Unequal Childhood Literature Review
Unequal Childhoods, written by Annette Lareau, is an interesting study about just how different the lives of children living in different social classes truly is. Conducted in the 1990s, the study involved 88 fourth-grade children and their families, with the book following 12 of these families for more extensive and “naturalistic” observations. The study consisted of an equal number of white and African-American families from the poor, working-class, and middle-class. Throughout the study, researchers followed the daily lives of those 12 children, such as when they played with friends, eating meals, doing homework, etc., in order to see just how much your social class affects a child’s life and their future development into adulthood. While …show more content…
The study focuses on children coming from either the Lower Richmond School or Swan School. Lower Richmond School is an urban city elementary school, mainly attended by poor or working-class children. While many parents have positive views of this school, they are constantly low on supplies and even teachers, with the lower salaries than suburban schools leading to classes often being run by substitutes. This makes it harder for these children to get the education they need. Swan School, located in the suburbs, is mainly attended by middle-class children. Unlike Lower Richmond, Swan does well financially, with no shortages of teachers or supplies. Compared to Swan, Lower Richmond cannot afford to give their students as much as they would like to increase their chance of even finishing high school, much less college.(Lareau, 2011) This shows that middle-class schools are more likely to have students finish their education and go on to have better jobs, while poor and working-class schools have students who are more likely to stay confined to their social classes. While most of the children from the study who went to Swan, such as Garrett Tallinger, went to college and looked to have bright futures, none of the children in the study who went to Lower Richmond went to college, although Tyrec Taylor took four courses at a community college. Some children, such as Katie Brindle and Billy Yanelli, dropped out of high school.(Lareau, 2011) This shows just how much your social class affects your
Unequal Childhoods Summary
1038 Words | 5 PagesUnequal Childhoods is an ethnography outlining the study done by Annette Lareau which researched how socioeconomic classes impact parenting among both white and African American families. She used both participant observation and interviewing. 12 families participated in this study where she came to conclusions on whether they displayed parenting styles of concerted cultivation or natural growth based of their socioeconomic status. Concerted cultivation is a parenting style where the parent(s) are fully invested in creating as much opportunity for their child as possible, but results in a child with a sense of entitlement. An example of this would be a parent who places their children in a wide array of extracurricular activities and/or actively speaks to educators about the accommodations their child needs to effectively learn.
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151 Words | 1 PagesThe status of a family’s social class can make a difference in their process of socialization. For example, people in lower class focus more on the values of survival, physical safety and economic security. “Research also shows that class position affects not just how much money parents have to spend on their children but also what parents expect of them” (Ellison, Bartkowski, & Segal, 1996). Whereas people in people in higher class develop cultures that value individualism and self-expression. They have a higher income so they can provide much more for their children.
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