Unequal Childhoods

While reading Unequal Childhoods, I was faced with more than a few nihilistic thoughts. As I continued down my thought pattern, I realized that social class is not everything. I think that there isn't a singular layout for parenting that is good for every person within a society. Successful people come from a number of different parenting styles. One issue I took with this book is its assumption that the there were only two options when it comes to parenting styles. I think that the middle-class parenting style is as seriously flawed as the working-class style. While both have their strengths, a combination of the two seems the most logical to me. Children need many different types of support. Sometimes they need freedom, sometimes security, sometimes challenges, and sometimes discipline. While that is not anywhere near a full list, I think that this video makes a good point about not falling into the trap of protecting your child from every single little thing and relentlessly trying to control their environment. They will never learn independence if parents always direct and protect them.

[SO, this is the point where my entire thought process is going to be completely new. I made the mistake of not saving the work I did all week long, and I am now back to beginning. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches, though. Moving on...]

The following video brings up situations in which the culture a child is raised in can skew Lareau’s results about class’ effect on parenting style. Parents have the choice to raise their children in any parenting style regardless of their economic class. My story is similar to some of the exceptions in this video except that my family is natively American (not Native American, just to be clear). My mother was my primary parent. My father supported what she did, but he was not around very much throughout my youth, especially when it came to doing schoolwork. He was in the military and I only saw him on the weekends, and not even every weekend once I began middle school. Anyway, my mother was one of 10 children in an impoverished family who lived in the metropolitan part of Cleveland, Ohio. Needless to say, she didn't have the best parenting or prospects of upward social mobility. She joined the Marine Corps when she was 18, though, and that is when she truly moved up in social class. I think that the military is one solid way for the working and lower classes to gain upward mobility, especially now that they pay for education for soldiers as well. But that is getting a little off topic. My mother raised me in both a cultivated and a natural growth way. She consistently asked me what I learned in school and helped me with my homework, but she also had me go outside to play with the neighborhood children in the woods. The only extra-curricular activities I participated in were ones offered by the school that didn't cost anything to participate in. I feel like this allowed me to be very well rounded with a fairly equal grasp of both 'intelligence' (from cultivation) and 'smarts' (from natural growth), or at least that was how my father always explained it. 

I think that the children in the video and I are the exception to the rule, though. Our parents were not caught up in the trap of generations of static, unfulfilled social mobility. My father's family was a little better off than my mother's, but neither were of the middle class. The military was what broke the chain for both of them, and therefore for me. Not every family, or even every person, is in that situation, though. Many children grow up in families that don't put any effort into cultivation, or even families who discourage school and education all together. Many people in the rural south still teach their children that there is not point to finish high school unless you want to be a doctor, lawyer or teacher. I encountered one or two of these while I was growing up. It may seem outlandish to think that at this point in our history there are still people who do not see the value of a high school education, but they exist. And, when a child whose parents believe this encounters differing opinions in school, they are usually criticized by their parents, which has a great impact. These parents are not to be confused with those participating in the "unschooling" movement, which is a Montessori-style homeschooling.

The film, Waging a Living, illustrates the difficulty of upward social mobility. The people portrayed in the film had jobs and worked hard, but still lived in poverty without hope of a better life. They did all that they were capable of financially. They believed in the concept of the American Dream, if you work hard, then you will be able to own a home and support your family without difficulty. Waging a Living illustrates that the American Dream is a lot harder to obtain than we are told and speaks to the issues this entails. One problem was that government assistance only helps if one is completely destitute. As soon as one is offered opportunities, the assistance takes away an equal or greater amount. This is unfortunate because there is no incentive to work harder if money is just going to be taken from you. The poor in our country are unable to grasp hold of the American Dream they have been working for their entire lives. It is fairly disheartening and probably the reason for so many 'welfare queens.' 

Lareau’s main point was that class has a large effect upon which parenting style is used within a household. I agree with her that in most cases, that is the largest determiner of success. The higher the social class one is born into, the more opportunities one encounters and profits from.