Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [156]
Americans tend to resist the notion that they live in a society of social classes. Most people describe themselves as middle class. When asked about social divisions, many readily discuss the power of race, but the idea of social class is not a systematic part of the vocabulary of most Americans.46 Nor is there a set of widely discussed beliefs, as in earlier decades, of the importance of eliminating poverty or narrowing gaps in social inequality.
Looking at social class differences in the standards of institutions provides a vocabulary for understanding inequality. It highlights the ways in which institutional standards give some people an advantage over others as well as the unequal ways that cultural practices in the home pay off in settings outside the home. Such a focus helps to undercut the middle-class presumption of moral superiority over the poor and the working class. And a vocabulary of social structure and social class is vastly preferable to a moral vocabulary that blames individuals for their life circumstances and saves the harshest criticism for those deemed the “undeserving poor.”47 It is also more accurate than relying only on race categories. The social position of one’s family of origin has profound implications for life experiences and life outcomes. But the inequality our system creates and sustains is invisible and thus unrecognized. We would be better off as a country if we could enlarge our truncated vocabulary about the importance of social class. For only then might we begin to acknowledge more systematically the class divisions among us.
PART IV
Unequal Childhoods and Unequal Adulthoods
FIFTH-GRADE GRADUATION IS A LONG time ago now. As the young boys and girls traveled through middle school into high school and beyond, they not only grew taller—Garrett Tallinger is now well over six feet—but also took on the concurrent signs of adulthood: some of them acquired tattoos on their arms or backs, the young men’s voices deepened, and young women—like Melanie Handlon—emulated fashion magazines with their trendy hairdos and bright nail polish. They varied in their personal styles. Some dressed fashionably and some favored T-shirts and jeans. But, unquestionably, they all became young adults.
My practice of sending an annual holiday card and small gift to the children prompted some messages in return over the intervening years and gave me a sense of how some of the families were faring. Still, these glimpses provided a picture that was incomplete. I wanted to know whether the differences in child rearing described in Unequal Childhoods had or had not continued over time. As young people develop into adults, they are less dependent upon their parents. The patterns observed during the original study might have significantly altered. Thus, approximately ten years later, when the youth were nineteen to twenty-one, I revisited the twelve families who were in the intensive study to take up these issues. As I explain in more detail below, I conducted a two-hour interview with each of the twelve young adults, and in most cases, I also did a separate in-depth interview with the mother, father, and, in most cases, one sibling.
These interviews suggest that there were important changes in the lives of the families over time. Some of the families did much better in this period than they had been doing a decade earlier. Among the working-class families, two—those of Wendy Driver and Tyrec Taylor—moved from being renters to home owners. Katie Brindle’s mother started working cleaning houses. All of the young adults, including the poor and working-class youths, were able to avoid major life difficulties. None of the twelve had been arrested as adults (although some had had run-ins with the police as juveniles). All were alive and healthy. Some were married with children.
Yet social class continued to matter in the lives of the young people. It mattered in their high school experiences. It mattered in their transitions out of high school as many sought,