Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [151]
Others have shown that parents’ occupations and working conditions, particularly the complexity of their work, influence important aspects of their child-rearing beliefs.29 In this study, there were not only suggestions that parents’ work mattered, but also signs that the experience of adulthood itself influenced how individuals conceived of childhood. Middle-class parents, spared severe economic struggles, often were preoccupied with the pleasures and difficulties of their work lives.30 They tended to view childhood as an opportunity for play, but also as a chance to develop talents and skills that could be valuable in the self-actualization processes that take place in adulthood. Mr. Tallinger, for example, saw implications for the world of work in his assessment of the value of sports for Garrett, noting that playing soccer taught his son to be “hard nosed” and “competitive.” Ms. Williams, similarly, mentioned the value of Alexander learning to work with others on a team. Middle-class parents were very aware of the “declining fortunes” of the middle class and of the country as a whole at the close of the twentieth century. They worried about their own economic futures and those of their children.31 This uncertainty made them feel it was important that children be developed in a variety of ways in order to enhance their future possibilities.
The experiences and concerns that shaped the views of the working-class and poor parents had little in common with those of the middle-class parents. For working-class families, it was the deadening quality of work and the press of economic shortages that defined their experience of adulthood and influenced their vision of childhood. For poor families, it was dependence on public assistance and severe economic shortages that most affected their views about adulthood and childhood. Working-class and poor families had many more worries about basic issues: how to endure food shortages, get children to doctors despite a lack of reliable transportation, purchase clothing, and manage other life necessities. Thinking back over their childhoods, these adults acknowledged periods of hardship but also recalled times without the kinds of worries that troubled them at present. Many appeared to want their own youngsters to spend their time being happy and relaxed. There would be plenty of time for their children to face the burdens of life when they reached adulthood. In summary, then, parents’ conceptions of adulthood and childhood appeared to be closely connected to their lived experiences. The factors influencing parents’ child-rearing strategies thus seem to go beyond the role of education per se to encompass these adults’ occupational and economic experiences as well.
In fact, it was the interweaving of life experiences and resources, including parents’ economic resources, occupational conditions, and educational backgrounds, that seemed to be most important in leading middle-class parents to engage in concerted cultivation and working-class and poor families to engage in the accomplishment of natural growth. Still, the structural location of families did not determine their child-rearing practices. The agency of actors and the indeterminacy of social life are inevitable. It is important to keep in mind this “relative autonomy” of individuals in the enactment of social structural position and biographical outcomes.32
Aside from economic and social resources, there are other factors that might influence child-rearing practices by social class. Indeed, one might imagine two different scenarios: if the resources of the poor and working-class families were transformed overnight so that they equaled those of the middle-class families, would their cultural logic of child rearing shift as well? Or are there