Final notes on Unequal Childhoods:
-- All the siblings in these homes wound up on generally the same trajectories as the profiled children (to the point where Stacey's sister Fern also got a four-year basketball scholarship to a solid school, Melanie's younger brother also dropped out of community college, etc.). There was strikingly little variation in their outcomes. Their parents' class status (with maternal education being the most influential factor) really was all but determinative of how these kids turned out.
-- Class differences also began to show up among the parents during the ten-year check back. Everybody remained in the same general economic category (one of the middle-class families got substantially wealthier when the father got a new job, and a borderline working-class/middle-class family moved solidly into the middle class when the mom went back to school and got a better professional certification, but otherwise everybody stayed where they were), but health differences began to become apparent for the parents.
By the time their kids were in their early 20s, about half of the working-class parents were beginning to suffer from chronic health problems (the Yanellis, both heavy smokers, were showing the toll of that; another father was injured at work and did not regain full function). The majority of the poor parents were in poor health. Of the middle-class parents, one was diagnosed as diabetic and another had a bad leg, but they were otherwise all in good health.
-- Lareau observed that when the children were ten years old, she thought the middle-class kids looked tired and overscheduled, while the working-class and poor kids were buoyant and full of energy. By the time they were in their 20s, their positions were reversed: the middle-class kids seemed younger and full of optimism, while the less fortunate kids appeared to be worn down and, while still hopeful, far older than their years.
-- Lareau also noted that "the experience of adulthood itself influenced how individuals conceived of childhood." Middle-class parents "tended to view childhood as an opportunity for play, but also as a chance to develop talents and skills that could be valuable in the self-actualization processes that take place in adulthood." Moreover, they were keenly aware of the competitive job market for middle-class occupations and thus felt "it was important that children be developed in a variety of ways in order to enhance their future possibilities."
For the working-class and poor parents, by contrast, Lareau found that "it was the deadening quality of work and the press of economic shortages that defined their experience of adulthood and influenced their vision of childhood. [...] Thinking back over their childhoods, these adults acknowledged periods of hardship but also recalled times without the kinds of worries that troubled them at present. Many appeared to want their own youngsters to spend their time being happy and relaxed. There would be plenty of time for their children to face the burdens of life when they reached adulthood."
-- Lareau's study included a small number of upwardly mobile families where the parents were middle class, but the grandparents were poor or working class. "In some cases," she wrote, "these grandparents objected to the child-rearing practices associated with concerted cultivation. They were bewildered by their grandchildren's hectic schedules of organized activities, outraged that the parents would reason with the children instead of giving them clear directives, and awed by the intensive involvement of mothers in the children's schooling." The upshot, she found, was that "as parents' own social class position shifts, so do their cultural beliefs and practices in child rearing."
It would be interesting to know whether the same is true of downwardly mobile families (do they revert to natural growth philosophies?), but there weren't enough of those in the study to make any observations on that front. There was only one such family, and they practiced concerted cultivation within the time and money constraints that their family was under. Their kid, not included in my previous summary because they weren't among the primary profiled families, did end up going to a four-year college on a full scholarship and made the dean's list there.
-- While none of the kids in the primary profiles went to a predatory for-profit school (probably because that wasn't as much of a thing during that time period), some of their younger siblings did. All the kids who went to for-profit schools were either working-class or poor (I would presume, although Lareau doesn't say, because the middle-class kids' parents knew enough to steer them far the hell away from that trap).
They all accrued significant debt, only one of the three who took that road finished with a degree, and none of the three was able to obtain work or any significant economic benefit from having gone to a for-profit school. All of them basically sank into deeper debt with nothing to show for it.
THE END. This is a pretty good book, I'd definitely recommend it if you're into doing sociology readings in your spare time.
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