The emergence and popularity of such trade books as Not Everyone Gets a Trophy signal a growing dissatisfaction over the sense of entitlement displayed by middle-class youth.64 Similarly, working-class parents, such as Ms. Brindle, often do not mince words when describing middle-class youth:
The people . . . who I clean for have some really spoiled kids. I never in my life seen kids that have everything you could possibly think of—yet be the biggest slobs in the world and disrespectful to their mothers and fathers.
Yet scholarly inquiry remains focused on searching out deficits in the child rearing of working-class and poor families, rather than probing the limits of middle-class cultural practices.65 The logic and legitimacy of working-class and poor parents’ dependence on educators also need systematic attention. Many middle-class parents feel comfortable supervising teachers and intervening in the educational process. But if these same parents’ children needed surgery, they would be likely to turn over responsibility to the attending surgeon.66 Working-class and poor parents generally look up the status hierarchy to all “educated people.” Teachers and surgeons appear to be in the same category—both are experts in their respective fields. From this perspective, depending fully on such professionals to do what they have been trained to do is both logical and sensible. And, when working-class and poor parents accord educators and surgeons a similar status, teachers reap vastly more respect and deference than they frequently receive from middle-class parents. The latter routinely intervene in schooling, requesting that teachers “round up” their children’s grades or demanding that their children, despite failing to meet the qualifying criteria, be placed in a gifted program, or threatening legal action if educators appear hesitant to comply with these or other demands.
Class differences in how parents manage youths’ institutional lives are a crucial, understudied piece in the larger puzzle of unequal life outcomes. But, as many studies have shown, there are other important factors as well. The youth I studied were embedded in multiple social contexts. Different aspects of these contexts loomed large as the children traveled the path to adulthood. The interviews revealed some of the ways in which race has impacted their lives as they have grown older. For example, as others have shown, friendship patterns and dating choices were often racially stratified.67 Racial profiling was common. Alexander’s Ivy League admission and high SAT scores did not protect him from being monitored by store clerks as he shopped. And, although their families differed greatly, he and Harold shared very similar levels of deep resignation that race-based harassment was inevitable. White working-class and poor young men also reported being harassed by the police but, strikingly, middle-class white youth did not, a pattern echoed in national data. Given the racially stratified nature of American society, it is not surprising that the young adults reported racial dynamics surfacing in many of their rituals of daily life. Nevertheless, I did not observe race-based patterns in parents’ institutional knowledge or in their management of their children’s experiences within institutions.68 In these realms, the patterns that emerged fell along lines of social class, not race.69
Much as when they were youngsters, class position shaped the young adults’ relationships with their extended families. Among the working-class and poor young adults, there were palpably deep connections and tight interweavings of kinship and family life that were not apparent among the middle-class youths. To be sure, the latter were close to their families—in fact, growing older seemed to have improved the relationship among siblings. Both Garret and Stacey reported that they got along “better” with their siblings than they had when they were younger. Still, middle-class young adults seemed comfortable maintaining more physical and emotional distance from their families than was common among their working-class and poor counterparts. Harold shared an apartment with his older brother and his family. Katie left her daughter in her older sister Jenna’s care while she sorted things out. Katie’s relationship with her mother was more openly troubled than it had been when she was in elementary school (in part because Ms. Brindle’s drinking had escalated, as had her tendency to be verbally abusive when drunk). Still, Katie continued to see her mother regularly, socializing with her as well as with Jenna and Jenna’s family. Wendy also came home often in order to socialize with her family. Regularly interacting with family members provided bonds of support that were particularly valuable in helping working-class and poor youths meet child care needs and cope with other life challenges.
However, class-based cultural repertoires, interwoven with economic resources, continued to matter. Even as the youth grew into adulthood and became more autonomous, class remained important. Middle-class parents and their children had much deeper and more detailed knowledge of the inner workings of key institutional structures, such as high school curricula, college admission processes, and professional job opportunities, than did working-class and poor parents and their children. Middle-class parents and kids also had more knowledge about and detailed understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their specific “case,” and of the options available, given their individual situation. While all parents helped their children in many ways, middle-class parents adopted a concerted cultivation stance that included close monitoring of their young adults’ circumstances as well as many interventions. Some of the working-class and poor parents also sought to intervene, but these efforts were less frequent and less successful.
SECTION 5. SUMMING UP: CLASS AND THE TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD
When they were ten years old, the middle-class youth seemed worldly, blasé, and hard to impress. For them, pizza parties were very common and thus no special treat. Spring concerts drew shrugs. Kids readily complained to their parents about being bored when they were not occupied by an organized activity. Although the working-class and poor children were the same age as the middle-class children, they seemed younger, bouncier, and more childlike. They smiled broadly while on stage for the spring concert, were ecstatic over a pizza party, and entertained themselves for hours on weekends and evenings. Ten years later, the pattern had reversed: it was the middle-class youth who seemed younger. Now college students, they were excited about the way the world was opening up for them. They had dreams of traveling and visions of many different possible pathways. To be sure, most had experienced setbacks. Garrett had his heart broken by a girl, Stacey was told that she would never compete in collegiate gymnastics, and Melanie was disappointed when a plan to live with a friend fell through. Still, the middle-class youth seemed young and upbeat. By contrast, the working-class and poor youth were generally working full-time in jobs they did not like, and they had various pressing responsibilities such as raising children, paying for food and board, and making monthly car payments. Unlike the middle-class kids, who tended to have worked only at summer jobs, youths who had dropped out of school, such as Harold, had already spent many years in the labor force. There were many wonderful features about the lives of working-class and poor youth. Wendy loved being a mother. Billy was very excited about owning a car. Harold enjoyed hanging out with his brother and watching sports on their large-screen television. The working-class and poor youth remained optimistic—they still had hopes and dreams—but they had struggled in a way that the middle-class youth had not.