Annette Lareau

Many people migrate to the United States every year to achieve the famous American Dream. The dream being that, “if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you”(Lareau, Annette). Nonetheless society does not take into account many circumstances that could alter or influence the chances of a individual in the pursuit of the American Dream. Some of these circumstances being gender, class and the particular traditional…

what Annette Lareau sets out to answer in her book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Race is defined as a category of individuals who share common inborn biological traits, such as skin color, the color and texture of hair, and the shape of eyes or nose (Newman 2009). Social class is a division of society based on social and economic status (businessdictionary.com). Lareau states on pg. 3 of her book that, “parents’ social class impacts children’s life experiences.” (Annette…

inequality produced? Annete Lareau studied a wide range of families from different social classes over a period of time in order to gain first- hand insight on these questions. To recognize the various…

Annette Lareau, in her book “Unequal Childhoods”, explains her belief that parents from different social classes raise their children in different ways. She does this through her observations and studies with select families from upper middle class to the poor lower class. She states that the working and lower class families use a method that she refers to as “accomplishment of natural growth”. From my experience, Annette Lareau’s thesis was accurate as I have grown up in a working class family…

Lareau begins by critiquing work done by Kingston, in which the idea is that family life is too complex and cannot be reduced to meaningful patterns. Kingston also believes that class does not distinguish parenting style. Annette Lareau contests Kingston’s views arguing that social class does have an effect on the way parents raise their children. She also seeks to conceptualize…

society. The important highlighted components of the sociological framework are historical context, empirical data, and the impact of social context. The historical context of the social class impact on families in society has changed over time. In Annette Lareau’s book “Unequal Childhoods,” she states that in the nineteenth-century class differences have been affected by the economy’s loss of high paying jobs (pg. 263). She also mentions that good paying jobs are closely tied to education…

and entitlement in children raised by concerted cultivation can cause major problems in society. In Annette Lareau’s article Invisible Inequality, she talks about the different methods of parenting based on class. She argues that middle-class parents use concerted cultivation and working-class parents use natural growth. Lareau claims that neither method is completely desirable over the other (Lareau, 105). However, both of the articles above give an example of a negative effect from concerted…

resulted in middle class children feeling like they deserved special privileges (Lareau 2002: 749). They were more likely to speak up against rules they saw as unfair and expect the world around them to accommodate their preferences (Lareau 2002: 770). As a result, middle class children were able to get more out of their education because they knew how to play the system in a way that working/poor class children did not (Lareau 2002:…

As is discussed by Annette Lareau in Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, the way a child is brought up has a great effect on their life later down the road. Lareau performed extensive studies and research to arrive to her conclusion that social class and race in childhood has a profound effect on who the children grow up to be, and what kind of life they grow up to live. She observed two different elementary schools, a study that included talking to the parents of eighty-eight of…

communicate around and to their kids. In Unequal Childhoods Lareau talks about how the language that is used in a child’s household can have long term effects on the child’s future speaking kills. Lareau talks about how middle and upper class kids are more likely to learn better language skills because they are exposed to more kinds of literature at younger age and would “discuss alternate meanings of words.” Another thing that Lareau talks…