5. U. S. Census Bureau, “Educational Attainment.” A GED is a General Educational Development certificate, awarded on taking a series of tests that indicate the equivalent of a high school education. For the impact of the GED on earnings, see John H. Tyler, “The Economic Benefits of a GED.” By almost all income-gap measures, including annual wages, weeks of unemployment, likelihood of receiving governmental aid, size of pensions, and weeks of vacation, individuals with college degrees fare better than those with lower levels of education. See Economic Policy Institute, The State of Working America.
6. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis made this point in their book Schooling in Capitalist America. There is some debate, however, over the degree to which job skills in the new economy are responsible for the increasing pressure for more education. Some see a connection between educational training and work productivity. Others see the relationship as highly variable and often weak. For the classic piece, see Randall Collins, The Credential Society. Also, higher education is increasingly differentiated. The majority of students begin at community colleges or state schools, but relatively few community college students complete a B.A. See James E. Rosenbaum, Regina Deil-Amen, and Ann E. Person, After Admission. Less than one-fifth of the college-going population is enrolled in highly selective colleges, but the admissions process for this group is highly competitive among both students and colleges. See Mitchell L. Stevens, Creating a Class; Lloyd Thacker, ed., College Unranked.
7. The phrase originated with Horace Mann. For classic works in educational history, see David Tyack, The One Best System; Michael Katz, Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools.
8. The role of gender was not a focus of either the original study or the follow-up. It is important to note, however, that gender, like race, played an important role, as many other studies have shown as well. For instance, Katie Brindle and Wendy Driver both took greater responsibility for their unplanned pregnancies and were more involved in child rearing than were the young men who fathered the children. See, among others, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep; Julie Bettie, Women without Class. For a critical assessment of Unequal Childhoods on this issue see Hae Yeon Choo and Myra Marx Ferree, “Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research.”
9. In Tracking Inequality, Samuel Lucas shows that in contemporary high schools, students rather than school staff are responsible for course selection. It takes considerable knowledge to negotiate the college application process successfully. Since colleges require specific (and complex) course preparation, having middle-class parents who supervise high school course selection is a considerable advantage. See U.S. Department of Education, “Academic Preparation for College,” for evidence of how parents’ education shapes high school course selection. A similar pattern also exists in studies of college access. Individuals must know what questions to ask to determine if a school is a good fit, compile a list of schools likely to show interest, make the right choice among colleges that potentially “fit,” fill out financial aid forms properly, and learn various new systems at the new institution (e.g., registration, housing, financial aid, and course registration). See U.S. Department of Education, “First-Generation College Students”; Patricia McDonough, Choosing Colleges; Janice Bloom, “(Mis)Reading Social Class in the Journey towards College”; Mitchell Stevens, Creating a Class.
10. See especially p. 244.
11. See, among others, Michèle Lamont, Dignity of Working Men and Money, Manners, and Morals; Marianne Cooper, Doing Security in Insecure Times; Jay MacLeod, Ain’t No Making It; Alfred Lubrano, Limbo; Jennifer A. Reich, Fixing Families; Lois Weis, The Way Class Works; David Grusky and Szonja Szelényi, The Inequality Reader; Fiona Devine, Class Practices; Adam Howard and Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez, Educating Elites; Erik Olin Wright, Approaches to Class Analysis; Annette Lareau and Dalton Conley, Social Class.
12. The first edition discusses only nine of the twelve families studied. The Greeley and Irwin families had been selected as “deviant cases” (see the section on Recruiting the Families in Appendix A). However, as noted in Appendix A, the data from these two deviant cases supported the general thesis rather than providing significant additional insight, so adding chapters on these families would not have significantly enhanced Unequal Childhoods. A chapter on Tara Carroll’s family was dropped in the production phase in order to shorten the book. (The chapter, slated to be in Part I, described a deeply religious African American family living in poverty; it highlighted the separate worlds of adults and children in the accomplishment of natural growth.)
Readers interested in details of the transitions to adulthood of the children of these families can find them in Annette Lareau and Elliot B. Weininger, “Concerted Cultivation Continues,” which provides an extensive discussion of Tara Carroll’s college application process and describes the education experiences of Jessica Irwin and Karl Greeley. Briefly, Tara made energetic efforts to enroll in college, but after a short stint in community college she stopped attending. Jessica persisted further; she attended a local four-year public college where she had a full scholarship. In both cases, as in Wendy Driver’s family, the working-class and poor parents had limited knowledge of higher education and therefore turned over responsibility for the college application process to educational professionals. Thus, the relationship between the family and colleges echoed the pattern of accomplishment of natural growth that had been evident in earlier years.
13. See, for example, Richard A. Settersten Jr., Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., and Rubén G. Rumbaut, On the Frontier of Adulthood.
14. See Chapter 14 for further discussion of the research methodology, including a detailed description of the process of finding, contacting, and re-interviewing the original study participants. Chapter 14 also closely examines the families’ reactions to the book.
15. In the presentation of quotes, I have eliminated false starts and filler words, such as “um,” “like,” “you know,” in instances where doing so seemed not to change the speaker’s meaning. In a few instances I have reordered speech for clarity when it did not alter the speaker’s original meaning.
16. I interviewed Katie Brindle in her own apartment, Melanie Handlon at the church where her mother was working, Harold McAllister at his brother’s apartment (where Harold was living), and Garrett Tallinger in his college dorm room.
17. See Michael Burawoy “Revisits”; Linda Burton, Diane Purvin, and Raymond Garrett-Peters, “Longitudinal Ethnography”; Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Ire in Ireland”; Jay MacLeod, Ain’t No Making It. See also the compelling series of British Up movies (7 Up, 14 Up, etc.) produced by Michael Apted, beginning in 1964, and discussed by Michael Burawoy, “Public Ethnography as Film,” and others in the journal Ethnography.