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A review by finesilkflower
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau
5.0
Upfront, I am not an educator or sociology student. I don't remember why I requested this from the library--I must have read about it in the notes of a pop-social-science book, a Malcolm Gladwell or something. At first it looked like a sociology textbook, and I set it aside after trying to make headway in the jargony first chapter. But at some point it fell open to one of the case studies, and I was hooked. The book is all case studies and for some reason I cannot stop reading them. It's deeply satisfying in a voyeuristic way.
Each study concerns a family with a nine-year-old child. Field workers studied each family closely, spending weeks living at their homes and carefully recording small interactions. Through juxtaposition of case studies, the book effectively argues that children from middle-class, working-class, and poor families are taught different life lessons, not just because of their families' differing access to resources, but because the classes have fundamentally different cultures.
The middle-class families studied tended to practice "concerted cultivation," that is, they saw the child as a project to be worked on and they saw it as their parental duty to arrange and prioritize activities specifically designed to educate and mold the child (sports, extracurriculars, church groups, tutoring, etc.) Working-class and poor families tended toward the "natural growth" model. Children's and adults' worlds were considered more separate. Children had more unstructured time and devised their own activities with playmates and siblings.
The book shows advantages and drawbacks to both approaches. Although middle-class parents were often convinced that their method of parenting was "right" and that they had no choice but to rearrange their lives around organized activities if they wanted the children to succeed, the studies show some advantages to the "natural growth" approach that may surprise some middle-class parents: the children engaged more deeply in play, never complained of boredom, resolved their own conflicts, played well with children of various ages (including insinuating themselves with older groups with ease and caring for younger children without being asked), and had closer bonds with siblings. Still, the lessons taught by middle-class children's activities and parental attitudes were more advantageous in our society: hand-shaking and eye-contact-making; juggling multiple commitments; confidently demanding & getting "customized" treatment from authority figures (such as asking questions of the doctor or reasoning their way around parental directives); fluently speaking the language of education, medicine, and other powerful institutions. The book shows how cultural differences between the classes contribute to a lack of social mobility and perpetuate themselves across generations.
Things may have changed since 1995 when the study was conducted (though I suspect they haven't much), but I was nine then, the same age as the "focal children," and I had both working-class and middle-class friends, so the cultures described feel true to life to me, and seem to accurately describe differences that I never put into words before.
I'm personally biased toward the "natural growth" model, and I identify with it a lot more; it's how I was raised, which is odd, because I definitely grew up socioeconomically middle class. Judging from the book, my parents' interactions with me mimic the middle-class model of language use--drawing out my opinion, cultivating my vocabulary, encouraging me to reason with them. But their attitudes about school and activities are firmly in the "natural growth" model. I had hours of unstructured time, which I mostly spent reading or drawing. It never would have occurred to my parents to sign me up for anything. Nor would it have occurred to them to initiate contact with my teachers or school professionals. On the other hand, I definitely had the advantages of a middle-class upbringing, like access to money, parental knowledge of how college applications work, a working knowledge of educational and medical vocabulary, etc. I think my case demonstrates that "concerted cultivation" is not necessary for access to middle-class privilege. It's the privilege itself, not the details of any particular (arbitrary) cultural expression of it, that creates generational advantages for children.
Each study concerns a family with a nine-year-old child. Field workers studied each family closely, spending weeks living at their homes and carefully recording small interactions. Through juxtaposition of case studies, the book effectively argues that children from middle-class, working-class, and poor families are taught different life lessons, not just because of their families' differing access to resources, but because the classes have fundamentally different cultures.
The middle-class families studied tended to practice "concerted cultivation," that is, they saw the child as a project to be worked on and they saw it as their parental duty to arrange and prioritize activities specifically designed to educate and mold the child (sports, extracurriculars, church groups, tutoring, etc.) Working-class and poor families tended toward the "natural growth" model. Children's and adults' worlds were considered more separate. Children had more unstructured time and devised their own activities with playmates and siblings.
The book shows advantages and drawbacks to both approaches. Although middle-class parents were often convinced that their method of parenting was "right" and that they had no choice but to rearrange their lives around organized activities if they wanted the children to succeed, the studies show some advantages to the "natural growth" approach that may surprise some middle-class parents: the children engaged more deeply in play, never complained of boredom, resolved their own conflicts, played well with children of various ages (including insinuating themselves with older groups with ease and caring for younger children without being asked), and had closer bonds with siblings. Still, the lessons taught by middle-class children's activities and parental attitudes were more advantageous in our society: hand-shaking and eye-contact-making; juggling multiple commitments; confidently demanding & getting "customized" treatment from authority figures (such as asking questions of the doctor or reasoning their way around parental directives); fluently speaking the language of education, medicine, and other powerful institutions. The book shows how cultural differences between the classes contribute to a lack of social mobility and perpetuate themselves across generations.
Things may have changed since 1995 when the study was conducted (though I suspect they haven't much), but I was nine then, the same age as the "focal children," and I had both working-class and middle-class friends, so the cultures described feel true to life to me, and seem to accurately describe differences that I never put into words before.
I'm personally biased toward the "natural growth" model, and I identify with it a lot more; it's how I was raised, which is odd, because I definitely grew up socioeconomically middle class. Judging from the book, my parents' interactions with me mimic the middle-class model of language use--drawing out my opinion, cultivating my vocabulary, encouraging me to reason with them. But their attitudes about school and activities are firmly in the "natural growth" model. I had hours of unstructured time, which I mostly spent reading or drawing. It never would have occurred to my parents to sign me up for anything. Nor would it have occurred to them to initiate contact with my teachers or school professionals. On the other hand, I definitely had the advantages of a middle-class upbringing, like access to money, parental knowledge of how college applications work, a working knowledge of educational and medical vocabulary, etc. I think my case demonstrates that "concerted cultivation" is not necessary for access to middle-class privilege. It's the privilege itself, not the details of any particular (arbitrary) cultural expression of it, that creates generational advantages for children.