Analysis Of The American Dream: Slipping Away By Susan Neuman

In the article The American Dream: Slipping Away? by Susan Neuman I found many things interesting to read, some even shocking. When Neuman speaks about a study done that found that middle and upper middle class families use a child-rearing strategy called concerted cultivation while working-class and poor parents use the strategy of natural growth, I realized that my mother definitely used natural growth. Neuman states, “These parents generally have less education and time to impress on their children the values that will give them an advantage in school. Their children often spend less time in the company of adults and more time with other children in self-directed, open-ended play” (pp. 166).

I was aware that child rearing differed upon classes, but I never thought that when I would learn about them, they’d be so spot on, at least the strategy that the working class and poor parents have adopted. I grew up in a single parent household and my mother barely had enough time to feed us in between her two jobs and sleeping. Don’t get me wrong, I love childhood and my mother even more for sacrificing so much for us, but I mean, this is the

“When an unmarried woman became pregnant, relatives pressured her and her partner to agree to a ‘shotgun wedding’… Most social scientists agree that, on average, children who grow up in a one-parent family are more disadvantaged than children who grow up with two parents” (pp. 190). While I was reading these, I was thinking, “Well, duh!” I also found interesting that Neuman found “…people whose parents had been divorced had poorer mental health as adults” (pp. 191). I know that many of these people had other factors that contribute to this so this was not the reason for their poor mental health, but I still thought, “Wow! I would have never made that