Parenting in Privilege or Peril: How Social Inequality Enables or Derails the American Dream

by Pamela R. Bennett, Amy Lutz, Lakshmi Jayaram

Overview

Is the American dream that exists for the middle class equally available to the working class? Using extensive interviews with parents and a variety of data sources, this book examines how social contexts and culture affect parenting decisions. By analyzing class differences in neighborhoods, schools, and networks, as well as their relationship to mobility-related parenting practices, the authors demonstrate that cultural differences are no match for economic inequalities. They show how middle-class parents have access to social contexts characterized by security, which gives rise to what the authors call “strategic parenting”—a set of practices that allow adolescents to develop the qualities and skills they will use to go off to college and, subsequently, achieve the American dream. Conversely, the contexts of working-class parents are characterized by precarity, giving rise to “defensive parenting”—an almost frantic use of harm-mitigating interventions to protect adolescents from threats to both their well-being and prospects for mobility. This important book calls for a shift in public policy away from trying to change working-class parents to improving the social contexts in which society asks them to raise the next generation.

Book Features:

• An explanation for social class differences in educationally relevant, mobility-related parenting practices that contrasts with the dominant cultural explanation.
• Research findings that are informed by a variety of data sources, including interview data, survey data, social network data, census data, and crime statistics.
• Two new parenting concepts—strategic parenting and defensive parenting—that capture how middle-class and working-class parents pursue social mobility for their children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807779903
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	10/29/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	613,596
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Pamela R. Bennett is an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Amy Lutz is an associate professor of sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Lakshmi Jayaram is president of the Inquiry Research Group LLC and policy fellow in the School of Public Policy at UMBC.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
Social Contexts Matter 3
Culture, Conditions, and Constraints: Themes and Variation in Explanations for Social Reproduction 5
Defensive and Strategic Parenting: An Illustration 8
Data 11
Overview of the Book 15

1.  Worlds Vastly Different: The Neighborhood and School Contexts of Middle-Class and Working-Class Families 21
The School Contexts in Which Middle-Class and Working-Class Children Learn 21
The Residential Contexts of Middle-Class and Working-Class Parents 25
Summary 41

2.  Networks to Get Ahead and Networks to Get By 43
Measuring Social Networks 44
Class Differences in Social Network Resources 46
Class Differences in the Utilization of Social Network Resources 53
From Getting by to Getting Ahead 64
Summary 67

3.  Navigating Adolescence in Unequal Contexts 69
Vigilance Among the Working Class 69
Fostering Autonomy Among the Middle Class 79
Summary 85

4.  Opportunities to Participate: Unequal Contexts and Social Class Differences in Structured Activity Participation 87
Studying Parents’ Engagement With Structured Activities 89
Social Class Differences in Structured Activity Participation 91
Parents’ Expressed Cultural Logic 94
Schools as Equalizing Institutions 104
Financial and Institutional Constraints on Non-School Activities Among the Working Class 109
Summary 113

5.  In Search of a Good School: Middle-Class and Working-Class Parents’ Navigation of the High School Application Process 119
Universal Participation in the Application Process 121
The Middle-Class Pursuit of an Elite Public Education 123
Working-Class Parents’ Avoidance of Dangerous Schools 127
Teacher Assistance in Choosing Schools 134
Social Class Differences in High School Selectivity 137
Summary 137

6.  Unequal Contexts and Parents’ Educational and Occupational Expectations 141
Educational Expectations 142
Occupational Expectations 145
The Meaning of Adolescent “Mistakes” 154
Summary 156

7.  The American Shift to Child-Centered Parenting 161
Child-Centered Parenting 163
Summary 172

Conclusion 175
Child-Centered Parenting 175
To Strategize and Defend 177
The Privilege to Live One’s Values 180
What Can We Do? Policy Recommendations 181

Appendix A: Sociodemographic Characteristics of Sample 185

Appendix B: List of Occupations Used in the Position Generator 187

Appendix C: Selected Characteristics of Individual Study Participants 188

Appendix D: Methodology 191

Appendix E: Re-Analysis of Social Class Differences in Structured Activity Participation Using a Multidimensional Measure of Social Class 203

Notes 213

References 221

Index 233

About the Authors 241

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Parenting in Privilege or Peril is a compelling account of how differences in family resources and social contexts privilege children of middle-class background and limit the prospects of children of working-class background over the transition from middle school to high school. The project’s interviews reveal two parenting styles, with implications for whether children are college-ready and attend a quality high school: middle class parents engage in ‘strategic parenting’ in charting a course toward those goals, whereas the dangers present in their neighborhoods and schools oblige working class parents to adopt a strategy of ‘defensive parenting.’ Bennett, Lutz, and Jayaram reject the notion that such differences of parenting styles are cultural constructs, arguing instead that they are dictated by the resources parents command and conditions in the social contexts they and their children are obliged to navigate. This is an important insight, and Parenting in Privilege or Peril is an important book.”
—Karl Alexander, John Dewey Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University