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Good news everyone: I finished Unequal Childhoods and will be going into another nonfiction fast for a bit, so I will maybe be shutting up for a bit, except actually I finished last week and was waiting to post this till I finished the posts I'd held in reserve (yes, this was me pacing myself), and I keep coming up with new things to say, so maybe not.
If there's one piece of good news in the book, it's the dearth of an influence of race. Black families in the study had to deal with slightly more crap than their white counterparts, but in general, being SES trumped race. Middle class families practice "concerted cultivation", which means signing your kid up for 5 million activities, encouraging him to use words as magic spells, and vigorously fighting educators on his behalf, and poor and working class families practice "natural growth", which means giving your kid lots of autonomy to go out and play, expecting obedience to adults, and a lot of deference from you to authority figures. This surprised me because every other study I've read (see Black Picket Fences for an example, but I've read it in many other places) report black middle class families doing less concerted cultivation than white middle class families. Either this study is a fluke, or the difference lies in the definition of middle class: most studies use income level, but UC used the social status of the parent's job (interesting/high autonomy/requires education=middle class, boring/low autonomy/doesn't require education = working class, none = poor. Note that this means you can end up with a working class family having more money than a middle class family, if the working class parent has a high paying union job and the middle class parent is an arty type. But I don't think that was the case for any of the focal families). Further proof that the S is in SES for a reason.
There's also a number of interesting tidbits about teachers in the book. I have friends who are teachers (and are reading this), so I want to make it clear that I know not all teachers are like this, but in general: aaargh. The teachers at the poor school complain about parents who don't care and don't do enough. The teachers at the rich school complain about parents who are too quick to intervene and over schedule their kids. And that's okay. People like things that make their job easier. I complain about my devs not documenting even though it's a basic fact of my job. But somehow when teachers do it (not all teachers, but not just the ones in this book either), it takes on this edge of sanctimony. They're not suggesting you do more/less/different because it would make their job easier, no, they're suggesting it for the welfare of your child, you over protective/neglectful bitch. And it is always the mothers they're complaining about.
The author mentions that no poor kid would ever take food (from their family, in their family's house) without asking a parent first. This is one of those things that simultaneously made me understand something a new light, made perfect sense as soon as heard it, and would never, ever have come up with on my own, event though it made perfect sense as soon as I heard it. It may also be my new definition of poor.
At the end of the book, the author admits you can't make poor/working class parents act like middle class parents by giving them money, but nonetheless thinks we should do that. She also suggests things like scholarships for extracurriculars, which I think is a fantastic idea and have contributed to organizations that do just that, but I wish she didn't assume the government is the one to do it. I wonder if providing an advocate would do any good- someone to go to the dentist with the family and explain to the mother what "tooth decay" means (actual example from book), to yell at the school if a kid's special needs testing feel through the cracks (again, actual example), and maybe slip in a $25 registration fee for band now and again. So like Treehouse, but without requiring the kids to go into foster care. I'm already on board with extracurriculars at schools, including publicly funded ones, but this is just another reason for it.
If there's one piece of good news in the book, it's the dearth of an influence of race. Black families in the study had to deal with slightly more crap than their white counterparts, but in general, being SES trumped race. Middle class families practice "concerted cultivation", which means signing your kid up for 5 million activities, encouraging him to use words as magic spells, and vigorously fighting educators on his behalf, and poor and working class families practice "natural growth", which means giving your kid lots of autonomy to go out and play, expecting obedience to adults, and a lot of deference from you to authority figures. This surprised me because every other study I've read (see Black Picket Fences for an example, but I've read it in many other places) report black middle class families doing less concerted cultivation than white middle class families. Either this study is a fluke, or the difference lies in the definition of middle class: most studies use income level, but UC used the social status of the parent's job (interesting/high autonomy/requires education=middle class, boring/low autonomy/doesn't require education = working class, none = poor. Note that this means you can end up with a working class family having more money than a middle class family, if the working class parent has a high paying union job and the middle class parent is an arty type. But I don't think that was the case for any of the focal families). Further proof that the S is in SES for a reason.
There's also a number of interesting tidbits about teachers in the book. I have friends who are teachers (and are reading this), so I want to make it clear that I know not all teachers are like this, but in general: aaargh. The teachers at the poor school complain about parents who don't care and don't do enough. The teachers at the rich school complain about parents who are too quick to intervene and over schedule their kids. And that's okay. People like things that make their job easier. I complain about my devs not documenting even though it's a basic fact of my job. But somehow when teachers do it (not all teachers, but not just the ones in this book either), it takes on this edge of sanctimony. They're not suggesting you do more/less/different because it would make their job easier, no, they're suggesting it for the welfare of your child, you over protective/neglectful bitch. And it is always the mothers they're complaining about.
The author mentions that no poor kid would ever take food (from their family, in their family's house) without asking a parent first. This is one of those things that simultaneously made me understand something a new light, made perfect sense as soon as heard it, and would never, ever have come up with on my own, event though it made perfect sense as soon as I heard it. It may also be my new definition of poor.
At the end of the book, the author admits you can't make poor/working class parents act like middle class parents by giving them money, but nonetheless thinks we should do that. She also suggests things like scholarships for extracurriculars, which I think is a fantastic idea and have contributed to organizations that do just that, but I wish she didn't assume the government is the one to do it. I wonder if providing an advocate would do any good- someone to go to the dentist with the family and explain to the mother what "tooth decay" means (actual example from book), to yell at the school if a kid's special needs testing feel through the cracks (again, actual example), and maybe slip in a $25 registration fee for band now and again. So like Treehouse, but without requiring the kids to go into foster care. I'm already on board with extracurriculars at schools, including publicly funded ones, but this is just another reason for it.
