Unequal Childhood Lareau's

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In Chapter 10 of Unequal Childhoods, Lareau’s case study on the Driver family highlights the influence of social class position on perspective, mainly on how it affects approach to educational resources. Admittedly, she mentions that working-class and poor parents are equally eager as their middle-class counterparts to ensure their children’s success in school. Nonetheless, she reveals a distinction between the working-class/poor approach to education and the middle-class approach - the fear of doing “the wrong thing” in school related matters (Lareau, 2011; p. 198). Most importantly, she echoes this sentiment by saying, “... it is more useful to focus on social class position both in terms of how class shapes worldviews and how class affects …show more content…

Working-class and poor parents are in constant strife to satisfy the basic needs of their families and in most cases, are socially considered low in status. Thus the construct of social classes, being built on the notion of status, places such families in positions where they have almost no bargaining power over issues. In a world where one’s words are mostly measured by their worth - in this case, status- it is easy to see how social class positions will influence the engagement in the usage of resources. I do see also, that the sense of entitlement established in families from different social classes is directly proportional to their ranks in these social classes. That is, the higher the social class, the bigger the sense of entitlement. In that, I think Ms. Driver shows typical signs of inherent inferiority complex that grows on most people from working-class or poor families as a result of the low sense of entitlement established in them. This shapes how these families take advantage of the resources around them as well as interact with institutions that require that they show more assertiveness (which, to me, translates as exhibiting signs of higher entitlement - something attributed to the higher social classes). That being said, I think the author makes a salient point in stressing on the influence of social class on the views, the distribution of and engagement with economic and educational