Unequal Childhoods Summary

Home environment influence a child’s ability to succeed both academically and socially in a school environment. It has been proven by Annette Lareau that children that come from upper class homes are aided by their parents to better developed social skills, more easily assert themselves, and asses real life situations.These children usually feel more secure with their parents. While children that come from lower class homes are left to grow and develop naturally without parental guidance.Children that come from lower class families usually feel more insecure about themselves and their families, resulting in more social and behavioral deviance. (Gladwell). This difference in parenting is what allows the world to become so diverse.

Although both cultures hold high aspirations for their children, they adopt very different approaches to parent involvement. “African-American parents believed strongly in home and school-based involvement and attempted to intervene inside their children 's schools. While social class within the African-American community seemed to influence this pattern, African Americans were far more likely to seek school-based involvement” (Diamond, Wang, & Gomez, 2006)

In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he highlights key reasons on how to find success. Gladwell features Annette Lareau and her study about parenting styles affecting the success of a child. During the 1990’s, Lareau and a team of grad students studied around 88 families from diverse settings. Black, white, middle class, working class, and the poor. She conducted in depth observations of 12 families. In her book called Unequal Childhoods, she explains that middle class families raise their children differently than working class families. Although Annette Lareau believes that middle and upper class children are more likely to be successful, reality shows that success is more complicated than that.

The Raising of children has been a topic that has changed quite a lot because things change due to the surroundings of the child and who they are bore from. Children from the 16th - 17th century were treated well based on their social status on birth, if you were born into wealth you would likely survive and if you were born a bastard or into poverty then you would be more likely to die of disease or infanticide. Although infanticide was rampant in Europe during these times it had been going for ages, like in Sparta when children were born female or weak they would kill them because they weren’t good enough to be born into their society.The adults opinion on children over time changed from loving their children to killing them changed a lot

Explain the reasons why children and young people’s development may not follow the expected pattern:

However, the reality is quite different. Much to this point, while eighty-one percent of households were family households in 1970, fast-forward to 2012, and a downward trend is evident, whereby only sixty-six percent of households were family households. (Vespa). In fact, an estimated 28% of children are raised in a single parent household. (legalmomentum.org). Children of color are over-represented in single-parent households with fifty-five percent of Black children and thirty-one percent of Hispanic children being raised in a single-parent household. (Vespa). The lessons parents will teach their son or daughter help provide the children with the skills and traits that will prepare them for adulthood. When one parent is missing, more specifically the father, the effect has an everlasting feel to

The great depression made a major impact on the lives of the people that lived through it. One group of people that is often overlooked are children that lived during that time period. When the parents lost their jobs the responsibility the parent once held was put on the children of the families to contribute to the income of the home. Because of this in the great depression “two-fifths of children were employed in part time jobs” (Elder 65). In Glen Elder’s book Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience he discusses how the depression affected those children in their later lives. Vonnie McLoyd discusses in the book Child Development that black families are more likely to face poverty in America and the effects that poverty has on those children. McLoyd states that children that have faced poverty in their lives can have “impaired socioemotional functioning” (McLoyd 311). As a result from job loss creating parental stress, parents often become

Simply put parenting is a conscious or unconscious systematic routine way of teaching values to growing children, which in turn gives the child a model of how to operate as an adult. Because parenting is cultural the various methods used in teaching values can vary from person to person. Michelle Alexander the author of the New Jim Crow Mass incarceration in the age of Colorblindness, states that “70 percent of African-American women are unmarried. More African-American adults are under correctional control today-in prison or jail, on probation or parole---than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery” (Alexander, 180). Children of any culture require nurturing in order to grow to become a productive member of society. However, In African American communities often children are left to fend for themselves. In a one-parent home all responsibilities fall on the shoulders of one person, by default creating a

Throughout human history, children were thought of as servants, apprentices, or a means to ease workload. Children would work on the family farm or a family business. They could be easily taken advantage of compared to adults. The exploitation of children for labor without concern for their education or welfare was common and even the norm. No special concern about children existed. By 1890, 18% of the labor force consisted of worker between the ages of ten and fifteen. (6/) But the progressive reformers between 1890-1920 sought to change this. This period of time is refereed to as the Progressive Era. The reforms were a turning point in history for improving living standards and acknowledging basic human decency for majority of children in

Development is a gradual and continuous process. The development of children is greatly influenced through interactions with the family, friends and culture. Children learn from seeing how they are treated, overhearing the interactions of the people around them and observing the things we do all throughout the day. Fully understanding how children grown and change over the course of childhood requires us to look into various child development theories such as psychosocial, cognitive, behaviourist and ecological theories, to name a few. The various development theories could greatly help us in guiding and caring for children. As every child is unique and does have different experiences, there is no single theory that can effectively explain

Living in vastly different circumstances and the difference can have a dramatic influence on a child’s development. Bronfenbrenner (1989) believes child developments takes place in home, schools, neighborhoods and communities. This case study will look into the contextual factors of family and schools that affects Alexander.

Throughout the preface, Hirsch indicates how passionate and devoted he is by writing about Cultural Literacy and wanting to have reform. He is motivated by the fact that he truly believes that Cultural Literacy would benefit many citizens, especially, “disadvantaged children” because of the opportunity it constitutes. It allows them an opportunity to be able to flee from the path of a future where no progress or success is sought. Hirsch discovers, that through changing the curriculum and breaking the cycle, there will be more cultural literacy and more success in those disadvantaged children, as well as, many other people. Since this discovery, he is making an effort to convince his audience of how beneficial changing the curriculum and education

behavior, learning and memory of an individual ( 1). While Dr. Noble noted the more affluent children possessed larger hippocampuses than their disadvantaged counterparts (Brain Trust 47), Hanson notes that the lifestyle of less affluent families affect the hippocampus negatively. For instance, maternal separation can negatively impact the hippocampus, I.e. working mother's. The lower the income a household has, the more stress it faces. Outstanding stress can have long-lasting negative effects on the hippocampus (1.). Hanson found that poor children had less gray matter within the hippocampus (5). Hanson concluded that “higher levels of chronic stress” could result in small hippocampal volumes into adulthood and other “early environment” factors, such as

This journal article illustrates that many countries have enormous disparities in health. To accomplish advancements in health systems, it is essential to strive to eradicate major fatal diseases and to manage poverty. Life expectancies are considered on a global level concerning age, sex, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, region as well as the level of education, resulting in alarming statistical data. The objective for enhanced health systems incorporates decreasing the rates of morality. The social gradient greatly contributes to social inequalities around the world. Social conditions, for example, the environment in

Member of society have a mindset that agent of socialization is one of the origin that influenced the reinforcement of gender inequality since childhood. What is socialization? In lexical definition, socialization, as a lifelong interactive process, contains individual’s culture learning that is in compliance with social norms and roles to integrate into community (Socialization, n.d.). Childhood is the most influential period of socialization which agents of socialization impact the way children behave that related with social norms.