Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [242]
52. Among the working-class and poor parents whose children dropped out of high school or did not persist in college, only Ms. Brindle did not display signs of heartbreak during the interview. Katie had a serious drug problem, had a baby at a young age, and had difficulty bonding with that child. In this context, dropping out of high school was only one of a host of very pressing problems. Also, in both the original and follow-up studies, during interviews, Ms. Brindle often shared very painful experiences, but her affect was more flat than that of other parents. In the follow-up interview, though, she made it very clear that she fervently hoped Katie would go back to school to get her GED.
53. Ms. Handlon and I spoke in August. At the beginning of the interview, I said that I was trying to catch the students in the summer. Ms. Handlon, blushing and looking embarrassed, said, “before they go back to college.” She appeared to be profoundly distressed that Melanie was not in college. Children’s failure to enroll and persist in college is likely to be disappointing to all parents, but it is especially stressful for parents living in middle-class communities where college attendance is so common that children who do not attend college are stigmatized. Since college enrollment remains relatively unusual for working-class and poor young adults, parents in these families were disappointed, but, unlike Ms. Handlon, they did not appear to feel humiliated. A national study found that dropout rates vary by family income: of the children who dropped out of high school, the distribution was 2% of high-income students, 4% of middle-income students, and 8% of low-income students. U.S. Department of Education, “Event Dropout Rates.”
54. Although Mr. Handlon had a master’s degree and Ms. Handlon had only two years at a community college, she was the one who took a leadership role in managing Melanie’s schooling. It is possible that, as Melissa Wilde pointed out (personal communication, October 25, 2010), Ms. Handlon was “the least middle class of all of the middle-class parents” and lacked the requisite knowledge, dispositions, and other forms of cultural capital to manage successfully Melanie’s school career. Also, regardless of social class, as the sociology of motherhood literature has pointed out, mothers are often blamed for their children’s behaviors. See Anita Garey and Terry Arendell, “Children, Work, and Family.”
55. A National Center for Education Statistics report, for example, shows that among youth who aspired to a college degree when they were high school sophomores, only one-third of those with at least one parent with a college degree were deemed “highly qualified” for college, and a significant number did not end up attending a four-year institution. See U.S. Department of Education, “Access to Post-Secondary Education for 1992 High School Graduates.” Some critics place the figure much lower.
56. The literature is filled with debates on the genetic contribution to intelligence, the role of “nature and nurture” in development, the proper definition and measurement of intelligence, and the contribution of schools and families to outcomes.