Sociology Readings - Unequal Childhoods (3/5): Further Thoughts

Further notes on Unequal Childhoods (Chs. 10-12, discussing how class differences influence families' interactions with schools):

-- Working-class and poor parents expressed "more distance, distrust, and difficulty in their relationship with educators than occurred [with] middle-class families. [One mother] did not feel that she had the 'words' to 'talk about' what she wanted to cover in [parent-teacher] conferences. Instead, she felt powerless and constrained."

This is in part due to the fact that many of these households relied on physical punishment as a primary means of discipline (reasoning and negotiation was not as emphasized as in the middle-class households) and this "was not in keeping with the standards promoted by professionals." Accordingly, one mother who relied on physical punishment "felt rightfully threatened [by school officials' standard warnings that they were legally bound to report child abuse], since she felt that 'Billy gets so out of control that maybe he does need [a beating with a belt] once in a while.'"

"In short," Lareau concluded, "[this mother's] failure to use reasoning and her adoption of a belt made her vulnerable, since she moved in a 'field' (the school) that privileged reasoning. [Physical punishment] carries a potentially catastrophic risk: that her son could show the teacher the marks on his arm, she could be arrested for child abuse, and her son could be put in foster care."

This worry contributes to "an ongoing feeling of the threat of a looming catastrophe" in the parents' dealings with the school, which "undermines their feeling of trust or comfort at school, a feeling that other researchers have argued is pivotal in the formation of effective and productive family-school relationships."

That whole section was interesting to me because while I was aware of the research showing a more direct correlation between use of physical punishment and lowered life outcomes for kids, *that particular* wrinkle had never occurred to me. And Lareau's research confirms that for middle-class parents, it's literally unimaginable that the school would "come and take my kids away" for that reason; they often joke about it, but for them it's not remotely considered a real possibility. But for all the working-class and poor families who got profiled, physical punishment was a core tool, and the risk of being turned in for abuse was perceived as very real by those parents.

-- Relatedly, because their approach to discipline and problem-solving is different, working-class and poor parents "are likely to regard the school's approach [to discipline] as inappropriate. Many encourage their children -- in direct violation of school rules -- to hit peers who harass them, specifically including the advice to take their retaliatory actions 'when the teacher isn't looking.'"

All else aside, this dramatically raises the risk that the parents are effectively advising their kids to get suspended or expelled (or even arrested and charged as delinquents), which is not helpful for their long-term educational prospects or upward mobility.

-- Another theme was that while working-class and poor parents were very willing to push back verbally against "cable companies, landlords, and local merchants," they did not do so against educators, because "these parents view education as the job of educators and thus they expect teachers and school staff to be the ones primarily responsible for seeing that their children learn all that they should."

However, that isn't the expectation that most teachers hold. They expect that parents will be actively involved as partners working toward the same goal, and "openly criticiz[e]" more passive parents "for not taking more of a leadership role in their children's schooling."

This has major implications when it comes to choosing an appropriate class load for high-schoolers and beginning the college application process, because all of that is highly individualized and requires extensive knowledge of the expectations and requirements that different colleges have, plus how those colleges align with the kid's abilities and goals. For middle-class parents, all of whom were college-educated in this sample, it was relatively easy to navigate the process because they were familiar with the requirements and the various strengths and weaknesses of the competitive schools they were considering.

For the working-class and poor parents, none of whom had a college degree, the whole process was foreign, and most of them didn't have any inkling that they were supposed to be involved at all. They saw that as educators' duty to guide their kids through, and took a much more hands-off approach.

-- Finally, the researchers found "a common tendency among working-class and poor parents to merge authority figures into one indiscriminate group. Thus, classroom teachers, resource teachers, librarians, and principals are usually all referred to as 'the school.'"

One mother in the sample even conflates nurses at two different schools, one assigned to treat her son and the other assigned to treat her daughter in two separate incidents, as "the school." When one nurse (in the mother's mind) overreacted to a minor matter, and the other nurse failed to notice a fairly serious injury some time later, the mother's interpretation was that "the school" as a whole was not to be trusted.

I imagine this doesn't help parents' level of engagement/cooperation with school officials when, e.g., a kid has a single ineffective or unpleasant teacher and, rather than moving their kid to a different class or registering objections to that individual teacher, the parents' conclusion is that the whole monolithic system is against them.

All this stuff is likely obvious to people who have worked in the educational system, but I had never thought about it before and so this was all new to me.