Unequal Childhoods

Undeniably, every family worldwide aspires to provide a better future for their children and wish for them to be happy and thrive as they grow up. However, based on the studies in Unequal Childhoods by Dr. Annette Lareau, it is shown that cultural logic of child-rearing and the general success of children’s academic studies are significantly dependent and impacted by economically societal differences and family setting. Annette Lareau invites her readers to a new perspective of child-rearing, where people are not just individual human beings, but rather class subjects. Her book, Unequal Childhoods provides the best means to demonstrate her views, via following the lives of twelve completely socially and culturally diversified families that had children around the ages of eight and ten, regardless gender and race. Lareau introduces two core parenting styles that are believed to affect a child’s learning in different ways. The first core theory presented in her book is “Concerted Cultivation” which, according to Lareau, is interpreted as a parenting pattern that enforces a child’s talent by allowing specific activities in his or her life that will encourage the child to unleash and further develop his or her talents. The second theory is based on a completely different parenting style, called “Natural Growth, “ where parents do not interfere with or disturb their child’s natural development and allow their children to enjoy their childhood without implementing any particular activities in their child’s life. The second theory is commonly seen among families in the poor and/or working class. Lareau concentrated exclusively on families where parents were employees, rather than self-employed workers or employers and also families that were not involved in the labor market and supported by the public assistance; moreover, families that belonged in the working-class or middle-class category. According to Lareau’s findings, children that belonged to the

Cited: Lareau, Annette. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California, 2011. Print.