Katie was cleaning houses alongside her mother, who had gotten her the job. Her aspirations were to get her GED, get a better job, and be able to afford her own apartment.
9. Harold McAllister (black, poor): although he was an unrivaled basketball player as a kid, he got derailed when the coach at his high school insisted that he should play football instead and wouldn't let him play basketball. Harold, who had been a pretty solid student up until then, started working full time as a bus boy "to get [his] mind off basketball." Because he worked late hours as a bus boy, he slept through too many school mornings and ended up dropping out six weeks before graduation. At the time of the interview, he was working as a waiter at the same suburban chain restaurant where he'd been a bus boy during high school -- a job that required him to make a two-hour bus commute each way. His aspirations are to get married, have children, and "earn enough money to be able to retire at 35."
It's interesting to survey these outcomes after reading Promises I Can Keep, because both of the lower-income girls did largely follow that pattern: the working-class girl grew up to be a teen mom who married, and the poor girl grew up to be a teen mom who wound up single. The poorer kids in general had much more explicltly gendered childhoods than the middle-class ones, and were raised in accordance with some pretty clear double standards. I didn't see much evidence of that happening in the more affluent and educated homes.
It's also interesting to note that while race had an impact on the kids' trajectories (all the black boys reported experiencing discrimination, even the premed student at Columbia, and all were resigned to it; meanwhile, the working-class white boy got a lot of second chances that he probably wouldn't have otherwise, although he too reported being harassed by the police, on the basis of his class status rather than race), class was a much much bigger determinant of their life outcomes.
Finally, one thing that stuck out to me was that while all the families aspired for their kids to go to college, the working-class and poor families were generally content with high school graduation (and the Yanellis were thrilled when Billy got his GED; Lareau noted that to them, it seemed that "a diploma" was all that mattered, and Billy Yanelli Sr. did not differentiate between a college diploma and a GED). Meanwhile, for the Handlons, it was perceived as a "humiliation" that their daughter flunked out of community college, and her mother visibly blushed and was embarrassed when she realized that Lareau was doing her follow-up interviews during the summer, "before the kids go back to college."
To me, this suggests that aspirations aren't the only factor. Negative social pressure pushes middle-class kids to finish school too. There's a stigma to middle-class kids dropping out of college that the lower-class families don't experience.
I don't know whether that's good or bad (it sure didn't make the Handlons feel great, and it probably pushes some kids into suboptimal decisions), but I do think it's pretty clearly a factor.
Anyway, the conclusion of the book was that in 8 out of 9 cases, the kids appeared to be clearly on a path to mirroring their parents' life outcomes. This suggests that while there is some room for exceptional cases to move upward or downward, those are exceptions, and in general, for most people, the class you're born into will have a significant influence on the class you end up in.
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