Annette Lareau's Theory Of Concerted Cultivation

Introduction Annette Lareau researched the connections between social class position of family members including children and the uneven outcomes of their experiences outside the home as they interact with professionals in dominant institutions (Lareau, 2002) such as teachers, doctors, judges and police officers. Lareau’s researched revealed that middle class parents practiced concerted cultivation parental style which enabled their children to reap wanted outcomes from dominant professionals and working/poor parents practiced accomplishment of natural growth parental style which enabled their children to reap unwanted outcomes from dominant professionals. Concerted cultivation is a term coined by Annette Lareau to describe a parenting approach

In 1942, when penicillin became the standard treatment for the disease the medicine was withheld as a part of the treatment for both the experimental group and control group. (Tuskegee, 2015) The study was finally shut down in 1972 with only 8 survivors. Many African Americans’ distrust in today’s medical establishment and distrust in government can be attributed to Tuskegee. (Shelton, 1997) In Annette Lareau’s research study she observed a poor African American family interaction with a health professional and observed a cautious and constrained interaction between the health professional, parent, and patient. Lareau contributed this behavior as a consequence of social class and stated in her research paper, “fear was a key reason for the unease with which working-class and poor families approached formal (and some informal) encounters with officials.” (Lareau, 2002) I believe the fear Lareau observed is rooted in historical distrust of dominant professionals and dominant institutions in the African American

The interviewed woman expressed fear of social services taking her children away from her if she did not follow the perceived rules put forth to her in dominant institutions such as her child’s school. During Lareau’s interview the interviewed woman shared an example regarding her concern. The interviewee expressed her “outrage that school personnel allowed her daughter to come home from school one winter without her coat. The interviewed woman stated if she had allowed that to happen, the school would have reported her to Child Protective Services for child abuse.” (Lareau, 2002) Lareau did not acknowledge the truth and existing threat Social Services (and other) dominant institutions posed in many African American