Annette Lareau’s classic work, recently translated into French, sheds new light on primary socialization, showing the importance of parental education strategies and the inequalities they perpetuate, between “concerted cultivation” and “natural growth” of children.
Published in 2003, Unequal Childhoods quickly established itself as a classic of American sociology. Its recent translation into French offers the opportunity to return to this major contribution which was gradually appropriated by the French sociology of childhood. Based on rare ethnographic material, the work gives us the daily life of twelve children aged 9 and 10. Annette Lareau highlights two philosophies of parental practices of educational supervision which are opposed from one end of the social space to the other. In middle classes, children are conceived as projects in their own right, whose development must be supported. In the working classes and in poor families, parents believe that their role is to guarantee their children a sufficiently comfortable living environment so that they can “ lead their lives “. Annette Lareau illustrates this educational contrast by means of two agrarian metaphors: while some support the “ concerted cultivation » of children, the others favor the “ success of natural growth “.
The work deploys this typology through three dimensions of daily life: the organization of free time (Part I), the use of language (Part II) and the relationship with institutions (Part III). We will present these two educational models in turn, before concluding on the resources and handicaps that children gain from them.
In wealthy families, developing children through concerted cultivation
According to Annette Lareau, parents from wealthy families consider it necessary to develop their children’s talents. These latter are the subject of a concerted cultivation which structures the entire family schedule. This is what the third chapter documents by detailing the case of the Tallinger family. The eldest, Garrett, educated in the American equivalent of the CM1plays four sports and two musical instruments. His many appointments outside the home (training, matches, concerts, etc.) require an adult to drive him there and sometimes to attend, largely restricting parental (and particularly maternal) time. Daily life is then structured around Garrett’s calendar, imposing a sustained pace that leaves little room for maintaining ties with the extended family. Unlike working class children, he is regularly surrounded by adults – teachers, coaches, the public, carers – and learns to become a center of attention for them. Prioritizing children’s development ultimately shapes relationships between siblings, cultivating a climate conducive to competition and rivalry.
Annette Lareau demonstrates that this cultivation is concerted, that is to say that it is developed in a dialogue with the child. The result is an intensive use of speech, designed as a tool for stimulating cognitive and social skills. This is documented in chapter six, which profiles Alexander Williams, the only child of a middle-class African-American couple. The Williams family home is characterized by numerous speeches, which are themselves the pretext for educational asides on scholarly terms or grammatical problems. When the Williams parents address their son, they systematically favor argument over injunction. In return, they encourage Alexander to express his point of view in the presence of adults, even if it means sometimes interrupting or correcting them. The family life of the middle and upper classes is thus punctuated by verbal jousting between children and adults, at the end of which the children sometimes obtain the last word.
Parents – and especially mothers – from wealthy families tend to pay great attention to the agents of their child’s cultivation who are external to the household. The result is an interventionist posture towards the educational institution and leisure centers. Mothers demand that professionals adapt to their child’s particularities, and do not hesitate to intervene if they feel that their needs are not being met. The author compares Mrs. Marshall, a middle-class black mother whose case is detailed in chapter eight, to a “ guardian angel » (p. 217) who hovers over her daughter wherever she goes. Children thus observe their parents negotiating the world beyond their home, and internalize the idea that it is legitimate and reasonable for adults to adapt to their preferences.
In working-class families, allow successful natural growth of children
There is a completely different concept of education in working-class families. Economic constraints – difficulty accessing housing, food, dependence on social services or even reduced mobility – make securing children’s primary needs a daily struggle. In this context, parents take care to allow the success of the natural growth of childrenthat is to say, to provide them with a sufficiently comfortable living environment so that they can develop independently. The adjective “ natural » refers to parents’ representation of children’s growth as a process that does not require their intervention – as long as their primary needs are satisfied. This is the case of Mrs. Taylor detailed in chapter four, who lets her son Tyrec occupy himself as he wishes, as long as he respects a certain number of rules: ban on swearing, coming home after a certain time, consuming alcohol or drugs, or even going out to play without having done his homework. Within this framework, Tyrec is free to use his schedule. Most often, he joins boys from his neighborhood to play ball, buy candy, watch television at each other’s houses, play chase or fight. In doing so, adults hope to protect children from the burdens of adulthood.
Conversely, adults do not have much interest in children’s activities. This is what Annette Lareau illustrates in chapter five by taking the case of Katie Brindle, a little working-class girl, who invites her mother to participate in her games or watch her sketches. Far from praising her daughter’s creativity, Mrs Brindle ignores these requests which she considers inappropriate, even annoying. For her, children’s games are made for children.
The use of speech is also rarer in working-class households which rely on the success of natural growth. Parents answer children’s questions, but do not raise them again or ask them to develop their thoughts. The instructions are shorter, and negotiation is not encouraged. Annette Lareau paints a portrait of this relationship with language in chapter seven, using the example of the McAllister family. When an adult gives an instruction, young Harold McAllister shuts up and listens. The emphasis on respect for authority rather than the development of each child makes Adelphia a place of mutual aid and camaraderie rather than competition.
The educational model employed by working-class parents comes into conflict with the dominant institutions of American society, starting with school. Teachers view the lack of cultural training as part of an incomplete education, and regret that parents do not invest more in active development work. This is what is blamed on Mrs. Driver, who, faced with the academic difficulties of her daughter Wendy, prefers “ let teachers lead the way » (p. 255). This feeling of illegitimacy in the face of dominant institutions encourages working-class parents to regularly delegate expertise, which contrasts with their middle- and upper-class counterparts.
The social distribution of the feeling of legitimacy
According to Annette Lareau, these two educational models unequally provide children with a central resource for evolving in the social world: the feeling of legitimacy. In wealthy families, children become accustomed to being treated with respect and interest by the adults around them, both inside and outside the home. They learn to impose themselves on them, to interrupt them, to advise them or to correct them, and derive from these habits a feeling of individual importance. This is the case of Alexander Williams, for example, who dares to casually interrupt his doctor (p. 170). Alexander certainly has good language skills, but above all he has the feeling of having right for the attention of adults.
Accustomed to respecting a tighter boundary between children and adults, working-class children are more helpless in the face of authority, both parental and institutional. The young Harold McAllister, for example, does not ask the doctor any questions and remains introverted throughout the examination (p. 209). The situation inhibits his social skills, even though he is a particularly verbose and noisy child in the presence of his friends. Through his education, Harold acquires a feeling of distance and constraint towards authority figures.
The results developed in the work largely echo French work which identifies the educational practices of the wealthiest classes as being the most socially profitable. The latter have regularly made school the central mechanism for the social sorting of children, both because they are unequally endowed with cultural capital, unequally socialized in “ school form» and unequally supported in their learning. By tracing the genesis of the feeling of legitimacy in relation to adults, Annette Lareau sheds light on a new dimension of inequalities between children. It thus invites us to think about the weight of the relationship with authority in the making, both academic and extracurricular, of social destinies.