Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [221]
8. Some readers expressed the concern that the contrast to natural would be “unnatural,” but this is not the sense in which the term natural growth is used here. Rather, the contrast is with words such as cultivated, artificial, artifice, or manufactured. This contrast in the logic of child rearing is a heuristic device that should not be pushed too far since, as sociologists have shown, all social life is constructed in specific social contexts. Indeed, family life has varied dramatically over time. See Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood, Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death without Weeping.
9. Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street; see especially Chapter 2.
10. For a more extensive discussion of the work of Pierre Bourdieu see the theoretical appendix; see also David Swartz’s excellent book Culture and Power.
11. I did not study the full range of families in American society, including elite families of tremendous wealth, nor, at the other end of the spectrum, homeless families. In addition, I have a purposively drawn sample. Thus, I cannot state whether there are other forms of child rearing corresponding to other cultural logics. Still, data from quantitative studies based on nationally representative data support the patterns I observed. For differences by parents’ social class position and children’s time use, see especially Sandra Hofferth and John Sandberg, “Changes in American Children’s Time, 1981–1997.” Patterns of language use with children are harder to capture in national surveys, but the work of Melvin Kohn and Carmi Schooler, especially Work and Personality, shows differences in parents’ child-rearing values. Duane Alwin’s studies of parents’ desires are generally consistent with the results reported here. See Duane Alwin, “Trends in Parental Socialization Values.” For differences in interventions in institutions, there is extensive work showing social class differences in parent involvement in education. See the U. S. Department of Education, The Condition of Education, 2001, p.175.
12. In this book, unless otherwise noted, the statistics reported are from 1993 to 1995, which was when the data were collected. Similarly, unless otherwise noted, all monetary amounts are given in (unadjusted) dollars from 1994 to 1995. The figure reported here is from Everett Ladd, Thinking about America, pp. 21–22.
13. This quote is from President Bill Clinton’s 1993 speech to the Democratic Leadership Council. It is cited in Jennifer Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream, p. 18.
14. Paul Kingston, The Classless Society, p. 2.
15. As I explain in more detail in the methodological appendix, family structure is intertwined with class position in this sample. The Black and white middle-class children that we observed all resided with both of their biological parents. By contrast, although some of the poor children have regular contact with their fathers, none of the Black or white poor children in the intensive observations had their biological fathers at home. The working-class families were in between. This pattern raises questions such as whether, for example, the pattern of concerted cultivation depends on the presence of a two-parent marriage. The scope of the sample precludes a satisfactory answer.
16. As I explain in Appendix A, three of the twelve children came from sources outside of the schools.
17. Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift.
18. My concern here is the vast diversity in views among white Americans as well as Black Americans. The phrase “a white perspective” seems inaccurate. This is not to say that whites don’t experience considerable benefits from their race in our stratified society. They do. Whites benefit from racial discrimination in many ways, including their improved ability to secure housing loans and employment as well as relatively higher market values for their homes in racially segregated