28. See the classic article by Urie Bronfenbrenner on this point, “Socialization and Social Class through Time and Space.”
29. See the extensive writings by Melvin Kohn on this point, especially his book (with Carmi Schooler) Work and Personality.
30. Middle-class families did not live problem-free lives. The point here is that middle-class families have more varied occupational experiences; their superior educational training also gives them access to jobs with more economic returns.
31. Katherine Newman, Declining Fortunes, and Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, America: What Went Wrong?
32. Erik Olin Wright, Class, Crisis, and the State, chapter 1.
33. Not all middle-class parents we interviewed approved of this scenario, either. Many thought it was wrong to force a child to take piano lessons that he did not enjoy. Still, unlike working-class and poor parents, many stressed the importance of “exposure.”
34. Michael Katz, The Price of Citizenship.
35. See Lawrence Mishel et al., The State of Working America, p. 289.
36. David Karen, letter to author, 7 June 2002. See Jody Heymann, The Widening Gap.
37. Alvin Rosenfeld and Nicole Wise, The Over-Scheduled Child, pp. 1–2.
38. Rosenfeld and Wise, The Over-Scheduled Child, pp. 1–2.
39. See Maria Newman, “Time Out! (for Overextended Families): A Town Takes a Rare Break from the Frenzy of Hyperscheduling.”
40. For example: “Like wild animals raised in captivity who never develop their inborn potential to hunt for themselves, children who are robbed of the opportunity to come up with their own games and entertain themselves at those times in their lives when these capacities are developing may very well become dependent upon others to determine their good times.” Dana Chidekel, Parents in Charge, pp. 94–95.
41. See work by Doris Entwistle and Karl Alexander on this topic, including Entwistle, Alexander, and Olsen, Children, Schools, and Inequality.
42. For details of one program, see a series of articles by Dale Mezzacappa in the Philadelphia Inquirer, including “Ten Years of Learning, Living, Loving.” Overall, the program was most successful for students in the regular educational track (as opposed to those in special education) and for young men rather than women.
43. For example, in the Chicago-based “I Had a Dream” program, 72% of the cohort graduated from high school, compared to 35% of the control group. For Paterson, New Jersey, 60% of the 1993 cohort graduated compared to 33% of the control group. These interventions begin in third grade (as opposed to sixth in the Say Yes program). See the “I Had a Dream Foundation” Web site for a summary of in-house statistics as well as research evaluations conducted by independent researchers, www.ihad.org (accessed 12 December 2002).
44. Among others, see Hugh Mehan et al., Constructing School Success, and an evaluation by Public/Private Ventures of the Big Brother/Big Sister Program, Joseph Tierney et al., “Making a Difference.”
45. As Barrie Thorne has noted in Gender Play, the significance of gender varied across context. As she suggests, we observed children self-segregating into gender homogenous groups, as when Harold McAllister, Tyrec Taylor, Wendy Driver, and Jessica Irwin separated into informal, gendered groups in their neighborhoods. But if there was a scarcity of near-age children, then boys, such as Billy Yanelli and Garrett Tallinger, would play with girls; Katie Brindle would play with both boys and girls. In addition, children, particularly Karl Greeley, spent a great deal of time playing with their younger siblings. For an overview of the research on gender role socialization in childhood, see Eleanor Maccoby, The Two Sexes.
46. See David Halle’s book, America’s Working Man.
47. Michael B. Katz, The Undeserving Poor.
PART IV: UNEQUAL CHILDHOODS, UNEQUAL ADULTHOODS
1. A new table, C10, has been added to Appendix C, presenting in summary form information about the twelve families at the time of the original study that I feel will be useful to readers, and a new Appendix D contains summary information on the twelve young adults and their families at the time of the follow-up.
CHAPTER 13: CLASS DIFFERENCES
Portions of this chapter were originally drafted as part of a paper with Amanda Cox, “Social Class and the Transition to Adulthood,” in Changing Families in an Unequal Society, and of a paper with Elliot Weininger, “Concerted Cultivation Continues,” in Social Class: How Does It Work? I am grateful to both Amanda Cox and Elliot Weininger for their assistance with these sections.
1. For a highly readable account of job loss, see Donald L. Barlett and James Steele, America: What Went Wrong? In The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills wrote about the intersection of social structure, history, and biography. The many powerful historical shifts that have influenced the lives of the families in the study are beyond the scope of this essay. However, the contemporary focus on globalization sometimes obscures the important impact other changes have had on everyday family life in the United States. For example, in 1959 35% of the elderly were poor, but many factors, particularly the introduction of Social Security and Medicare, have reduced this figure to only 9% in 2009. Children have not fared as well. Census data show that in 2009 20.7% of all children under 18 were poor (but 12% of white children and 37% of black children). Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America, “Poverty Higher for Children,” www.stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/view/27 (accessed March 30, 2011); and “Poverty Rates Higher Among Younger Children,” www.stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/view/180 (accessed March 30, 2011). For the debate about absolute versus relative measures of poverty, as well as a valid standard for measuring poverty, see John Iceland, Poverty in America. Poverty remains linked to many detrimental outcomes, particularly for children. See Greg Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Consequences of Growing Up Poor.
2. Prior to 1973, many families were able to live relatively comfortably on one income. In the decades after, however, wages for high school graduates and dropouts deteriorated considerably. After 1970, women, particularly married women with children, entered the labor force in large numbers. This period also saw a delay in the age of marriage, a drop in the likelihood of marriage, an increase in the number of babies born to parents who were not married, and an increase in poverty rates for children. See, among others, Andrew J. Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round; Frank Furstenberg Jr., “The Recent Transformation of the American Family.” Through much of this period, inequality increased. See George Irvin, The Super Rich; Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America.
3. For discussion of this point, see Arne Kalleberg, Barbara Reskin, and Ken Hudson, “Bad Jobs in America.”
4. The U.S. Census Bureau gives the following figures for 2009 for the median earnings by level of educational attainment and gender, for full-time workers of all races, ages 25 to 34 years old:
In order to embed the experiences of the young people in this study in a broad national context, unless otherwise noted, I have selected statistics that correspond to their life course. Generally, the young people in the original study were born in 1984. Thus, data for high school graduation are from 2002, college graduation figures are from 2006, and so forth. When figures are not available for the requisite years, I provide the most recent data available.