How Has Your Life Chance That Affected Your Parenting Style

While both styles of parenting have their benefits and weaknesses, the educational system of the United States is built predominantly on middle class values and Concerted Cultivation. Consequently, this may negatively affect how children who aren’t familiar with this upbringing navigate their already complex academic and home lives. This imbalance within the student population can put some students farther ahead and at the same time neglect students who don’t have the resources they need to keep up with their peers. Lareau refers to this as “transmission of differential advantages to children”. She states the benefits the advantages that middle-class homes typically offer:

Although most American views prosperity as an individual effort, still the society is stratified and there is no way to ignore the class factors on individuals. The educational and economical life of a child still depends on the educational level of their parents and the wealth they inherit from their parents.

Lareau, in Unequal Childhoods, focuses on socioeconomic status and how that affects outcomes in the education system and the workplace. While examining middle-class, working-class and poor families, Lareau witnessed differing logics of parenting, which could greatly determine a child’s future success. Working-class and poor families allow their children an accomplishment of natural growth, whereas middle-class parents prepare their children through concerted cultivation. The latter provides children with a sense of entitlement, as parents encourage them to negotiate and challenge those in authority. Parents almost overwhelm their children with organized activities, as we witnessed in the life of Garrett Tallinger. Due to his parents and their economic and cultural capital, Garrett was not only able to learn in an educational setting, but through differing activities, equipping him with several skills to be successful in the world. Lareau suggests these extra skills allow children to “think of themselves as special and as entitled to receive certain kinds of services from adults” (39). Adults in the school system are in favor of these skills through concerted cultivation, and Bourdieu seems to suggest that schools can often misrecognize these skills as natural talent/abilities when it’s merely cultivated through capital. This then leads to inequalities in the education system and academic attainments.

In comparison, another subculture, fatalism, was a belief that ‘whatever will be, will be’. This allows working-class children to lose self-belief and accept that they cannot improve their position through individual efforts. The third aspect of working-class subculture is the low value on education. Douglas argues that working-class parents show less incentive to help and encourage their children with their education and ultimately support them less. He believed that working-class parents placed less value on education and therefore were less likely to discuss their children’s progress with teachers. Correspondingly, Leon Feinstein (1998) found that working-class parents lack of interest was the main reason that their children were under-achieving and was a more important factor than financial factors. Feinstein argues that most middle-class parents provide obligatory motivation, discipline and support, thus they are more successful. Sugarman also argued that collectivism and present-time orientation acted as barriers to educational achievement. Collectivism occurs when a person values being a part of a group more than succeeding as an individual. Conversely, the middle-class infers that an individual should not be held back by

Regardless of social class most parents wish for their children to be happy, healthy, and successful; however, parents disagree on the best way to raise their children to be all of those things, which is when social class determines the parents’ child rearing method. Whether a child comes from a working class or middle class family affects the child’s development and socialization; and consequently the child’s future.

Families are organized with fathers as the figures in control and the mothers are subordinate to them. Mothers, however, take compete charge of the children, and so from a child’s point of view, mothers appear to be authority figures as well. Children are obligated to respect and obey these authoritative figures. (p. 103)

Robert Putnam takes the reader on a roller coaster through the narratives of several individuals across the country, who have been handed the short end of the social class stick, and of those granted the long end. Through these stories and supplement research we can see that the opportunities for working class kids are not as equal, or as plentiful as those available for more affluent children. Putnam breaks down his argument into sections, and in his first section he capitalizes on the influence of family dynamics and families on an individual’s future. In that chapter, Putnam introduced to two young adults: Kayla

All families want their children to be happy, healthy, and grow. Social classes make a difference in how parents go about meeting this goal. In Annette Lareau book, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, she promotes middle class parents as concerted cultivation. Middle class parents encourage their children’s talents, opinions, and skills. For example, engaging their children in organized activities and closely monitoring children’s experiences in school. According to Lareau, middle class children gain an emerging sense of entitlement through this pattern of converted cultivation. This causes a focus on children’s individual development. There are signs that the middle class children gain advantages from the experience of concerted cultivation. However, the working class and poor children do not gain this advantage.

My father, Ken Hart, was the youngest child in a family of five. His parents, Chuck and Sally Hart, had two children prior to him. The younger of the two was his brother, John, and the oldest was his sister, Donna. He grew up in Glendora, California in a middle class neighborhood where both of his parents worked at the local college. While the last three generations of Harts - my great grandfather, grandfather, and father - have belonged to the middle class, their individual socioeconomic statuses have varied due to many different social and economic influences. These influences included the college wage premium they received from their schooling, the increase in mobility they gained from their education, the varying structure of the economy when they were in the work force, and the life chances they had access to.

This study by Decker, Dunkel, Kelts, Kesserlring, Mathes (2015) was done to measure life history and the influences of maternal and parental sensitivity in childhood, and parental authoritative parenting in late adolescence on developing life history strategies. The study suggests that the sensitive of the parents in early childhood and in late adolescence will affect their life history. Life history theory is explaining human individual differences, parenting influences in the early development. Promislow & Harvey, (1990, 1991). In this

A child can be affected socially as well as emotionally based on their parents economic status. For example as a child my father was our provider in our household. We did not live in a good neighborhood, we did not go out of the yard. It was rare that I was allowed to visit a friend at their house. We also did not eat at restaurants or go out places often, but the times my siblings and myself did, we were very thankful and appreciated it. I always appreciated what I had, even though I didn’t always get what I wanted. This has taught me to always be humble.

To overstate the case, the middle class parents with high expectations subject their children to a rigorous, meaningful and very busy schedule of study time and extra-curricular activities. They are preparing their children for admission to a famous college or university, and they expect them to succeed. Furthermore, they expect their children, once they are adults, to carry this demanding social process with them, governing their lives, and, in due time, even the lives of their children.

The next section focuses on the lifestyle of children before the traditional time period of applying for college. This section comments of the different parenting styles in terms of guidence provided by the middle class and the lower class. Middle class families tend tocontinue support of their children past the age of when they are still considered "children." Into teenage years, middle class families still encourgae their kids in opportuties for developmental growth. The lower class families often stop facilitating growing opportunities for their children as they age. This can partly be attributed to lower classes having more important worries like saftey and money.

A working class parents’ parenting style focuses on their child’s freedom and the ability to grow on their own. Lareau calls this type of parenting, accomplishment of natural growth parenting. Due to the fact that they are too busy working, their children have more freedom to roam. These children have more leisure time to themselves. They are able to play with friends in the neighborhood or watch television without feeling like they have a strict set schedule to follow. There is also a clear boundary between being adult and being a child. A working parent simply gives their child order. They believe that children will naturally grow into adulthood without interference. An example of a working class family parent style would be the McAllisters. Since his parents are busy working, Harold McAllister has more time to play outside with his cousins. He is able to enjoy more intimate time with his extended family.

The style I was in was an authoritative style because if there was a reason for me to do a chore or go somewhere then that would be the final decision. My parents has always held a high standard for me in regards to getting tasked with something and making sure it was done properly and done in the right way. Starting at the age of 6 was the beginning of what I had to in the household and knowing had no choice in the matter what was said to be done I got it done. When I started to develop my maturity through the years I began to get my own identity which still didn’t matter because I was still living under my parents roof. As each year goes by my parents saw and always seek my interest in what I wanted because