Unequal Childhood: Class Race And Family Life

From what I remember about my life as a youth, in terms of socialization, was an exposure to both concerted cultivation and the accomplishment of self-growth as explained by Annette Lareaus study of Unequal Childhoods: class, Race, and Family Life. The reason I feel I was exposed to both is because I feel my mom attempted to give my brother and I a concerted cultivation life of structure, schedule, and activities but there were road blocks that didn’t allow her to implement this teaching in prime years of my development.
Lareaus talked about the big effect that a parent’s education level plays on the child’s life. Growing up I only had a mother and although she didn’t make it past her sophomore year of high school she later enlisted in the …show more content…
My mom on the other hand saw the importance of schooling which lead me to my third school in by the fifth grade, I attended a smaller catholic school with children from middle class families. Although my mom placed me into a good school, I don’t think she realized that I didn’t really know how to learn, although she read to me and my brother when we were younger and often questioned us allowing us to think beyond our years learning in school was not something that I was very good at. After my mom was unable to finish her treatment she fell into a depression of sorts and her days still consisted of a lot of sleeping and disconnect. Around this time, I had entered in to the sixth grade where the school had low funding and even lower expectations for all of the kids who attended. At this point my mom had been out of work for a couple of years and there was no other income into the house, other than the maybe child support that we might receive from my birthfather. With nearly no income coming into the house my mother fell into a deeper depression so my brother and I did a lot of things for ourselves. Around this time my mom’s bipolar stated to surface with …show more content…
The school was much like my experience of my sixth grade of low income families the population being primarily black and Hispanic, the teachers dreading going to work as much as the students dreaded being there. There were often fights in halls or bathrooms, open bullying, and the idea of college was far-fetched. The school seemed more supportive of teen pregnancy than they did of students going to college. I stayed in this school until I was a junior where I transferred to the other campus. I wasn’t used to making permanent friendships but luckily the school was huge so changing groups was