Summary Of Unequal Childhoods

The book Unequal Childhoods describes observations made by Annette Lareau to shed light on the significance of social class and how it affects student’s learning. Lareau presents her observations by highlighting the two dominant ways of parenting that ultimately affect how successful students become as they transition into adulthood. These styles of parenting consist of Concerted Cultivation where parents put through kids through structured activities, and Accomplishment of Natural Growth where unrestrictive freedom and directives are exercised (20-22).

In Annette Lareau’s study and subsequent book Unequal Childhoods, she examined the lives of twelve children of different social classes. In particular, she focused on parenting styles within their households and their effects on the children’s future and found a direct correlation. Two of the children from her study were Alexander Williams and Tyrec Taylor, both African-American nine-year-old boys.

She also talks about how middle class parenting differs from the other social class. The middle class parents mostly dominate the lives of their children while the working class parents cannot concentrate that much on their kids. She also brought a name for this phenomena called “Concerted Cultivation”.

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.

Accordint to the author Gonzalez-Mena, “The Status—that is, the family’s position in society—affects socialization and can in turn affect expectations as well as where children find themselves” (p.126). That is, children socialization is greatly affected by the status of the family due to, the different expectation between children belonging to rich families and that children living in poverty.

In the study Lareau conducted, it can be see that working class and poor families differ slightly in that being poor means less resources and a means of a greater struggle for the child. The similarities found explain why being lower class has it benefits in some areas then if you were middle or upper class. Now Lareau is not telling people to raise their children one way or that being rich is better because even the rich have many disadvantages their children encounter. Lareau emphasizes, “Overall, daily life for working-class and poor children is slower paced, less pressured, and less structured than for their middle- and

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.

Parents have a significant amount of influence on how their children will act, behave and do certain things in today's world which base off of their skills. Not all parents will acquire impressive parenting skills and be able to raise their children properly in society. In a memoir called The Glass Castle, by author Jeannette Walls shares her life story and how it may be perceived as normal. In Jeannette’s life, she along with her siblings are raised by a father and a mother who raises their family in a way that society would view as unusual or problematic. Parents are the adults who have certain ways and skills on how their children are raised in which could be considered a problem, society, on the other hand, has certain views but isn’t necessarily the problem.

Exploring the nuances of race and social position beginning in childhood and culminating in adulthood Lareau explores different approaches exercised by parents in raising children. Separating families into three categories, including: middle-class, working-class, and poor, the author began her study. Attempting to answer the question, “What is the outcome of these different philosophies and approaches to child rearing?” Lareau discovers that the answer was found in the “transmission of differential advantages” (Lareau 2011:5). Accordingly, these advantages equip children with tools to navigate through life progressively or prohibitively respective to the individual instruction obtained in childhood. In unearthing these discoveries, the author employed the use of ethnography through naturalistic observation utilizing field notes and taped recordings of interviews with family members.

The line between being an acceptable and unacceptable parent is often blurry and is seen on different perspectives when it comes to class, culture, and generation differences. Based on the two stories of Amy Tan’s, “Two Kinds” and Tillie Olsen’s, “I Stand here Ironing” we see these two perspectives that derive from different maternal upbringings of the children in the stories. What is found between them is the conflict of being too little or heavily involved in a child’s life has had more negative outcomes during their childhood than positive.

In roughly 95 million middle-class American homes the notion of making last minute plans to share quality time with family and friends is challenging. With their priority for leisure time being focused on their children’s futures, making plans often involves two to four weeks advance notice. However, 200 million working-class and poverty level families accommodate those last minute plans with ease. Parenting styles in American families is what Annette Lareau addresses in Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Lareau identifies middle-class families as concerted cultivators, mothers and fathers that dominate their children’s lives with established, controlled and organized activities intended to give them experiences that

Every society has a class whether that be lower-middle, upper-middle or high class. Differences between children that grow up in favorable conditions and those who grow up in poverty are noticeable around 9 months (Moore, McDonald, Carlon, & O’Rourke, 2015). The class you are in sometimes can have effects on your health and lifetime. This article Early childhood development and the social determinants of health inequities points out the indicators pertaining to children and families. It is said that poor children worsen in health as they progress while those in higher class improve.

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.

Parenting a child from infant to the adult stage is a full-time responsibility that every parent takes on. The type of style used to socialize their children to conform adequately to the expected standards of conduct to function successfully in their society is the option that is decided by each parent. Since there are different ways of parenting a child, it is the parent’s responsibility to ensure that the child’s behavior is sufficient to live in society let alone act compliant in it as well. It is interesting to observe the different methods that a variety of parents demonstrate in order to make sure that the children of that society will be considered ‘acceptable’ by the environment itself and of course by the parenting

Research on human development has been much devoted towards determining when one should expect children to be capable of certain skills. Every day, our communities develop as generations of individuals make choices and invent solutions to changing circumstances. Our ongoing daily activities, ranging from learning when to brush our teeth, to learning the numbers on a telephone. Barbara Rogoff’s The Cultural Nature of Human Development discusses cultural patterns as they relate to human development. Human development is a cultural process by which devices such as language and literacy are employed by means of learning from one another. To date, the study of human development has been largely based around research and theoretical knowledge coming from middle-class communities in Europe, as well as North America. Questions such as “When does children’s intellectual development permit them to be responsible for others?” and “When can they be trusted to take care of an infant?” are vital in recognizing cultural approaches among different cultural communities. Rogoff’s work discusses the importance of increasing the understanding of the cultural basis of our own lives as those of our neighbors and those individuals we do not know personally.