Unequal Childhoods Summary

In the Consumer Model (Cunningham & Davis, 1985), it is explained the parent is given a more energetic role. Parents will be carrying out alternative solutions suggested by the professional who can then decide which treatment can be most effective for the child. The professional’s role is collect information from the caregiver about the child meaning they have to listen to worries, questions, complaints, aims and opinions from the parents in order to give beneficial proposes for the child’s future treatment and developmental plans. The aim of the professional is to consult the parents at any given opportunity and give the family necessary knowledge. Professionals do not loose ‘authority’ and status because they remain in a considerable position but a major difference with the expert model compared to the Empowerment model is that parents are now considered as having a different expertise from the professional, bringing in the decision-making process information.

However, if children don’t feel safe in the nursery then they will lack confidence. Likewise, if the nursery doesn’t welcome diversity then families may feel excluded and less willing to chat about their child’s development, which may consequently hinder their development. Furthermore, early years practitioners should aim to have a secure partnership with the parents so that there is a connection between nursery and home life, which will consequently benefit the child. Nurseries can promote parent participation through: noticeboards, regular conversations, websites, frequent newsletters and meetings.

This modality emphasizes that change and dysfunction lie within the family structure. This theory assumes that Tracey’s foster family and biological family can solve their own problems with professional support and guidance. Unlike CBT, by identifying the foster family’s strengths, the social worker can build upon these strengths so that the family develops new skills to handle Tracey’s school transition and immersion into the new family system. This modality is also time limited and has an expectation of change. Utilizing this modality will allow Tracey’s foster parents a safe place to explore their perspectives on interracial couples, which could influence how the family interacts with others, Tracey and themselves.

Therefore if they are not engaged then the adults have to come up with another way for child to learn the same skills as other children without separating them from everyone to make them feel different. This can be dealt with by them talking to parents and the child after school to come up with a possible outcome for either the child to have 1 to 1 with an adult to see to their individual needs or if they’re not feeling to well on that day to be able to concentrate.

The more awareness that intercultural adoptive parents have, as well as a willingness to act on behalf of their child, the better prepared the growing child will be to live as an adult in a society where heritage still matters (Ramos). When a family adopts a transracial child, it helps them open to the racial issues around them. Interracial adoption gives homeless children a better home and family. In 1994, Congress passed the Multiethnic Placement Act, or MEPA, to ban race matching, thereby barring agencies from routinely presuming that same-race placements are in the best interests of children (Wagner). Adoption agencies should focus on the interest of the child and getting the child a happy home.

Will good parenting skills change a child’s bad behavior? Some people may say that to fix a child’s behavior parents should involve punishment. Maybe they will also say that punishment leads to having a well-disciplined child. In the article, “No Spanking, No Time-Out, No Problem,” Olga Khazan proposes a parenting intervention from a child psychologist, she utilizes it to persuade readers along with parents into believing that punishment cannot change negative behavior. Kazdin discusses the causes behind a negative behavior from a child and utilizes it to prove that punishment does not need to be utilized.

Their final hypothesis is that either both of the responsiveness level and demand will be affected by neighborhood danger or that there will be a higher level of harsh parenting, acceptance, and demand. The study the researchers use for this article is a sub-sample from a larger one with a sample size of 749 of families with 5th grade students in schools that are located “in a large metropolitan area of the southwestern U.S”. This sub-sample focuses on students in 5th grade who had both parents participating in a sample size of 466. However, four were missing data, so the final study included information from 462 families.

Racial socialization refers to messages transmitted from generational elders to the youth based on attitude, behavior, and value of identification of their racial group. In alternative terms, racial socialization is when the parent explains to their child what does it mean to be a certain race and what they should expect as a member of society. The study correlated the parenting techniques of African American, Dominican, and Puerto Rican parents and measured how each group involves cultural socialization and preparation for bias. The results of the experiment showed that cultural socialization of African Americans did not have a positive effect on their ethnic identity, while it had a significant effect on the identities of their Dominican and Puerto Rican counterparts (Hughes, 2003). However, African American parents scored the highest of the three groups on using their role to prepare their children for bias (Hughes, 2003).

Figure 1 Macoby and Martin’s simplification of parenting styles as seen in Bee’s The Growing Child (Source: Adapted from Macoby & Martin, 1983, Fifure 2, p.39.). Parents only want what’s good for their children and for them to grow intro great adults, for their children to be independent and to be able to undergo hardships. There are quite a few advantages of being over protective parents. Because over protecting parents control their children’s decisions and day to day activities, they are able to monitor their children and ensure their safety (Overprotective Parents, n.d.).

“Social Class and College Readiness” shows the correlation between different social classes and how it affects how prepared students are for college. After the research was completed the unnamed authors came to the conclusion that if parents raise their children according to the “norms” of their social class, then it can have a direct link with how children think about their educational future. In “Educating the Hierarchs” Sacks has a similar approach to the research question, and shows how a family’s social class correlates with a student’s SAT scores, and these scores directly correlate with the level of education the students will receive. These authors show that a child’s social class will impact their standardized test scores, and their thoughts about their academic

A black family? A multiracial family? A white family? All other factors being equal, what makes one family more qualified than the other? The experiences of interracial couples who have adopted reveal an adoption system that is grounded in essentialist understandings of race.

A study investigated this exact scenario by comparing the parenting attitudes of Asian Indian mothers living in the United States with those living in India in a pool of fifty-seven mothers, 23 of which were living in the United, and 34 living in India (JAMBUNATHAN et al., 2016). The results from this study showed Asian Indian immigrant parents adopted an authoritative parenting style. This is because they believed by maintaining an authoritarian parenting style in the United States, they may be causing their child to accrue social disabilities associated with such parenting style. Also, the parents found European American parenting style balanced their traditional cultural expectations and values with the demands of the new, majority

Ms. Maloney said that the majority of their students would not receive any type of pre-school education if not for the Head Start center. When asked if she believed that the programs offered through the Head Start profited the targeted groups, Ms. Maloney emphatically stated “yes, children who receive early educational intervention go on to perform better in school.” The U.S Department of Health and Human Services website offers testimony to support this belief. Oscar Dominguez writes this; “Head Start has offset many of the challenges I faced early in my life, including a father in prison and a mother on welfare raising two boys in public housing. With a hand up from programs like Head Start, I was able to graduate near the top of my Texas public high school class, from Stanford University, and from the Master in Business Administration program at San Francisco State.

In our lives there are many factors from our past that shape who we are today. Concerted cultivation is a style of parenting that allows for the parent to schedule activities that will keep the children occupied during their free time. The idea of concerted cultivation is made clear by Annette Lareau the author of the book entitled Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. She states that parents who organize their children 's lives through concerted cultivation believe that their child will obtain certain knowledge and skills that will help them and set them apart academically and socially. (Lareau, 2011)

Theoretical Perspectives The article “Identification of Disabilities and Service Receipt among Preschool Children Living in Poverty” takes a look at the services provided by Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Longitudinal Follow-up programs’ Part C services. In this article the theoretical perspectives focus on the quality of education for early childhood, specifically for vulnerable poverty-stricken children. The focus on children with disabilities is what this case study explores. While Head Start has been a beneficial program, it does not serve all vulnerable early education students.