what is the thesis of annette lareau's book unequal childhoods

Unequal Childhoods

53 pages • 1 hour read

Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Part 1, Chapters 3-5

Part 2, Chapters 6-7

Part 3, Chapters 8-12

Part 4, Chapters 13-15 and Afterword

Key Figures

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Summary and Study Guide

Unequal Childhoods is a nonfiction sociological research study written by Annette Lareau in 2003 and republished in 2011 with a decade-later update on the subjects from the study. Lareau is an American sociologist with a doctorate in sociology. She currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences. Lareau spent two decades researching family life before undertaking her major project and continues doing research today. Lareau conducted her study at the turn of the 21st century and feels the problems she witnessed have only been exacerbated since then.

This study guide utilizes the 2011 edition of the book.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

• 7,550+ In-Depth Study Guides
• 4,900+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
• Downloadable PDFs

Lareau introduces her longitudinal ethnographic study into the influence of class and race on institutional success by explaining the two parenting styles she observed in her fieldwork: concerted cultivation and the accomplishment of natural growth . Concerted cultivation is upheld mainly by middle-class parents who wish to develop their children for success through organized activities, customizing of situations, and intentional language use. The accomplishment of natural growth is commonly upheld by working-class and poor parents and focuses more on fulfilling basic needs and ensuring the safety of the children. Children spend more time with extended family and less time in organized activities. Both parenting styles have benefits and downfalls. The social structure in which families live, including their economic and institutional positions, shapes what social class families belong to and thus influences the daily lives of families.

The SuperSummary difference

• 8x more resources than SparkNotes and CliffsNotes combined
• Study Guides you won ' t find anywhere else
• 100+ new titles every month

Lareau’s ethnographic study relied on naturalistic observation within the family’s lives. Interviews were occasionally conducted to gather more detailed information on particular subjects. Her team included both Black and white researchers, and she attempts to remain objective in retelling the daily events of her subjects. Lareau introduces her subjects in three sections based on a group of related traits. The first is the way families organize their daily life, and Lareau describes the daily lives of the Tallingers, the Taylors, and the Brindles. Each family has a unique class position that influences how their lives are lived within the home and around it. Middle-class families organize their lives in a more hectic and calculated manner in an attempt to set their children up for success. The second section, which includes the Williamses and McAllisters, discusses the ways language is used within the home—the tone , intention, and underlying messages being communicated between family members. Working-class and poor families tend to use language more as a practical and directive tool, which serves them well but is not recognized by the state or school as a useful or acceptable method of communication. This creates barriers between the families and the institutions they live with and prevents them from having the same opportunities and luxuries middle-class families have. The third section focuses on the relationships families have with these institutions, specifically with their schools and the people who work in them. The Handlons, the Drivers, and the Yanellis all have varying experiences with the schools their children attend. Some feel powerless and constrained while others feel they have a strong influence over the school.

In the second edition, Lareau follows up with the subjects of the study and their families by conducting lengthy interviews with each of them. She finds that their social class has followed most of them into young adulthood. Most are happy, but most have not moved either up or down economically (to any significant degree). She offers to let the participants read Unequal Childhoods and records their reactions to it. The vast majority of the families were disturbed or offended by the way they were portrayed, which Lareau describes as a natural reaction to being exposed to the results of one’s own study. A few of the families were open and accepting of the results and the way they were written. Lareau concludes her second edition with a comparison to quantitative data from a national survey on family life and financial statistics. She finds the results of the survey mirror the results of her ethnographic study and believes this shows that class does have a direct and tangible influence on success in America. As a result, she urges her readers to understand that while upward mobility is possible, it is not entirely up to the individual. Instead, people in America are trapped within social structures that dictate the opportunities afforded to them.

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Featured Collections

View Collection

Popular Study Guides

Poverty & Homelessness

Annette Lareau

Unequal childhoods: class, race, and family life.

Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children’s hectic schedules of “leisure” activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of “concerted cultivation” designed to draw out children’s talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on “the accomplishment of natural growth,” in which a child’s development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America’s children.

The first edition of Unequal Childhoods was an instant classic, portraying in riveting detail the unexpected ways in which social class influences parenting in white and African American families. A decade later, Annette Lareau has revisited the same families and interviewed the original subjects to examine the impact of social class in the transition to adulthood.

Book Reviews

2016: Unequal Childhoods: Annette Lareau (Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality’s America’s Course on Poverty )

2011: Unequal Childhoods and Unequal Adulthoods (Presented at the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences as a Knowledge by the Slice Lecture)

Presentations

Educational Inequality in the United States: The Importance of Social Class (June 6,  2019)

Presented at the Scuola democratica: First International Conference: “Education and Post-Democracy” Cagliari, Italy)

Other Relevant Content Related to the Book

Downloads from the Publisher’s Website including “Portraits of the Youth A Decade Later”

Doonesbury Cartoon (by Garry Trudeau) included in book:

Explaining Annette Lareau, or, Why Parenting Style Ensures Inequality

The sociologist argued that middle-class kids are raised in a way that provides them with the skills necessary to remain in the middle class.

Jonah, did you ask your French teacher about why you got that B on that assignment? At 5:00 p.m. today, you have an orthodontist appointment. We'll pick up Thai food on the way home and then you'll finish your English homework. Don't forget to put a book cover on your essay. A book cover always bumps a grade up half a point. Your dad can check your math when he gets home. Do you want tofu in your green curry or chicken? Ian, do you want noodles?

Every once in a while, you step back from yourself as a parent and say, "Dude! Did I actually just say that? I used to be cool. Did some alien take over my brain and turn me into this Mom Machine?"

No crab-faced alien can be blamed for transforming me from a slacker in a black dress into what I am today. According to sociologist Annette Lareau, I'm a product of my social class.

During the 1990s, Lareau and a team of grad students studied 88 families from various backgrounds -- black, white, middle class, working class, poor -- and then conducted in-depth observations of 12 families. In her 2003 book, Unequal Childhoods , she explains that middle-class families raised their children in a different way than working-class and poor families, and that these differences cut across racial lines. Lareau's research is finding a new audience thanks to the resurgence of interest in social class and economic outcomes .

Lareau writes that the working class and the middle class have very different methods of raising their children. Poor and working-class parents practice what Lareau calls accomplishment of natural growth parenting. Their children have long periods of unstructured time where they shoot the breeze with neighbors and cousins, roam around the neighborhood, and watch TV with their large, extended families. Parents give orders to the children, rather than soliciting their opinions. Parents believe that they should care for their children, but kids reach adulthood naturally without too much interference from adults.

In contrast, middle-class kids are driven to soccer practice and band recitals, are involved in family debates at dinner time, and are told that to ask their teacher why they received a B on a French exam. They talk, talk, talk to their kids all the time. Even discipline becomes a matter of negotiation and bargaining between the child and the adult. Lareau calls this style of parenting concerted cultivation.

Parenting styles have a huge impact on future outcomes, says Lareau. She speculates that concerted cultivation creates adults who know how to challenge authority, navigate bureaucracy, and manage their time -- all the skills needed to remain in the middle class. The working-class kids lack that training.

Yes, the middle-class kids gain advantages later in life, but are they really happier than the working-class and poor kids? Wearing an objective academic hat, Lareau refuses to weigh in on what is the best form of parenting. However, she does point out that the middle-class kids and parents in her study were exhausted from their schedule-driven days. Unlike the middle-class kids, the working-class kids knew how to entertain themselves, had boundless energy, and enjoyed close ties with extended family.

Perhaps it is not surprising that there is a spike in anxiety-related disorders in children.

A fellow blogger alerted me to Lareau's research several years ago. So, I know about the traps of concerted cultivation, but still find myself giving lectures about the benefits of plastic covers on English papers and arranging our after-school activities on color-coded calendars. It's hard to step back and relax when everyone around you is speeding up. My kids can't go out for a spontaneous game of tag when every other kid on the block is at a band concert or at soccer practice.

I suppose, though, that our over-scheduled lives are far less important than the fact that different parenting styles may be reinforcing class divisions in our country. The remedies for this problem are far more difficult and expensive than providing plastic report covers to all children.

Image: hartphotography/ Shutterstock .

Revisiting Unequal Childhoods with Annette Lareau

Ten years after the ethnographic work Annette Lareau undertook for her best-selling text Unequal Childhoods , she’s retraced her steps, adding 100 pages to the second edition, out now from the University of California Press. In this excerpt from her Office Hours interview , Lareau talks to Kia Heise and Jack Lam about the results of concerted cultivation, as well as the methods behind her concerted ethnographic research.

Kia Heise: Lots of classrooms use Unequal Childhoods , it’s a best-selling sociology book, and the University of California Press has just come out with a second edition. Has the success of this book surprised you?

Annette Lareau: It surprised me a lot! Unequal Childhoods is actually one of the press’s Top 10 paperback best-sellers, but I wrote it because I wanted to write a book that was similar to the books I liked to read when I was in college. Tally’s Corner , I think, is a really good, classic work that not that many people read, or All Our Kin by Carol Stack. I wanted to write a book where the people, the characters, were interesting and you felt like you knew the people after reading the book.

Now, for the second edition, I did a follow-up study 10 years later. I was able to track down all 12 young people, which was actually quite a feat! I interviewed them, then did separate interviews with most of their mothers and most of their fathers and usually one sibling (if there was a sibling) to find out how their lives had unfolded in the decade after the original study.

Jack Lam: How has this book been received by the media and the broader public?

AL: Well, it is true that David Brooks wrote a New York Times column about it and describes it in his recent book The Social Animal , and Malcolm Gladwell describes it in his book Outliers . It’s a great honor to have people read it.

Some even read it in reading groups—novel-reading groups—because it’s about parenting and social class differences, and the argument is that middle-class parents see their children to be a project, trying to develop their talents and skills through reading use, through language use and time use, organized activities, and also interventions in institutions such as doctor visits or schools. Working-class or poor parents, who love their kids just as much, use scarce resources to take care of them, but then they presume that they will spontaneously grow and thrive. So, rather than answering questions with questions, they give directives, rather than organize, putting them in organized activities, they watch TV, they hang out, they get together with their cousins, and when it comes to schools, the parents turn over responsibility to the institutions and they depend on the institutions. So, I use a gardening analogy, calling the middle-class children the product of “concerted cultivation” and the working-class children and poor children the “accomplishment of natural growth.” Because it’s a lot of work—the parents are accomplishing something important—but then they’ll presume that they’ll spontaneously grow and thrive. And the middle-class children get a benefit, not because of the intrinsic value of the activity, but because they’re complying with the standards of dominant institutions, which are changing all the time—the standards are changing all the time.

Still, David Brooks wrote a beautiful summary of this research in 600 words, but at the end he concluded that the middle-class kids out-competed the working-class and poor kids, which was really not the thesis of the book. So, I think that, as in lots of things in life, people read it and they can come away with different interpretations.

And so I think one of the important things in doing public sociology is to try to really get your work out there. I believe in sociology. I believe that sociologists have a lot of really important social insights, and it’s important to share them. And reporters are so busy that the reporters from the New York Times will actually tell you, they’ll say, “It’s really helpful when an author calls us up and says, ‘You know, I see you’ve been writing about these articles and this topic, this is what I’ve done research on.’” And I’m like, “You’re kidding!” This seems like such chutzpah here! But they say it’s very helpful. So I think you have to do your best to share the results, but then I think you also have to let go of expectations that you can control how it’s used in the press.

KH: In updating Unequal Childhoods , were there any surprises?

AL: Well, one of the surprises of Unequal Childhoods in the first place was that, even though the families were very different, they were often only 30 minutes away from one another by car. But in each setting, they all felt like home, they all felt comfy, and after you got there, it felt comfortable to be there. Some of them had wood paneling and others lived in low-income housing with roaches falling out of the wall—I mean, they were all very different in terms of their facilities, in terms of how they raised their kids, but they were all home , they were all family. And I think it’s common for kids growing up to think that their family is “normal,” then they grow up and they see a variety in families. But it was hard to do the study because, if you saw two families in one day, it, I always felt like I got a headache. The inequality, the gaps in people’s lives were so profound, and then you’d be writing field notes for five or ten more hours.

Anyhow, ten years later, the gaps had really widened. For instance, what was on the line for middle-class kids ten years prior was

how kids spent their time, whether or not they watched TV or not. So, Alexander Williams, a black middle-class kid, had a piano lesson at 8:15 on a Saturday morning because his mother really didn’t want him watching TV and didn’t want to have a fight about it every Saturday morning either! Well, working-class and poor families, I learned so much about TV, TV was on all the time, they didn’t have the same hostility to TV that middle-class parents did. But ten years later, it wasn’t about TV, it was about college .

It was about, “Did you fulfill the classes you needed to fill to apply to college? Did you know how to apply to college?” There was a lot of informal information about college that one group had and the other didn’t. So there was one girl who didn’t appear in the book who graduated from city high schools and had test scores that were the day’s equivalent of about 1000 out of 2400 in today’s SAT system (which is a typical score in a large, urban district). So she applied to a lot of colleges, and her mother said the process was between her and her school counselor. The girl, she applied to colleges where the SAT range was more like 1500-1800. If she was my daughter, probably I could have gotten her into a college, I could have found a college with a program for kids who have learning disabilities and gotten her a place. But I would have had to have a lot of informal knowledge about what kind of college to apply to, how to go about it, how to take her skills and package them, maybe do an extra year or something. And so, it’s just so clear that it’s not just about wanting to succeed and trying to succeed—she applied to 7 colleges! She got rejected from all of them. And she went to community college and then it was a lot faster for her and she wanted to be a nurse and she didn’t, the textbook was $115 and she didn’t have the money but she bought it, and she stopped going but she didn’t withdraw from the class, so she failed the class and got the bill, you know? So, little things become big things in the transition to adulthood.

Middle-class kids, I think, have cumulative advantages. There are little things that their parents intervene with, which end up then becoming big things because they avoid problems or if there are problems, they repair the problems. And so middle-class children benefit in countless ways from their parents’ intervention, but those are very hard to capture on a survey, because a survey, by definition, has to have standard answers and standard questions, and so, how do you know that, you know, finding the money to buy an anatomy textbook or telling your kid to go to see an advisor to drop a course, that those are the things which really make a difference in preventing problems? Those are hard to capture in a survey.

JL: That’s true. Talking now really reminds me of the 7-Up project . Are you thinking of following these kids more over time?

AL: I don’t know the answer to that entirely. Some of the families were fine with the follow-up and with the original book. But I gave them each a copy of the book, and in some cases the book really hurt their feelings. Because of that, I’m no longer in contact with all of the families. So, like Alexander Williams’ family, the black middle-class boy, Wendy Driver, the white working-class girl—it didn’t seem to have a pattern by class or by race, it was, some of the families were fine and some weren’t. So, in the 7-Up movies, he’s now at 49-Up or whatever, and has lost a lot of people. Now the kids I studied are like 25 or 26, and, in my afterward, I show where they are now. More or less, their lives are set. The middle-class kids are mostly in professional jobs and the working-class, none of the really working-class or poor kids made it into the professional arena. They’re working, but as waiters or house painters. Wendy Driver’s married to a guy who’s in the military. Their life chances are just really very different now at this point, and I don’t really think that is going to change. The working-class and poor kids might end up with more health problems earlier if you followed them over time, but I think it’s likely that the die is cast at this point.

KH: You’ve said that the middle-class kids once seemed “older” than the working-class and poor kids. How so?

AL: When they were little. When they were 10 years old, the middle-class kids were kind of blasé, they were bored. Even though they had a lot of organized activities, they would say, “Mom! I’m bored!” Like it was mom’s problem to fix this, you know? And working-class and poor kids had very few organized activities (if any), and they had time to fill, but they almost never complained about being bored. And in organized activities, which were very rare in the working-class and poor kids’ lives, for example, if there was a concert at the school, a spring concert, the middle-class kids looked kind of bored on stage, and they looked older! The working-class and poor kids looked very excited over the spring concert, and they’d be bouncing up and down on stage, so they looked younger. And, we had a pizza party at the end of each of our visits as an exit party with a cake, a bakery cake. For the middle-class kids, it wasn’t that special for them, because they had pizza all the time. But the working-class kids were very excited about it.

Ten years later, it was different because the working-class kids often had, had been working sometimes since they were 14 (like Harold McAllister, a black, poor kid), or they had car payments, they were working, or they were unemployed. Some had kids of their own, so they seemed kind of older and worn. They were still hopeful, but they were older. And the middle-class kids were in college and hoping to travel, and they seemed younger. It was like the pattern had been reversed.

JL: I know you’re in the process of writing a book on qualitative research. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

AL: I am writing a book on ethnography that I’m excited about. It’s a practical guide to ethnography, and so the idea is that when you do ethnographic research—which I think is very valuable, participant observation is extremely valuable—I think you need first to dream. Even if your project seems really hard, like following around a professional sports team, I wouldn’t give it up. Like, when I was doing Unequal Childhoods, people told me it couldn’t be done. They said, flat out, no one will ever agree. And so I was worried about it, and I tried to do it. The project is very ambitious, it’s not a role model for graduate students—I think a graduate student project should be much smaller, maybe nine months of participant observation and maybe 15-20 interviews—so Unequal Childhoods was sort of crazy how ambitious it was. So I would recommend a more manageable project than that!

But I also think there are practical guidelines ethnographers need, like what to wear, what food to bring (like I bring pies because I like desserts to interviews, but anything would work, you know, you’re just trying to warm up the interaction). Ethnographers need to know when do the details matter and when do they not matter. So I think the practical guide to ethnography I’m writing is about how to do ethnography and also what to worry about and what to let go. There’s something chaotic about ethnography for everybody! There’s a lot of uncertainty, you don’t really quite know what you’re doing, and you’re often very confused, , but I think it’s also important to try to figure out who you are, what you’re doing in the field, why you’re there,  and what you’re aiming for. It may not go that way exactly, but it gives you a sense of what you’d like this study to be one day if all goes well.

In my first book, Home Advantage , I have a long confessional appendix, and I felt there were some good ethnographic guides (William F. Whyte has a very good one in Streetcorner Society that’s used in many courses), but I felt that some books have kind of a smug tone. They say, “Well, I went in, I built rapport, and I wrote my book.” I mean, they act like everything went smoothly! And the reality is, there are always bumps, there are always problems, and I thought that sometimes people weren’t giving enough of a realistic picture of how difficult and challenging ethnography can be. And so, I’d like to put in my two cents on the topic!

Kia Heise is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Minnesota and authors The Society Pages’ Teaching TSP blog.

Jack Lam is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Minnesota. He studies work, organizations, health and well-being, and the life course.

Annette Lareau is in the sociology department at the University of Pennsylvania. The second, updated edition of her classic book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life  came out in 2011.

chris uggen — March 5, 2012

Nice interview! I'm looking forward to the new practical guide to ethnography -- and already thinking about how I might bring pie to a prison interview...

Jurassic World and Education | sergioplazathethird — June 17, 2015

[…] teachers and administration I worked with, but also other AmeriCorps Members and at times, myself. Directives are more common for children from poor or working-class families than it is for those fro… Students being seen as numbers rather than people is an issue I struggled with throughout the year. […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Kia Heise is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Minnesota and authors The Society Pages' Teaching TSP blog.

CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

• Social Forces

Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (review)

• Lisa D. Pearce
• The University of North Carolina Press
• Volume 82, Number 4, June 2004
• pp. 1661-1663
• 10.1353/sof.2004.0090
• View Citation

Additional Information

• Buy Article for $39.00 (USD)

• Buy Digital Article for $39.00 (USD)

Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life

Annette lareau.

343 pages, Paperback

First published August 12, 2003

About the author

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think? Rate this book Write a Review

Friends & Following

Community reviews.

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for.

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Unequal childhoods : class, race, and family life

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

1,974 Views

38 Favorites

Better World Books

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by [email protected] on March 15, 2011

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

• Search Menu
• Advance articles
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• Why Submit?
• About Social Forces
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

• < Previous

Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. By Annette Lareau. University of California Press, 2003. 331 pp. $21.95

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Lisa D. Pearce, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. By Annette Lareau. University of California Press, 2003. 331 pp. $21.95, Social Forces , Volume 82, Issue 4, June 2004, Pages 1661–1663, https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2004.0090

• Permissions Icon Permissions

Article PDF first page preview

Email alerts, citing articles via.

• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1534-7605
• Print ISSN 0037-7732
• Copyright © 2024 University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Sociologist Lareau Describes "Unequal Childhoods"

November 15, 2012

Research and Discovery

Share Options

• Share to Twitter
• Share to Facebook
• Share to Linkedin

Lareau’s presentation offered brief snapshots of the research behind Unequal Childhoods.  Ten years ago, she shadowed 12 very different families with 10-year-old children for three weeks at a time. Some families came from middle class backgrounds, others were working class, some were poor. She observed differences in how these different socio-economic classes interacted with their children. 

Lareau was testing for a “class advantage,” which grants more opportunities to those from a wealthier background. As Lareau explained, “your life chances are structured in crucial ways by the social standing of your parents… The gap by social class exists by the time children enter school, and it widens.” In 2011, Lareau tracked down the 12 children, to see if the class advantage proved effectual.

Her results were definitive. When she interviewed the children in 2011, “the middle class kids seemed younger, livelier, were off in college…. The working class and poor kids had hopes and dreams, but were worn down.” Despite the best intentions, the working class and poor children could not escape their situation.

“Americans are so focused on meritocracy and individualism, they often forget that opportunity is not equal across class lines.”

Lareau cites two approaches to child rearing – separated along class lines — which are the main cause for this discrepancy. The first, termed, “concerted cultivation,” is used most often by middle-class parents. In this method, “the parents treat [their children] like conversation partners… they view the lives of their children as a learning experience,” she described. The other, “accomplishment of natural growth,” is used more often by working class and poor families. Parents provide just the necessities like food and shelter, and these children “are expected to thrive.” Lareau went on to describe two of her subjects to demonstrate this difference. 

The first came from a middle class background—his parents both had college degrees and comfortable incomes. As a 10-year-old, he was enrolled in numerous extracurricular activities. His parents maintained a heavy hand on his schedule as he aged; “his father was managing his athletic career as his mother was managing his academics,” commented Lareau. By the time college applications came around, his parents coached him toward the best option; he was recruited to his top-choice school.

Lareau then told the story of a girl from a working-class family. The girl was left alone through much of her childhood, struggled in school and was later diagnosed with a learning disability. Her condition, however, was largely disregarded. The girl faced an unexpected pregnancy at 19 which monopolized most of her time. She never went to college. When Lareau suggested that her parents could have helped with school or with the pregnancy, she responded forcefully, “I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”

Sociology at Hamilton is a rigorous but creative program in which accomplished professors and engaged students work closely together on a broad range of topics. Students learn to conduct and assess many types of social research.

“This pattern was repeated across all working class and poor families,” said Lareau.

However, Lareau stressed that “all parents want their children to succeed, but the strategies are very different.” Working class and poor children are often more self-sufficient, but lack the opportunities that middleclass parents provide for their kids.

Lareau advocates for an understanding of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Americans are so focused on meritocracy and individualism, they often forget that opportunity is not equal across class lines. She said, “When it comes to class, people are often mute…. We need to develop a dialog of social stratification.” Her book aims to start that dialog.

Related News

Potter ’24 Examines Maternal Health Services for Refugee Mothers in Utica 

In a project funded by the Kirkland Endowment Advisory Committee, Aliana Potter ’24 spent the summer conducting research in Utica focusing on maternal health services for refugee mothers. She talks about the importance of her research and how she hopes it will make a difference.

White’s Student Researchers Study Children’s Self-Control 

“A lot of the research I do on self-control is focused on the preschool age range,” Associate Professor of Psychology Rachel White said. “If we are going to create interventions to build children’s skills, we want to do it while the prefrontal cortex is developing the most.”

Help us provide an accessible education, offer innovative resources and programs, and foster intellectual exploration.

Site Search

• Politics & Social Sciences

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: $29.30 $29.30 FREE delivery Sunday, May 5 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Apex_media

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Buy used: $13.25

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, 2nd Edition with an Update a Decade Later Paperback – September 20, 2011

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 480 pages
• Language English
• Publisher University of California Press
• Publication date September 20, 2011
• Dimensions 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0520271424
• ISBN-13 978-0520271425
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you

Editorial Reviews

From the inside flap, from the back cover, about the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; Second Edition, With an Update a Decade Later (September 20, 2011)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520271424
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520271425
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• #46 in Children's Studies Social Science (Books)
• #316 in Discrimination & Racism
• #2,468 in Schools & Teaching (Books)

About the author

Annette lareau.

Annette Lareau is the Stanley I. Sheerr Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is faculty member in the Department of Sociology with a secondary appointment in the Graduate School of Education. Lareau is the author of Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education (1989; second edition, 2000), and coeditor of Social Class: How Does it Work? (2009); and Education Research on Trial: Policy Reform and the Call for Scientific Rigor (2009); and Journeys through Ethnography: Realistic Accounts of Fieldwork(1996).

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

inequality.com

The stanford center on poverty and inequality, search form.

• like us on Facebook
• follow us on Twitter
• See us on Youtube

Custom Search 1

• Stanford Basic Income Lab
• Social Mobility Lab
• California Lab
• Social Networks Lab
• Noxious Contracts Lab
• Tax Policy Lab
• Housing & Homelessness Lab
• Early Childhood Lab
• Undergraduate and Graduate Research Fellowships
• Minor in Poverty, Inequality, and Policy
• Certificate in Poverty and Inequality
• America: Unequal (SOC 3)
• Inequality Workshop for Doctoral Students (SOC 341W)
• Postdoctoral Scholars & Research Grants
• Research Partnerships & Technical Assistance
• Conferences
• Pathways Magazine
• Policy Blueprints
• California Poverty Measure Reports
• American Voices Project Research Briefs
• Other Reports and Briefs
• State of the Union Reports
• Multimedia Archive
• Recent Affiliate Publications
• Latest News
• Talks & Events
• California Poverty Measure Data
• American Voices Project Data
• About the Center
• History & Acknowledgments
• Center Personnel
• Stanford University Affiliates
• National & International Affiliates
• Employment & Internship Opportunities
• Graduate & Undergraduate Programs
• Postdoctoral Scholars & Research Grants
• Research Partnerships & Technical Assistance
• Talks & Events
• History & Acknowledgments
• National & International Affiliates
• Get Involved

Unequal Childhoods: Annette Lareau

This video is part of our free online course on poverty and inequality in the United States. Enroll here.

Reference Information