Moreover, there has been a profound shift in the U.S. and world economies, with a decline in “good jobs” with high wages, pensions, health benefits, and stability, and a rise in “bad jobs” with relatively low wages, no benefits, little opportunity for career promotion, and lack of stability.23 In the lives of most people, these separate threads—their educational attainment, what kind of job they get, and how much money they earn—are all tightly interwoven. Together, these factors constitute parents’ social position or social structural location.
Many studies have demonstrated that parents’ social structural location has profound implications for their children’s life chances. Before kindergarten, for example, children of highly educated parents are much more likely to exhibit “educational readiness” skills, such as knowing their letters, identifying colors, counting up to twenty, and being able to write their first names.24 Schooling helps, and during the school year the gap in children’s performance narrows quite a bit (but widens again during the summer). Children of highly educated mothers continue to outperform children of less educated mothers throughout their school careers. By the time young people take the SAT examinations for admission to college, the gap is dramatic, averaging 150 points (relative to an average score of 500 points) between children of parents who are high school dropouts and those with parents who have a graduate degree.25 There are also differences in other aspects of children’s school performance according to their parents’ social structural location. 26 Many studies demonstrate the crucial role of educational success in determining occupational success. Parents’ social class position predicts children’s school success and thus their ultimate life chances.27
UNDERSTANDING INEQUALITY
Many people in the United States hold the view that the society is, in fundamental ways, open. They believe that individuals carve out their life paths by drawing on their personal stores of hard work, effort, and talent. All children are seen as having approximately equal life chances. Or, if children’s life chances appear to differ, this is seen as due to differences in raw talent, initiative, aspirations, and effort. This perspective directly rebuffs the thesis that the social structural location of the family systematically shapes children’s life experiences and life outcomes. Rather, the outcomes individuals achieve over the course of their lifetime are seen as their own responsibility.
A second perspective, held by some social scientists, recognizes the existence of important forms of social inequality. Differences in parents’ educational levels, occupational experiences, income, and other factors are all duly noted. Yet these social scientists, such as Paul Kingston, in his book The Classless Society, argue that inequalities of this sort are best understood as a series of disparate patterns. In other words, these scholars adopt a gradational approach. They see it as helpful to focus on differences within the society as a matter of degree. Put strongly, sharply defined categories of social class are useless in understanding “life-defining experiences” within the family. In addition, Kingston and others do not believe that these gradational differences cohere across spheres. Instead, they see haphazard patterns, results here and there, but no clear, definitive, overarching pattern. 28 Kingston is joined in this approach by those who stress the lack of “class consciousness” or “class identification” on the part of those who are similarly situated within the economic domain. Taking a historical perspective, these authors assert that “the communal aspects of class, class subcultures and milieu, have long since disappeared.”29 These social scientists are simply not persuaded that there are recognizable, categorical differences by social class.
One problem with these claims, however, is that the studies on which they draw have been fragmented and overly specialized, asking precise but small questions. In assessing the common linkages, researchers have drawn on multiple studies that they put together in an ill-fitting, jigsawpuzzle form of explanation. What is needed is research that is less narrow. Specifically, studies are required that investigate wide swaths of social life in order to determine how social class makes a substantial difference in children’s lives and also acknowledge those areas of life that may be largely immune to class influence. In short, we need a more holistic picture that accurately reflects both the permeability and impermeability of the home-to-class forces. And, such research needs to be conceptually guided but nonetheless open to the possibility of erring in its expectations.
TABLE 1. TYPOLOGY OF DIFFERENCES IN CHILD REARING
In this study, the research assistants and I followed a small number of families around in an intensive fashion to get a sense of the rhythms of their everyday lives. On the basis of the data collected, I develop the claim that common economic position in the society, defined in terms of social class membership, is closely tied to differences in the cultural logic of child-rearing. Following a well-established Western European tradition, I provide a categorical analysis, grouping families into the social categories of middle class, working class, and poor. 30 (See Table C1, Appendix C for details on how these categories were defined in this study.) I see this approach as more valuable than the gradational analysis often adopted by American scholars.31 In addition, I demonstrate that class differences in family life cut across a number of different and distinct spheres, which are usually not analyzed together by social scientists.
In particular, I delineate a pattern of concerted cultivation in middle-class families and a pattern of the accomplishment of natural growth in working-class and poor families. Table 1 provides an overview of the main points of the book. It indicates that concerted cultivation entails an emphasis on children’s structured activities, language development and reasoning in the home, and active intervention in schooling. By contrast, the accomplishment of natural growth describes a form of child rearing in which children “hang out” and play, often with relatives, are given clear directives from parents with limited negotiation, and are granted more autonomy to manage their own affairs in institutions outside of the home. These patterns help us unpack the mechanisms through which social class conveys an advantage in daily life. In addressing these important issues, I have been guided heavily by the work of the late Pierre Bourdieu (see Appendix B for a brief exposition of his theoretical ideas).32
Despite these differences in social structural experiences, some important aspects of children’s lives are not differentiated by class, including watching favorite television shows, having meals at fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s, taking an interest in specific dolls and action figures, and eagerly anticipating Halloween and important family holidays. As I show in subsequent chapters, all parents (regardless of social class) face the task of getting children up, dressed, fed, and transported to school, and getting them medical attention when sick. Thus, some experiences are threaded through the lives of all families. Nevertheless, social class differences influence the very pace and rhythm of daily life. The next chapter, which examines the life of Garrett Tallinger, shows how middle-class parents’ efforts to develop their children’s talents through organized leisure activities can create a frenetic family life.