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Social Class and its impact on education
Social inequality in children essay
Social inequality in children essay
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Unequal Childhoods explores the lives of children of different races and social classes in order to support Annette Lareau’s thesis that parenting styles are shaped by a child’s social class, and a child’s life chances will depend on the parenting style with which they are raised. These life chances can be viewed as benefits, which “accrue to middle-class children [and] can be significant, but they are often invisible to them and to others” (Lareau, 2011: 13). Life chances are viewed differently for the working or lower class because their strategies are viewed as “unhelpful or even harmful to children’s life chances” (Lareau, 2011: 13). Lareau’s thesis also includes the idea that children will then recreate their class background due to the life chances that their parenting style allowed them to have. Lareau supports her thesis by focusing on two parenting styles which are dependent on social class and seeing how the children’s daily lives, their interactions with institutions, and their parents’ interactions with institutions vary based on these parenting styles. She looks at the skills a child gains based on either the concerted cultivation or natural growth parenting style by examining one school within a city and one school within the suburbs (Lareau, 2011: 15). A child raised through concerted cultivation, in which parents organize and control their children’s lives, gains a sense of entitlement, and these middle-class children are taught “to question adults and address them as relative equals” (Lareau, 2011: 1-2). Lareau uses examples of how a middle-class child’s daily life is organized and how they use the skills learned from this organization when interacting with institutions. Their sense of entitlement will lead the... ... middle of paper ... ...ch as a recession, may change the accuracy of her thesis. During a recession like the one recently experienced in the United States, parents may be forced to work more to maintain their lifestyle and would have less time to invest in their child’s activities outside of school. A family could still be wealthy enough to be considered middle-class, but due to the increase in time spent working and decrease in time spent transporting children to activities, the children would have to become autonomous like the working and lower-class children. Even if children would be participating in less activities, their interaction and their parents’ interaction with institutions most likely would remain a two-way, highly involved interaction. Works Cited Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: class, race, and family life (2nd ed.). Berkely, CA: University of California Press.
Lareau also reported that many working class and poor parents feel that educators hold the expertise, and usually fear doing the “wrong thing” in school-related matters (Lareau 357). What this usually leads to is trying to maintain a separation between school and home (Lareau 358). Working class and poor parents typically are deferential while middle class parents can be demanding toward school personnel (Lareau 358). More educators want poor and working class parents to be more assertive (Lareau 358). “Put differently, they wish these parents would engage in forms of concerted cultivation” (Lareau 358).
Although it may not occur often Lareau fails to gives examples of different social classes using the opposite parenting style that is expected. Not every family is the same. In this book, every middle and upper middle class family focused on concerted cultivation and every working and lower class families focused on accomplishment of natural growth as their parenting styles. The book shows absolutely no example of a working or lower class families that raise their children under the concerted cultivation parenting styles and vice versa. From a personal standpoint, I was raised in the middle class and according to these two parenting styles it is likely that I will be raised in a concerted cultivation environment but in reality I was raised with a mix of concerted cultivation and accomplishment of natural growth with more of an emphasis on accomplishment of natural growth. There are most likely many other families that may mix these two parenting styles together or use the one that is not commonly associated with their social class and Lareau failed to also represent those families in her
People live in quite similar and yet vastly different Umwelten. In this reflexive paper I intend to explore for myself some ideas about the Umwelten of inner city, lower SES African American families (I taught in inner city Washington, D.C.) and white American suburban middle class families. Different Umwelten can lead to vastly different ways of thinking about what it means to be successful in life and, thus, how parents raise and what they desire for their children.
In a country like the United States of America, with a history of every individual having an equal opportunity to reach their dreams, it becomes harder and harder to grasp the reality that equal opportunity is diminishing as the years go on. The book Our Kids by Robert Putnam illustrates this reality and compares life during the 1950’s and today’s society and how it has gradually gotten to a point of inequality. In particular, he goes into two touching stories, one that shows the changes in the communities we live in and another that illustrates the change of family structure. In the end he shows how both stories contribute to the American dream slipping away from our hands.
The purpose of this study, as well as the central argument, is very well addressed by Lareau in the text and leads to many well supported conclusions. Lareau’s main argument in the text is that when children grow up in certain environments, parents are more likely to use specific methods of child rearing that may be different from other families in different social classes. In the text, Lareau describes how she went into the home of the McAllisters and the Williams, two black families leading completely different lives. Ms. McAllister lives in a low-income apartment complex where she takes care of her two children as well as other nieces and nephews. Ms. McAllister never married the father of her two children and she relies on public assistance for income.
Besides race, the scholar also reveals how childhoods are unequal based on social class. Drawing from the American society, there are several social classes. For each class, there are unique pathways of lives followed and these usually influence both the educational and work outcomes. To ...
Louie, Vivian. 2001. “Parents’ Aspirations and Investment: The Role of Social Class in the Educational
In his novel Our Kids, Robert Putnam speaks on about how the 1970’s brought a change in family structures. The family structure of two strong parents and stigma against wedlock births and pre-marital sex quickly began to fade. Birth control and the feminist revolution contributed to these rapid changes. Women began to work and were “in part, freed from patriarchal norms” (Putnam 62). Rather than conforming the female gender role and staying home, having children, and putting food on the table, women actually started to become a part of the economy. They were not as focused on the idea of marriage and finding an economically stable husband to provide for them. The decrease in family structure quickly began to affect opportunity inequality among individuals. Those children with “neo-traditional” marriages are more like to receive a college degree rather than those without. Having a lower-income family reduces educational opportunities children have. While a child from a two-income family may attend a private school with resources that assist them in getting into ivy league schools, a kid from a single parent family may have to attend a public school where there is not even access to a computer lab or extracurricular activities. The lack of education these kids have contributes to their lack of opportunity to receive a college degree. Normally, a college degree allows individuals to receive a higher income than those who just have a high-school diploma. They simply are not exposed to the resources to succeed. This contributes to the inequality of opportunity, and ultimately, the inequality of income. Not only does the structure of family affect the outcome of children, but also the style of
Class is something that is often defined by ones income, job, and family background, the area in which they live or indeed the schools or universities they have chosen to attended. This criteria is used to label people as a certain class and is something that can be seen in education through the likes of theories such as cultural capital. In this essay I am going to compare and contrast differences between middle and working class experiences of education focusing on two main theories; Cultural capital and social reproduction. I am going to concentrate upon the primary sector in oppose to secondary or higher education due to the fact I believe that primary school is where most children develop their personalities which they carry with them in further life and it is their first academic experience; therefore it is where social class first becomes clearly noticeable. In relation to these theories I am going to research into the argument that parents have a strong influence on their child’s education from this young age.
It can be said for most parents that they want their children to grow up to be successful contributing members of society. Being a parent is a difficult, yet rewarding task. But why do some types of parenting result in juvenile delinquency while others find success. There are four generally recognized parenting styles and are categorized: authoritarian, permissive, neglectful, and authoritative. This essay will break down the various styles, its type(s) of discipline and effectiveness.
Beller, Emily and Hout, Michael. “Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective”. The Future of Children 16, no. 2 (2006): 19-36. Accessed April 9, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3844789
Parenting styles are as diverse as parents themselves. Parenting is one of the most challenging and difficult responsibilities a person can face. The way a family is structured is called the parenting style. Parenting styles are collections of parental attitudes, practices, and non-verbal expressions that characterize the nature of parent-child relationships. Because individuals learn how to parent from many different examples including their own parents, role models, society and life experiences. Parenting techniques can vary greatly from household to household, however, experts believe that parenting styles can be broken down into four main categories which include permissive,authoritarian,authoritative,and neglectful.
Diana Baurmind and Alfred Adler have similar categories of parenting styles. Authoritative parenting can be compared to democratic and encouraging. Both of these styles offer love and security of the child. They express the parent is in control, but the parent also respect their child with explaining parental actions in a positive way. Permissive parenting can be compared to over-submissive parenting style. The child is rude, and demanding. The parent usually accepts the child’s behavior. In my opinion, the parent does not want to upset the child, or bother with correcting the behavior, so they will give in by rewarding the child in order to correct the child’s behavior. Authoritarian parenting can be compared to over-coercive parenting. These parents are very strict with children. My father can be compared to this parenting style. There was no reasoning, no communication, and his actions were final. This kind of parenting reminds me of being in the military. Finally, uninvolved parenting can be compared to neglecting parenting. I almost wanted to compare uninvolved to rejecting, but I cannot necessarily say the parent has denied acceptance. The parent is selfish, and does not even provide the bare minimum for their child’s necessities. I can compare this type of parenting from a 16 year old mother from the show Teen Mom’s. Jenelle had her son Andrew at a very young age. After his birth, she was distance and cared more about partying. Her
In Howard Garner’s argument, I can see where he has a point when he stated that “Harris and most of the authorities that she cites are not studying child rearing in general, indeed they are studying child-rearing largely in the white, middle-class United States during the last half century” (pg. 43). I believe as I had stated earlier that both our parents and peers could influence us in different points in our lives. However, for Judith Harris to have a better argument she could have used more studies outside of the United States. Nevertheless, either way both peers or parents have a major impact on our lives.
Parents and their parenting style play an important role in the development of their child. In fact, many child experts suggest that parenting style can affect a child’s social, cognitive, and psychological development which influence not just their childhood years, but it will also extend throughout their adult life. This is because a child’s development takes place through a number of stimuli, interaction, and exchanges that surround him or her. And since parents are generally a fixed presence in a child’s life, they will likely have a significant part on the child’s positive or negative development (Gur 25).