Lareau, Annette. Unequal Childhoods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Print. 537-548
SUMMARY
Lareau suggests that social class has an important impact on the cultural logic of childrearing (Page 537). She brings up the term; ‘concerted cultivation’ as a way to describe how both white and black middle-class parents raise their children. This is a type of parenting where the parents attempt to nurture their child’s talents by enrolling them in numerous age-specific organized activities, which conduct important life skills. “This ‘cultivation’ approach results in a frenetic pace for parents, creates a cult of individualism within the family, and emphasizes children’s performances” (Page 537). White and black working-class and poor …show more content…
It went in depth with how parenting styles vary between classes. By including the observation details, it did something the other readings didn’t do, which was paint a portrait of how families live in middle and lower class lifestyles. In Black Wealth/White Wealth, a piece by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, wealth portfolios of blacks and whites were compared. The piece of writing went more in depth with what wealth and income were, which was something Lareau didn’t really explain at all. Besides the parents’ occupations, Lareau didn’t distinguish how each family was categorized in middle class or working class. Oliver and Shapiro discussed more about the racial inequality that is based on the analysis of private wealth, another thing Lareau did not mention. One thing that neither of the pieces of writing above mentions, but the other reading for the week mentioned a lot of was statistics. The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground writing states a worthy definition of a middle-income household, something the Laneau piece does not, despite being all about the middle-class. The Pew Research Center is where most of the data from The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground comes from. In their extensive report, they mention; who is middle class, changes in the middle class, income within the middle class, and altered demographics within the middle class. A lot of numbers and statistics are included, making it a little overwhelming to look at, but something Laneau fails to really mention in her piece. All the readings were differently relevant to class in their own ways, with the Laneau piece including real life scenarios, Oliver and Shapiro discussing racial inequality within classes, and the last piece including tremendous amount of data. All of them form together to really comprehend the differences between
SUMMARY
Lareau suggests that social class has an important impact on the cultural logic of childrearing (Page 537). She brings up the term; ‘concerted cultivation’ as a way to describe how both white and black middle-class parents raise their children. This is a type of parenting where the parents attempt to nurture their child’s talents by enrolling them in numerous age-specific organized activities, which conduct important life skills. “This ‘cultivation’ approach results in a frenetic pace for parents, creates a cult of individualism within the family, and emphasizes children’s performances” (Page 537). White and black working-class and poor …show more content…
It went in depth with how parenting styles vary between classes. By including the observation details, it did something the other readings didn’t do, which was paint a portrait of how families live in middle and lower class lifestyles. In Black Wealth/White Wealth, a piece by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, wealth portfolios of blacks and whites were compared. The piece of writing went more in depth with what wealth and income were, which was something Lareau didn’t really explain at all. Besides the parents’ occupations, Lareau didn’t distinguish how each family was categorized in middle class or working class. Oliver and Shapiro discussed more about the racial inequality that is based on the analysis of private wealth, another thing Lareau did not mention. One thing that neither of the pieces of writing above mentions, but the other reading for the week mentioned a lot of was statistics. The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground writing states a worthy definition of a middle-income household, something the Laneau piece does not, despite being all about the middle-class. The Pew Research Center is where most of the data from The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground comes from. In their extensive report, they mention; who is middle class, changes in the middle class, income within the middle class, and altered demographics within the middle class. A lot of numbers and statistics are included, making it a little overwhelming to look at, but something Laneau fails to really mention in her piece. All the readings were differently relevant to class in their own ways, with the Laneau piece including real life scenarios, Oliver and Shapiro discussing racial inequality within classes, and the last piece including tremendous amount of data. All of them form together to really comprehend the differences between