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is a powerful predictor: consistent with the ethnographic data, we found that as maternal education increases, contact with relatives decreases. Thus, in a representative sample of U.S. children, middle-class children spend less time with their relatives than do working-class children. However, race is also significant here: Black children are considerably more likely than their white counterparts to have contact with extended kin. Indeed, the difference between Black and white children is roughly comparable in magnitude to the difference between children whose mothers dropped out of high school, on the one hand, and those whose mothers completed a bachelor’s degree, on the other. So, although the social class pattern is sustained, the PSID-CDS data reveal a race-related difference in the amount of time white and Black children spend with their relatives, a difference that did not show up in the ethnography.

Overall, the PSID-CDS analyses indicate that at a national level, differences between families exist that generally accord with the results of Unequal Childhoods. Children of highly educated parents and of high-income parents exhibit substantially greater involvement in organized activities than their peers whose parents are less well-educated and have lower income. Conversely, the children of less educated parents spend far more time hanging out than their counterparts with highly educated parents. These results are broadly consistent with the premise of an American middle class that tends to engage in concerted cultivation and of a working class and a poor group that tend to engage in the accomplishment of natural growth. The quantitative research also showed an interesting departure from the ethnographic work: the class pattern of time spent with relatives holds, but a significant race difference is also apparent.

Finally, it turned out to be virtually impossible to test some of the most important findings of Unequal Childhoods by analyzing survey data. The PSID-CDS data include test scores of reading ability (for children and parents), but this is not a meaningful measure of linguistic interaction. To capture that would require regularly recording snippets of conversation as talk took place within participating families—something well beyond the capacity of even high-quality data collection efforts such as the PSID-CDS. Most important, surveys are designed to be standardized. One of the key points of Unequal Childhoods, however, is that middle-class parents customize their children’s lives via individually insignificant but cumulatively crucial interventions. And, if these interventions are successful, the children’s problems that prompted the interventions vanish. Thus, a large, representative sample of American families highlights important cultural patterns, but the mechanisms of how social class shapes daily life can remain hidden from view.

Afterword

The children of Unequal Childhoods have grown up. They are scattered, not only to different cities, but to different positions within our country’s system of social stratification.1 In the five years since I followed up with the study participants, the gaps between them have continued to widen. Garrett Tallinger has recently started a career as an account executive. Alexander Williams is now in medical school. Stacey Marshall has left behind her plan to become a physician and is getting a doctorate in the humanities. Not all of the middle-class youth are professionals: Melanie Handlon is a hair stylist. But in most cases, the educational training of middle-class children has steered them toward spots in the top third of the income distribution. By contrast, none of the working-class and poor youth are employed in the professional sector. Billy Yanelli is a unionized painter, though he is currently jobless. Wendy Driver is a stay-at-home mom, supported by her husband, who is in the Navy. Harold McAllister is a waiter at a chain restaurant. Tyrec Taylor is looking for work. Katie Brindle, who had moved from cleaning rooms to working at the front desk of