49. Quantitative studies are unable to differentiate the level of detail that would illuminate this pattern, but there is evidence that parents with more education are more likely to initiate contact with schools and be more active in school matters. See Kathleen Hoover-Dempsey and Howard M. Sandler, “Why Do Parents Become Involved?” Ethnographic research also shows considerably less involvement by working-class and poor parents than middle-class parents. See Amanda Lewis and Tyrone Forman, “Contestation or Collaboration?”; Annette Lareau, Home Advantage; Fiona Devine, Class Practices; Val Gillies, “Teaching and Learning Guide for Childrearing, Class, and the New Politics of Parenting.” See also Gill Crozier and Jane Davies, “Hard to Reach Parents or Hard to Reach Schools?” Note that in addition to class differences in parents’ actions, educators may differ in the degree to which they perceive parents are powerful; educators’ perceptions of parents may shape how responsive educators feel that they need to be. I am grateful to Lisa Smulyan for this point.
50. Mr. Taylor suspected that Tyrec might have been selling marijuana at this point.
51. Put differently, it was not Ms. Taylor’s aspirations that impeded her involvement, but her class position. If she had had more knowledge about how to intervene more in high school to facilitate college enrollment, it is likely that she would have done so. Paul Attewell and David Lavin show, in Passing the Torch, that child-rearing practices change among women who are the first in their families to graduate from college (particularly compared to comparable women who do not attend college). They show that college graduates are more likely to read to their children and become more involved in schooling. Thus, there appears to be something transformative about a college degree in altering the contours of motherhood. In my study, all of the middle-class mothers continued their pattern of heavy involvement even as their children became young adults. The inexhaustible demands on mothers to help their children are beyond the scope of this piece, but see Sharon Hays, Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood; Alison I. Griffith and Dorothy E. Smith, Mothering for Schooling; Margaret Nelson, Parenting Out of Control; Demie Kurz, “I Trust Them but I Don’t Trust Them”; Diane Reay, “Doing the Dirty Work of Social Class?”; Margaret Nelson and Anita Ilta Garey, Who’s Watching? There are growing signs of efforts to have middle-class parents “let go” of such high levels of involvement. Some colleges, for example, attempt to restrict parent involvement in the higher education process. See Jennifer Jacobson, “Help Not Wanted”; Eric Wills, “Parent Trap.”
52. Among the working-class and poor parents whose children dropped out of high school or did not persist in college, only Ms. Brindle did not display signs of heartbreak during the interview. Katie had a serious drug problem, had a baby at a young age, and had difficulty bonding with that child. In this context, dropping out of high school was only one of a host of very pressing problems. Also, in both the original and follow-up studies, during interviews, Ms. Brindle often shared very painful experiences, but her affect was more flat than that of other parents. In the follow-up interview, though, she made it very clear that she fervently hoped Katie would go back to school to get her GED.
53. Ms. Handlon and I spoke in August. At the beginning of the interview, I said that I was trying to catch the students in the summer. Ms. Handlon, blushing and looking embarrassed, said, “before they go back to college.” She appeared to be profoundly distressed that Melanie was not in college. Children’s failure to enroll and persist in college is likely to be disappointing to all parents, but it is especially stressful for parents living in middle-class communities where college attendance is so common that children who do not attend college are stigmatized. Since college enrollment remains relatively unusual for working-class and poor young adults, parents in these families were disappointed, but, unlike Ms. Handlon, they did not appear to feel humiliated. A national study found that dropout rates vary by family income: of the children who dropped out of high school, the distribution was 2% of high-income students, 4% of middle-income students, and 8% of low-income students. U.S. Department of Education, “Event Dropout Rates.”
54. Although Mr. Handlon had a master’s degree and Ms. Handlon had only two years at a community college, she was the one who took a leadership role in managing Melanie’s schooling. It is possible that, as Melissa Wilde pointed out (personal communication, October 25, 2010), Ms. Handlon was “the least middle class of all of the middle-class parents” and lacked the requisite knowledge, dispositions, and other forms of cultural capital to manage successfully Melanie’s school career. Also, regardless of social class, as the sociology of motherhood literature has pointed out, mothers are often blamed for their children’s behaviors. See Anita Garey and Terry Arendell, “Children, Work, and Family.”
55. A National Center for Education Statistics report, for example, shows that among youth who aspired to a college degree when they were high school sophomores, only one-third of those with at least one parent with a college degree were deemed “highly qualified” for college, and a significant number did not end up attending a four-year institution. See U.S. Department of Education, “Access to Post-Secondary Education for 1992 High School Graduates.” Some critics place the figure much lower.
56. The literature is filled with debates on the genetic contribution to intelligence, the role of “nature and nurture” in development, the proper definition and measurement of intelligence, and the contribution of schools and families to outcomes. A discussion of these factors is beyond the scope of this chapter. See Judith Rich Harris, Nurture Assumption.
57. See Kathryn M. Neckerman, Social Inequality; Grusky and Szelényi, The Inequality Reader; Aaron M. Pallas and Jennifer L. Jennings, “Cumulative Knowledge about Cumulative Advantage”; Lareau and Conley, Social Class; Bill Keller and the New York Times, Class Matters; Future of Children, Opportunity in America.
58. See, for example, the influential work of Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals, and Manners; Dignity of Working Men; Lamont and Marcel Fournier, eds., Cultivating Differences; David J. Harding, Lamont, and Mario Luis Small, eds., Reconsidering Culture and Poverty. See also Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction.
59. See Pallas and Jennings, “Cumulative Knowledge about Cumulative Advantage.”
60. Stacey’s success also could be associated with her family background, but the concrete actions her parents took would remain unclear. There are methodological constraints associated with using fixed-response surveys to study the type and timing of interventions middle-class parents undertake. These constraints account for why social scientists so often try to understand a variety of social outcomes by conducting studies of grade point averages, verbal test scores, hours watching television, time parents spend reading to a child, and parents’ attendance at parent-teacher conferences. The problem, however, as we have seen, is that many of the things that middle-class parents do are difficult to capture on surveys.