Ironically, the new agenda for middle-class parents, whether expressed collectively or individually, amounts to a reinstatement of many of the elements of the strategy of the accomplishment of natural growth. For overburdened and exhausted parents, the policy recommendations center on setting limits: reducing the number of children’s activities, scheduling family time, making family events a higher priority than children’s events, and generally putting the needs of the group ahead of the needs of the individual.
Gaining Compliance with Dominant Standards:
Implications for Working-Class and Poor Families
For working-class and poor families, the policy recommendations center on trying to gain advantages for children in institutional settings. Some programs stress the importance of reading to children, bolstering vocabulary, and addressing “summer setback” (a reference to working-class and poor children’s tendency to lose academic ground when they are out of school while middle-class children’s academic growth spurts ahead).41 Here, it is important to bear in mind the ever-changing nature of institutional standards (phonics is “in” one year, whole language the next; computers are promoted and then challenged). Providing children with the resources needed to comply with institutional standards may be helpful, but it leaves unexamined the problematic nature of class-based child-rearing methods themselves. It is possible that policies could be developed to help professionals learn how to be more sensitive to differences in cultural practices and how to “code switch”; they, in turn, might be able to teach children to “code switch” as they move between home and encounters with institutions. One promising development is the success of programs that offer to working-class and poor children the kinds of concerted cultivation middle-class children get at home. Examples include intensive interventions in high schools and in “I Had a Dream” philanthropic ventures through which schools and private tutors take on the roles often carried out by middle-class parents (and the tutors they hire). These programs have improved children’s school performance; reduced suspensions, behavior problems, and teen pregnancies; and increased college admittance rates. Many have been shown to double the high school graduation rates of students.42 Other interventions have produced similarly positive results.43 In some, for example, high school teachers provide low-income students with tours of college campuses, remind them about key deadlines, and help them fill out college applications. Programs such as these, as well as more traditional programs, such as “Big Brother/Big Sister,” have improved school experiences.44 In sum, policy recommendations for working-class and poor children do not address hectic schedules or the need for greater parental control, as those for middle-class children do. Rather, they focus on gaining institutional advantages for children by encouraging parents to use reasoning to bolster their children’s vocabulary and to play a more active role in their children’s schooling.
BIOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE
The birth of a new family member is usually treated as a joyous event. Family members mark the arrival of the newest niece, nephew, daughter, or grandson with celebrations beforehand, such as baby showers, excitement and gifts on the baby’s arrival, with visits to the hospital and detailed conversations about who the baby looks like, and formal blessings such as christenings or “dedications” in churches of various denominations. All of these events celebrate the promise offered by this new life.
Each person’s life also unfolds in a unique way. Within the same family, brothers and sisters have different temperaments and preferences as well as different genetic configurations. Fern Marshall spent hours and hours each week playing basketball while Stacey was absorbed with gymnastics; Garrett Tallinger was quiet while Spencer was such a chatterbox that, as his father said in mock despair, “You can’t shut him up.” Melanie Handlon’s older brother was tall and thin while she was short and stocky. Moreover, even members of the same family do not have the same child-rearing experience. Family configurations change over time and parents’ life circumstances and parenting styles change as well. There are important variations in the choices siblings make and in their life outcomes.
But this unique character of each human life, as well as the distinctive gifts that each individual brings to a family, should not blind us to the way that membership in a broader social group matters in the creation of inequality. Social group membership structures life opportunities. The chances of attaining key and widely sought goals—high scores on standardized tests such as the SAT, graduation from college, professional jobs, and sustained employment—are not equal for all the infants whose births are celebrated by their families. It turns out that the family into which we are born, an event over which we have no control, matters quite a lot. It matters in part because the system of institutions is selective, building on some cultural patterns more than on others. To be sure, there are also significant amounts of upward and downward mobility. There are those in the population who overcome the predicted odds, particularly certain immigrant groups. The social structure of inequality is not all determining. But it exists. This system of social location, largely unacknowledged by most Americans, means that Katie Brindle, Wendy Driver, and Tyrec Taylor have important elements of their lives in common, just as Garrett Tallinger, Alexander Williams, and Stacey Marshall have important aspects of their lives in common. It means that class, in some instances, is more important than race. And it suggests that boys and girls of the same social class, while having important gender-related differences in their lives, also have important commonalities.45
Americans tend to resist the notion that they live in a society of social classes. Most people describe themselves as middle class. When asked about social divisions, many readily discuss the power of race, but the idea of social class is not a systematic part of the vocabulary of most Americans.46 Nor is there a set of widely discussed beliefs, as in earlier decades, of the importance of eliminating poverty or narrowing gaps in social inequality.
Looking at social class differences in the standards of institutions provides a vocabulary for understanding inequality. It highlights the ways in which institutional standards give some people an advantage over others as well as the unequal ways that cultural practices in the home pay off in settings outside the home. Such a focus helps to undercut the middle-class presumption of moral superiority over the poor and the working class. And a vocabulary of social structure and social class is vastly preferable to a moral vocabulary that blames individuals for their life circumstances and saves the harshest criticism for those deemed the “undeserving poor.”47 It is also more accurate than relying only on race categories. The social position of one’s family of origin has profound implications for life experiences and life outcomes. But the inequality our system creates and sustains is invisible and thus unrecognized. We would be better off as a country if we could enlarge our truncated vocabulary about the importance of social class. For only then might we begin to acknowledge more systematically the class divisions among us.
PART IV
Unequal Childhoods and Unequal Adulthoods
FIFTH-GRADE GRADUATION IS A LONG time ago now. As the young boys and girls traveled through middle school into high school and beyond, they not only grew taller—Garrett Tallinger is now well over six feet—but also took on the concurrent signs of adulthood: some of them acquired tattoos on their arms or backs, the young men’s voices deepened, and young women—like Melanie Handlon—emulated fashion magazines with their trendy hairdos and bright nail polish. They varied in their personal styles. Some dressed fashionably and some favored T-shirts and jeans. But, unquestionably, they all became young adults.