Scan barcode
A review by roddej86
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau
5.0
Lareau's honest investigation of class-based child-rearing strategies does really compelling analytical work without playing into the tired tropes that tend to pervade thinking about parenting. There's no hysterical bemoaning of the overscheduled middle class kid, nor the mockery of ignorant poor parents who create a culture of poverty with their failure to parent like the middle class. The book takes its subjects points of view very seriously and delivers a smartly contextualized portrayal of how class impacts on parenting, and vice versa. It's a classic for good reason.
I considered docking a star because the prose is often awkward--not excessively complicated, but slightly irksome: strange word choice, odd constructions, the like. I gave the fifth star back for the chapters added to the latest edition, depicting the reaction of each child subject and his/her family to the book. This is so rarely included, and so fascinating as a counterbalance to her analysis. I found it so interesting the families that felt their portrayal was unfair, because in most cases, I had found their depiction to be extremely positive! Her discussion of methods is probably beyond the interest of the typical reader (including myself), but I think it would be extremely interesting to someone headed out into the field.
I considered docking a star because the prose is often awkward--not excessively complicated, but slightly irksome: strange word choice, odd constructions, the like. I gave the fifth star back for the chapters added to the latest edition, depicting the reaction of each child subject and his/her family to the book. This is so rarely included, and so fascinating as a counterbalance to her analysis. I found it so interesting the families that felt their portrayal was unfair, because in most cases, I had found their depiction to be extremely positive! Her discussion of methods is probably beyond the interest of the typical reader (including myself), but I think it would be extremely interesting to someone headed out into the field.