Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [234]
29. See the extensive writings by Melvin Kohn on this point, especially his book (with Carmi Schooler) Work and Personality.
30. Middle-class families did not live problem-free lives. The point here is that middle-class families have more varied occupational experiences; their superior educational training also gives them access to jobs with more economic returns.
31. Katherine Newman, Declining Fortunes, and Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, America: What Went Wrong?
32. Erik Olin Wright, Class, Crisis, and the State, chapter 1.
33. Not all middle-class parents we interviewed approved of this scenario, either. Many thought it was wrong to force a child to take piano lessons that he did not enjoy. Still, unlike working-class and poor parents, many stressed the importance of “exposure.”
34. Michael Katz, The Price of Citizenship.
35. See Lawrence Mishel et al., The State of Working America, p. 289.
36. David Karen, letter to author, 7 June 2002. See Jody Heymann, The Widening Gap.
37. Alvin Rosenfeld and Nicole Wise, The Over-Scheduled Child, pp. 1–2.
38. Rosenfeld and Wise, The Over-Scheduled Child, pp. 1–2.
39. See Maria Newman, “Time Out! (for Overextended Families): A Town Takes a Rare Break from the Frenzy of Hyperscheduling.”
40. For example: “Like wild animals raised in captivity who never develop their inborn potential to hunt for themselves, children who are robbed of the opportunity to come up with their own games and entertain themselves at those times in their lives when these capacities are developing may very well become dependent upon others to determine their good times.” Dana Chidekel, Parents in Charge, pp. 94–95.
41. See work by Doris Entwistle and Karl Alexander on this topic, including Entwistle, Alexander, and Olsen, Children, Schools, and Inequality.
42. For details of one program, see a series of articles by Dale Mezzacappa in the Philadelphia Inquirer, including “Ten Years of Learning, Living, Loving.” Overall, the program was most successful for students in the regular educational track (as opposed to those in special education) and for young men rather than women.
43. For example, in the Chicago-based “I Had a Dream” program, 72% of the cohort graduated from high school, compared to 35% of the control group. For Paterson, New Jersey, 60% of the 1993 cohort graduated compared to 33% of the control group. These interventions begin in third grade (as opposed to sixth in the Say Yes program). See the “I Had a Dream Foundation” Web site for a summary of in-house statistics as well as research evaluations conducted by independent researchers, www.ihad.org (accessed 12 December 2002).
44. Among others, see Hugh Mehan et al., Constructing School Success, and an evaluation by Public/Private Ventures of the Big Brother/Big Sister Program, Joseph Tierney et al., “Making a Difference.”
45. As Barrie Thorne has noted in Gender Play, the significance of gender varied across context. As she suggests, we observed children self-segregating into gender homogenous groups, as when Harold McAllister, Tyrec Taylor, Wendy Driver, and Jessica Irwin separated into informal, gendered groups in their neighborhoods. But if there was a scarcity of near-age children, then boys, such as Billy Yanelli and Garrett Tallinger, would play with girls; Katie Brindle would play with both boys and girls. In addition, children, particularly Karl Greeley, spent a great deal of time playing with their younger siblings. For an overview of the research on gender role socialization in childhood, see Eleanor Maccoby, The Two Sexes.
46. See David Halle’s book, America’s Working Man.
47. Michael B. Katz, The Undeserving Poor.
PART IV: UNEQUAL CHILDHOODS, UNEQUAL ADULTHOODS
1. A new table, C10, has been added to Appendix C, presenting in summary form information about the twelve families at the time of the original study that I feel will be useful to readers, and a new Appendix D contains summary information