I Listen To My Parents

In most if not all cases, the class you are born into will determine how you will be raised, and who you will grow up to become. Whether you can speak up for yourself, if you are humble with what you have or you have a more hectic schedule or not, it all plays into what class you are from. No two childhoods are equal and Annette Lareau in her book, Unequal Childhoods explains why this is the case. I will be examining chapters four, five, and seven. These chapters examine poor and working children and teenagers and how their childhoods differ and relate to each other based on the class they were born in whether that be lower class to the poor. What can be learned from examining these three kids, Harold McAllister, Katie Brindle, and Tyrec Taylor is the advantages and disadvantages of having a childhood in the class of the poor or working class.

Children are not as oblivious as adults may believe they are. Even though they may have a lack of knowledge, and are not as smart as adults they can certainly listen and observe. In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the town of Maycomb has hypocrites walking around town everyday. Scout and Jem are among the mixture of them not only at school, but also at home. People they are taught to respect and love are putting the wrong thoughts and ideas in their small developing brains. Hypocrites walk around acting like they are such good people, when in reality they really are nowhere near it.

[Anthony Horowitz once said, “Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.”] In the novel The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the Walls children had a rough childhood, enduring many tough things like poverty. Rex and Rose Mary Walls wanted to teach their children resilience and self sufficiency. Despite their good intentions, they were very irresponsible and unstable parents. They put their children in danger in many ways which caused them to have a loss of innocence at a young age. The Walls children proved throughout the book that *having a rough childhood and losing innocence at a young age does not determine a person’s future.*

In the memoir “Words of My Youth,” the author Joe Mackall recounts a moment in his life as he retells the events he experienced while growing up in the suburbs. Mackall wants the readers to know that there are always repercussions in life for choices that are made. Young children often make disheartening choices in life that they may have no reason for doing and they may not realize the effects of their own actions. If you are unaware that you are doing something wrong, ignorance should not be used as an excuse and one day you will have to face the consequences of your own actions. If adults don’t think their children will pick up on the prejudices they say then they are wrong.

Children are like sponges, they soak up everything that the world has to offer them and as they grow with age it becomes easier for them to discern what is good for them and what is bad for them. For this reason, the role of a parent in a child’s life is extremely important. Writers E.B White, and Scott Russell Sanders understood this concept very well. By comparing & contrasting their essays “Under the Influence” & “Once More to the Lake” the reader will be able to understand how the fathers of both writers made a great impact on not only their lives but the way that they parent their own children as well.

As a toddler develops into a child, he/she becomes aware of what is right and wrong. A child desires to find out what morals are and why their parents make the decisions that they do. Coles articulates that “… any parent who has listened closely to his/her child knows that the girls and boys are capable of wandering about matters of morality…” (2003, p.439). Coles suggests that if a parent is willing to pay close attention to what his/her child asks, a parent will realize that children are indeed able to and need to ask those challenging moral

Another issue regarding this topic is the commonly held belief by parents that children are “innocent little angels”. On the contrary, children are sentient beings who observe their surroundings and make judgments according to what they perceive. Therefore when children seek answers from their parents about higher level questions, the parents themselves are forced to question what they believe. Coles stresses this, “Moral education is more than a series of rules handed down, and in our time one cannot assume that every parent feels sure of his own actual beliefs and values to make an explanation effect toward moral education. Because are unsure of their own beliefs, they just push what they were taught to their

It is a question asked continuously by parents worldwide: How can I push my children towards independence while still providing them with a sense of righteousness? The strain this worry can put on caregivers is reflected in the words of Laurence Sterne, “No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time.” It is often challenging for mothers and fathers to instill righteous ethics in their children while still allowing them to grow up to become self-sufficient members of society. In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Mama is faced with a dilemma such as this. She is caught in a

In today's world, most of the children are not aware of morally teachings. They are lack of them.

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.

While watching the film Poor Kids, I found myself thinking back to my own childhood. I grew up in a family consisting of my single mother, my younger sister, and myself. I would never consider my background one of affluency. Despite this it is jarring to think of how differently my early years were compared to those of children living in poverty. While there were times when I could tell my family was tight on money, I always had a hot shower waiting for me. Although I was on the free and reduced lunch program at my school for many years, no one in my family ever had to go without three meals a day. I never had to worry about the financial state of my family. Seeing this film made me reconsider how I viewed poverty and why it’s so important to acknowledge its prevalence in the U.S.

Growing up many children look up to their parents as role models, desiring to share their opinions, beliefs, behavior and character with their parents in attempt to be more like them. As a result, from an early age many children already share many of their parents beliefs, whether those beliefs are right or wrong. The older the children get, the more life experiences they receive that begin to shape their own beliefs and opinions, however they are still impacted by their parents.

Parents, as well as many other adult figures, provide guidance for children. Golding has the realization that parents furnish children with many necessary items: “Aren’t there any grownups at all?” (Golding 8). Golding makes use of the concern that Piggy has for the absence of grown to educate that parental figures lead children and; therefore, must help children also gain the knowledge of what actions they should take. Parents have an obligation to lead and nurture children and golding utilizes Piggy’s feelings to express the worry that many children feel in the absence of parental figures. Ultimately, through the initial feelings of Piggy, Golding begins to develop the theme that children need parental figures as they grow to maturity in order to lead and guide them away from savagery. Just as the structure of society in Golding’s book lacks parental guidance, so does the structure

When we are young our morality is shaped as we learn from our family and the environment. “Psychologists say a child must develop a sense of values by the age of seven to become an adult with a conscience” (Rosenstand 4). Children experience a plethora of information and subsequently build their personalities based on what they learn from growing up in their given culture. We are a product of our environment in the sense that we

Developmental psychologists have provided evidence that children are naturally tuned to believe from figures of authority.A child’s brain is set-up to believe what is told by elders, even if what is told is nonsense. Children usually acquire the religious views of their parents.