Parenting in Privilege or Peril

How Social Inequality Enables or Derails the American Dream

Pamela R. Bennett, Amy Lutz, Lakshmi Jayaram (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2021
Teachers' College Press (Verlag)
978-0-8077-6601-9 (ISBN)

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Is the American dream that exists for the middle class equally available to the working class? Using extensive interviews with parents and a variety of data sources, this book examines how social contexts and culture affect parenting decisions. By analyzing class differences in neighborhoods, schools, and networks, as well as their relationship to mobility-related parenting practices, the authors demonstrate that cultural differences are no match for economic inequalities. They show how middle-class parents have access to social contexts characterized by security, which gives rise to what the authors call “strategic parenting”— a set of practices that allow adolescents to develop the qualities and skills they will use to go off to college and, subsequently, achieve the American dream. Conversely, the contexts of working-class parents are characterized by precarity, giving rise to “defensive parenting”—an almost frantic use of harm-mitigating interventions to protect adolescents from threats to both their well-being and prospects for mobility. This important book calls for a shift in public policy away from trying to change working-class parents to improving the social contexts in which society asks them to raise the next generation.

Book Features:

An explanation for social class differences in educationally relevant, mobility-related parenting practices that contrasts with the dominant cultural explanation.
Research findings that are informed by a variety of data sources, including interview data, survey data, social network data, census data, and crime statistics.
Two new parenting concepts—strategic parenting and defensive parenting—that capture how middle-class and working-class parents pursue social mobility for their children.

Pamela R. Bennett is an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Amy Lutz is an associate professor of sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Lakshmi Jayaram is president of the Inquiry Research Group LLC and policy fellow in the School of Public Policy at UMBC.

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Social Contexts Matter 3

Culture, Conditions, and Constraints: Themes and Variation in Explanations for Social Reproduction 5

Defensive and Strategic Parenting: An Illustration 8

Data 11

Overview of the Book 15

1. Worlds Vastly Different: The Neighborhood and School Contexts of Middle-Class and Working-Class Families 21

The School Contexts in Which Middle-Class and Working-Class Children Learn 21

The Residential Contexts of Middle-Class and Working-Class Parents 25

Summary 41

2. Networks to Get Ahead and Networks to Get By 43

Measuring Social Networks 44

Class Differences in Social Network Resources 46

Class Differences in the Utilization of Social Network Resources 53

From Getting by to Getting Ahead 64

Summary 67

3. Navigating Adolescence in Unequal Contexts 69

Vigilance Among the Working Class 69

Fostering Autonomy Among the Middle Class 79

Summary 85

4. Opportunities to Participate: Unequal Contexts and Social Class Differences in Structured Activity Participation 87

Studying Parents’ Engagement With Structured Activities 89

Social Class Differences in Structured Activity Participation 91

Parents’ Expressed Cultural Logic 94

Schools as Equalizing Institutions 104

Financial and Institutional Constraints on Non-School Activities Among the Working Class 109

Summary 113

5. In Search of a Good School: Middle-Class and Working-Class Parents’ Navigation of the High School Application Process 119

Universal Participation in the Application Process 121

The Middle-Class Pursuit of an Elite Public Education 123

Working-Class Parents’ Avoidance of Dangerous Schools 127

Teacher Assistance in Choosing Schools 134

Social Class Differences in High School Selectivity 137

Summary 137

6. Unequal Contexts and Parents’ Educational and Occupational Expectations 141

Educational Expectations 142

Occupational Expectations 145

The Meaning of Adolescent “Mistakes” 154

Summary 156

7. The American Shift to Child-Centered Parenting 161

Child-Centered Parenting 163

Summary 172

Conclusion 175

Child-Centered Parenting 175

To Strategize and Defend 177

The Privilege to Live One’s Values 180

What Can We Do? Policy Recommendations 181

Appendix A: Sociodemographic Characteristics of Sample 185

Appendix B: List of Occupations Used in the Position Generator 187

Appendix C: Selected Characteristics of Individual Study Participants 188

Appendix D: Methodology 191

Appendix E: Re-Analysis of Social Class Differences in Structured Activity Participation Using a Multidimensional Measure of Social Class 203

Notes 213

References 221

Index 233

About the Authors 241

Erscheinungsdatum	01.12.2021
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 229 mm
Gewicht	363 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Bildungstheorie
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Makrosoziologie
ISBN-10	0-8077-6601-1 / 0807766011
ISBN-13	978-0-8077-6601-9 / 9780807766019
Zustand	Neuware