Socioeconomic Status Of A Child Essay

Literature on the effects of low socioeconomic status (SES) on one’s psychological well-being is well established. Prior studies show that low-SES not only impacts individuals’ mental well-being, but also affects their children’s developmental trajectories. This paper reviews one of these numerous studies and further discusses the influences of parental SES on one’s life outcomes, as well as intergenerational mobility and achievement gap through a developmental perspective.

Learning to read and write as a child is an experience that all can relate to. The average child learns to read and write at the early ages of three and four. Developing literacy at an early age is crucial to academic development as well as to performance in life. Early development can be just what a child needs to stimulate their minds, which in turn is assisting in the evolution of their future. The early and latter stages of development in a child’s literacy journey are the makings for their reading and writing skills. It also plays part in their analysis of obstacles as well as their developed or problematic literacy future. A child

Directions: Based on your personal experiences and on the readings for this course, answer the questions in the green section of the matrix as they apply to each of the listed socioeconomic classes. Fill in your answers and post your final draft as directed by the course syllabus.

The book Unequal Childhoods explains a study conducted to prove the significance of social class. Annette Lareau presents the study highlighting two primary ways of parenting that ultimately affect how successful the child becomes as they transition into adulthood. These styles of parenting include Concerted Cultivation which is where parents put through kids through structured activities, and Accomplishment of Natural Growth which is emphasized through freedom and directives. While both styles of parenting have their benefits and their weaknesses, the educational system of the United States is built predominantly on Concerted Cultivation and middle class values, which in turn may negatively affect how children prepare for their transitions into adulthood. This imbalance in education can put students farther ahead and at the same time neglect children who don’t have the resources they need to keep up with the other students. There are a multitude of variables involved with helping students reach their full potential and become successful. Some of the big factors to a student’s success include the student 's socioeconomic background, how they “fit” into the educational system, how strong their relationships are with other people, and their ability to access resources. Creating an education that can accommodate students from all different backgrounds will empower students to reach their full potential.

A family’s class background can have a huge effect on child-rearing. The way a family raises a child can be dependent on the class background that they have. Often families with a substantial amount of money are able to provide their children with more opportunities than families with lower income. This can have a tremendous effect on how the child is raised and how much help/support a child can get from their families to become successful and educated. Families with different financial backgrounds tend to raise their children differently and have different values in regards to schooling. In Annette Lareau’s book “Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life” she discusses the impact that economical class and family upbringings can have on a child and society. Throughout this analysis I will discuss the different approaches Lareau mentions, which approach prepares children for more effective school success, and the implications of these discoveries for teachers and schools.

Children can take more than one of these steps at the same time. This list of steps, though, gives you a general idea of how your child will progress toward reading.” (Helping your child become a reader) While these ideas may seem structured, it is also important to allow children to be creative and use their imagination. Although reading is imperative, too many arrangements and rules can turn a child off and lead to feelings of resentment, anger, and resistance. Reading should be set to the tone and pace of the child.

The development of children can depend on many factors, one of the important ones being socioeconomic status (SES). SES can be defined as a multidimensional construct, including measures of social factors such as power, prestige and hierarchical social status, and economic resources (Hackman and Farah, 2009). Child development can be studied from multiple dimensions such as physical, mental, social, and emotional development among others. For the purposes of this study, I will be focusing on how socioeconomic status affects child cognitive development.

The first area I would like to look at is Behavior. In the textbook chapter 2 discusses behavior genetics and heritability. It discusses the relationship between the genetic and the environmental influences using SES as an example on environment as it relates to intelligence. The book states that some studies find middle class families to have higher heritability of intelligence not due to different genes than those in a lower SES but because they have access to greater resources. (Arnett, 2016) Another study used a Family-based training program in lower SES preschoolers. “Children from different socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds display profound disparities in cognitive skills, brain structure and function, and academic outcomes (e.g., refs. 1⇓⇓–4). Because academic disparities associated with SES are increasing in many societies (5), there is strong motivation to develop and implement training programs that can narrow these achievement gaps.” (Neville, et al., 2013) This study did find that the children in the Family-based program showed significant changes in the reduction of problem behavior and improvement in their social skills. The implementation of parent or caregiver

Another defining factor for social class is education especially since education is seen as an achievement toward the American Dream. (Lareau, 235). Younger generations seem to place more emphasis on achieving higher education and the occupational opportunities provided for those who are well-educated (Cherlin, 113). The socioeconomic stratification corresponds to those with differing levels of education such as upper/middle class individuals have a college education while working/lower class have some college and/or minimal high school education (Cherlin, 118-119). These individuals and their given circumstances based on education and income have different values and trends about marriage, family and socialization/rearing of children. (Cherlin, 114-117). Family inequality is then based on direct obtainment for individuals who are head of these households such as employment of fathers and mothers (Cherlin, 111), which in turn affects the childhood/family experience of child within the socioeconomic status of their parents. (Lareau,

Everyone knows about the various stereotypes and social stigmas that come with socioeconomic status whether they will choose to admit it or not. Society has come to assume that a child who comes from a family of low socioeconomic status, that they will not do as well as a child who comes from a family of a greater socioeconomic status. Unfortunately these assumptions are so ingrained in our brains that we start to follow the self-fulfilling prophecy. When a child from a noticeably low socioeconomic status walks into a classroom, it is not uncommon for the teacher to automatically assume that the child will not perform well in class, and in turn either grades the child more harshly or does not give the child as much attention as the

Families are often encouraged to provide a variety of reading material for their children, especially at an early age, to give children plenty of options when learning how to read. When children are provided with a variety of reading material at home, they see that a high value is placed on reading. If parents value reading at home, children tend to value it also, and the more a child is encouraged to read at home, the more they will want to engage in reading in general. By being involved in their child’s reading development, parents can give their children a firm foundation to reading prior to entering grade school which will lead to a lifetime of reading enjoyment and

That a student’s social class origin impacts on their learning outcomes is self-evident across much of the developed world, with entrenched disparities in academic achievement that are inversely correlated with family income (Snook, 2009:3, Argy, 2007:para 3, Reay, 2006:289, Nash, 2003:179-180).

Reading is a skill often taken for granted but it is essential in order to progress in life. For a child being able to read well helps them learn new things, give ideas and enables use of imagination. National literacy trust (2015) suggests that children’s early language skills can have a major impact on a child’s development of literacy skills. Five-year olds with poor language and literacy have a higher risk of underachieving at age seven and beyond. Reading skills encourage more opportunities in life and it can affect a child’s wellbeing if they do not achieve this effectively (Finnegan,2015).

Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most widely studied constructs in the social sciences. Several ways of measuring SES have been proposed, but most include some quantification of family income, parental education, and occupational status. Research shows that SES is associated with a wide variety of health, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes in children, with effects beginning prior to birth and continuing into adulthood. A variety of mechanisms linking SES to child well-being have been proposed, with most involving differences in access to material and social resources. For children, SES impacts well-being at multiple levels.

By the mid-1980s emergent reading/literacy became accepted among researchers, early educators, and reading teachers. Emergent literacy appeared as an ERIC descriptor and was recognized as a justifiable area of work in the conventions of the National Association for the Education of the Young Children, the National Reading Conference, the International Reading Association, and other professional organizations (Teale, 1995). According to Teale, the emergent literacy model for preschool reading instruction had far-reaching implications. Daily interactions between parents or other caregivers and children in the home environment were emphasized. The shift to an emergent literacy perspective in the preschool and pre-kindergarten environments meant that reading needed to be taught in those settings (Teale, 1995; Roberts, Jurgens, Burchinal, 2005). In other words, adults in those environments must be considered as the child