Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [238]
22. With the exception of per pupil expenditure, which is from 2006, all other data on the schools in this section are from 2001–2, which was the senior year of high school for the youth. In the case of Lower Richmond, the Common Core of Data reported a senior class enrollment that was 58% of the number of students who had entered the school as freshman. But some of the “missing” students may have transferred to other high schools. It is difficult to estimate the number who dropped out. See John H. Tyler and Magnus Lofstrom, “Finishing High School”; John H. Tyler, “The Economic Benefits of a GED.”
23. See Mitchell Stevens, Creating a Class, for a discussion of how differences in high school guidance systems have implications for college, particularly the recruitment of students by college admission officers.
24. As sociologists and economists have shown, informal social networks are crucial for job access. See Mark Granovetter, “Strength of Weak Ties”; Matthew O. Jackson, Social and Economic Networks.
25. Neither Garrett nor Stacey discussed their college athletic scholarship when asked this question in the interview. I was surprised that two of the middle-class youth in my study ended up with athletic scholarships. It raises questions, of course, of the representativeness of the sample in terms of the children’s participation in organized activities; this question is taken up in Chapter 15. Still, there are signs that many middle-class youth are active in organized sports. Indeed, in their book The Game of Life, James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen found that approximately one-third of students in the liberal arts colleges in their sample were involved in athletics. These students are overwhelmingly from middle-class families. In the Tallinger family, the youngest boy also received an athletic scholarship (to a relatively small Division 1 college), but the middle child, Spencer, never was active in sports. He attended a military college.
26. Some advantages may be especially “taken for granted” and thus invisible to the respondents. For an assessment of the impact of organized activities on a variety of outcomes, see Katerina Bodovski and George Farkas, “ ‘Concerted Cultivation’ and Unequal Achievement in Elementary School”; Jacob Cheadle, “Educational Investment, Family Context, and Children’s Math and Reading Growth”; Elizabeth Covay and William Carbonaro, “After the Bell”; Susan Dumais, “Elementary School Students’ Extracurricular Activities”; Kimberly Maier, Timothy G. Ford, and Barbara Schneider, “Are Middle-Class Families Advantaging Their Children?”; and Jeremy Redford, Jennifer A. Johnson, and Julie Honnold, “Parenting Practices, Cultural Capital, and Educational Outcomes.” Although it is possible that the activities had more benefits than the young adults could articulate, it is hard to assess this issue without more observational data, multiple interviews, and a larger sample of middle-class youth who had been enrolled in organized activities. As a result, the second edition is primarily devoted to the relationships between families and institutions.
27. In The Game of Life, Shulman and Bowen report a significant admission advantage for athletes; in some colleges the admission advantage is higher than the advantage from race or from “legacy” status. They report that 32% of male students at coed liberal arts colleges in 1989 were athletes (p. 33).
28. See Lauren Rivera, “Ivies, Extracurriculars, and Exclusion.”
29. See public health research on the likelihood of low-income youth being exposed to violence as well as the detrimental impact of that exposure on development: David Finkelhor et al., “The Victimization of Children and Youth.” Both Katie and Harold’s sister Alexis reported reoccurring patterns of domestic violence with their partners. The father of Harold’s older sister Lori’s kids is “locked up” for a drug-related violent episode.
30. It is hard to assess these claims. But there have been documented cases of police harassment in this northeastern