Hectic Lives of Middle-Class Children Give Them Advantages That Go Beyond Wealth

BOOK SHOWS HOW HECTIC LIVES OF MIDDLE-CLASS CHILDREN GIVE THEM ADVANTAGES OVER POORER KIDS THAT GO BEYOND WEALTH

In writing her new book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life, Temple University sociologist Annette Lareau and her team of researchers went into the homes of a dozen middle-class, working-class and poor families--six black and six white--trying to find out how much social class shaped children's lives.

"We stayed overnight at their homes, went to baseball games, church services, family reunions, grocery stores, beauty parlors and barbershops, and generally participated in the normal routines of family life," says Lareau.

What they found was that social class plays a much larger role than race in how the children they observed were being raised. And that the oft-maligned overscheduled lifestyle of soccer games, band camps and dance recitals gives middle-class kids additional advantages over their less prosperous--and usually less hurried--peers that may not be obvious at first glance.

In describing the differing parenting styles seen in middle-class and working-class/poor families, Lareau came up with two terms -- "concerted cultivation" and "the accomplishment of natural growth." The middle-class Tallingers and 'concerted cultivation' Both Don Tallinger and his wife, Louise, work full-time in professional jobs with travel requirements. They have three children, Garrett (a fourth-grader), Spencer (a second-grader) and Sam (a preschooler).

Lareau describes a typical day for the Tallingers in her book.

"They rush home, rifle through the mail, prepare snacks, change out of their work clothes, make sure the children are appropriately dressed and have the proper equipment for the upcoming activity, find their car keys, put the dog outside, load the children and equipment into the car, lock the door and drive off. This pattern repeats itself with slight variations, day after day," she writes.

However, "concerted cultivation" is about more than just a busy schedule. Middle-class parents like the Tallingers are actively involved in their children's schooling, reason with their kids when arguing and teach their children not to fear authority figures.

The working-class Taylors and 'the accomplishment of natural growth' Nine-year-old Tyrec Taylor; his mother, Celeste; thirteen-year-old sister Anisha; and eighteen-year-old stepbrother, Malcolm, live in a rented four-bedroom house located near major bus lines in a small, stable, working-class black neighborhood.

"For Tyrec, organized activities were an interruption. In contrast to the Tallinger boys, he centered his life on informal play with a group of boys from his neighborhood.

Sometimes he simply hangs out at home," says Lareau. "One July afternoon, for example, after he returns from day camp, he, his friend Clayton, and I pass the time lying around companionably on the living room floor."

Like Taylor, most working-class children do not have nearly as many organized activities as their middle-class peers.

The researchers also found that working-class parents weren't as intensively involved with their children's school work as their middle-class counterparts.

"In the middle-class families, when the child had a problem at school it quickly slid into becoming the mother's problem too and the mother would work, sometimes behind the scenes, to help resolve it. In working-class and poor families, it usually remained just the child's problem," says Lareau.

And the researchers also observed many times that rather than reason with their kids, many working-class parents give directives such as "cut it out" or "shut up" and teach them to defer to adults and those in authority.

"These children get to control their time, they play outside a lot more and they have more of a spontaneous sense of being younger," says Lareau. "They're just as happy if not happier than their middle-class counterparts and their parents are just as loving and concerned for their children. But the cultural differences in the two groups give some definite advantages to the more prosperous children."

Advantages of concerted cultivation "Learning teamwork and responsibility are obvious benefits of concerted cultivation," says Lareau. "But it's much greater than just that. These children gain an emerging sense of entitlement. They see themselves and other members of the team do well and do poorly and--without even thinking about it--performance-based assessment gradually becomes routine. They learn not to fear authority figures. And by questioning and arguing with adults, they build their vocabularies."

Just as important as the internalized advantages gained by middle-class children are the advantages gained by the perceptions of others in American society.

"School officials in particular usually praise parents and children involved in concerted cultivation," says Lareau. "Schools test children, they value language skills. And generally the teachers themselves are middle class and believe concerted cultivation is the 'right' way to raise children." Positives and negatives of both styles of parenting "Middle-class kids have lots of activities and their verbal skills are very strong. But at the same time, their lives can be very exhausting and they don't have much of a sense of a childhood," says Lareau.

"We also found that family and extended family are much more important in the working-class families. There was much more acrimony between the middle-class siblings. One of the girls we spent time with was talking to her mother about her brother and said, 'I hate him' and the mom said, 'I know.' It's not that the working class and poor kids didn't have their squabbles, but there wasn't that venom and hatred."

Research methods In writing her book, Lareau and her team of researchers interviewed 88 middle- class, working-class, and poor families with children in third and fourth grade.

They then selected 12 families for more intensive study and followed them through their daily lives for three weeks, spending several hours a day with many families and even staying overnight at most homes at least once during the study. Implications of findings While one can debate which of the above examples represents a more idealized childhood, Lareau concludes that there's little chance of getting parents or institutions to change very much, but hopes that both can learn from her findings.

"What are the odds of getting working-class and poor families to raise their children in a middle-class fashion? I'm doubtful. Many of the working-class parents, even though they graduated from high school, did not have the intellectual skills to be very actively involved in their child's school work. The parents couldn't do things like fractions or even read comfortably, that the schools expect them to do.

"However, schools and other institutions need to be more realistic about the educational resources many parents have and more sensitive to this other parenting style. Not having a minivan and being a soccer mom doesn't make you a bad or unloving parent," says Lareau.

Copies of Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life, as well as an article from the American Sociological Review by Lareau on her research, are available through the Office of News and Media Relations.

A digital image of Lareau is available for download online through Temple's Photo Archive at: http://mdev.temple.edu/photoarchive/. Click on the faculty category to retrieve the image.