Studies often portray status as a position, but status is also a process sustained by social and cultural mechanisms. These social processes can create inequality in men’s and women’s economic ...positions. Families are key economic institutions, but the processes involved in managing family wealth are poorly understood. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-five women (and eleven husbands) in families with a median net worth of $27.5 million, I find that wives report general ignorance about wealth (although, on deeper probing, women often have more expertise than it appears on first glance). Second, women state they are disengaged with the economic realm. Third, the formation of marriages where women would have vastly more economic power than their future husbands are deeply stigmatized. Despite formidable wealth, in these marriages, women emphasized their lack of economic expertise and engagement. This gender “stickiness” contributed to status inequality in the economic sphere.
Using both qualitative longitudinal data collected 20 years after the original Unequal Childhoods study and interview data from a study of upwardly mobile adults, this address demonstrates how ...cultural knowledge matters when white and African American young adults of differing class backgrounds navigate key institutions. I find that middle-class young adults had more knowledge than their working-class or poor counterparts of the "rules of the game" regarding how institutions worked. They also displayed more of a sense of entitlement to ask for help. When faced with a problem related to an institution, middle-class young adults frequently succeeded in getting their needs accommodated by the institution; working-class and poor young adults were less knowledgeable about and more frustrated by bureaucracies. This address also shows the crucial role of "cultural guides" who help upwardly mobile adults navigate institutions. While many studies of class reproduction have looked at key turning points, this address argues that "small moments" may be critical in setting the direction of life paths.
Research on administrative burdens has demonstrated that families experience significant costs in navigating different institutions. Yet studies have often focused more on the nature of the burdens ...that result from administrative rules than on the types of obstacles that produce these burdens. Less attention has also been paid to how families navigate multiple institutions simultaneously. Drawing on qualitative research with Congolese refugees resettled in the United States, we conceptualize how errors and mishaps in organizations tangled procedures into institutional knots, or complex blockages. We also show how some knots had a ripple effect as problems in one institution reverberated, leading to new, unrelated problems in different institutions. These institutional knots and subsequent reverberations were costly to resolve and a hindrance to upward mobility.
In the growing literature on upwardly mobile college students, there is evidence of students from working-class backgrounds experiencing exclusion on campus. Yet there has been insufficient attention ...to interactions between working-class students and their more affluent same-race friends. Drawing on 44 in-depth interviews with undergraduates from working-class backgrounds at two private universities, the authors show that Black, white, and Asian American students experience classist interactions with same-race friends characterized by what the authors term hostile ignorance. Although these interactions challenged same-race friendships for each racial group, the precise form they took was inflected by racial dynamics. Furthermore, tensions in intraracial friendships led students to withdraw socially, thereby shrinking their social networks. These findings clarify how racially homogenous social ties can provide support yet also feature class-based antagonisms. As we consider students’ sense of belonging on campus, we must be more precise about where working-class students are exposed to classism and who is responsible.
Stratification is a central issue in family research, yet relatively few studies highlight its impact on family processes. Drawing on indepth interviews (N = 137) and observational data (N = 12), we ...extend Melvin Kohn's research on childrearing values by examining how parental commitments to self-direction and conformity are enacted in daily life. Consistent with Kohn's findings, middle-class parents emphasized children's self-direction, and working-class and poor parents emphasized children's conformity to external authority. Attempts to realize these values appeared paradoxical, however. Middle-class parents routinely exercised subtle forms of control while attempting to instill self-direction in their children. Conversely, working-class and poor parents tended to grant children considerable autonomy in certain domains of daily life, thereby limiting their emphasis on conformity.
Focusing on parental networks-a central dimension of social capital-this article uses ethnographic data to examine social-class differences in the relations between families and schools. We detail ...the characteristics of networks across different classes and then explore the ways that networks come into play when parents are confronted by problematic school situations. The middle-class parents in our study tended to react collectively, in contrast to working-class and poor parents. The middle-class parents were also uniquely able to draw on contacts with professionals to mobilize the information, expertise, or authority needed to contest the judgments of school officials. We did not find substantial race differences. We affirm the importance of a resource-centered conception of social capital that grants the issue of inequality a predominant place.
Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working- class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods ...explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle- class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth, " in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children. The first edition of Unequal Childhoods was an instant classic, portraying in riveting detail the unexpected ways in which social class influences parenting in white and African American families. A decade later, Annette Lareau has revisited the same families and interviewed the original subjects to examine the impact of social class in the transition to adulthood.
Lareau discusses the differences between qualitative work based on participant observation and qualitative work based exclusively on interviews. He suggest in this article that there can be rigor in ...qualitative work without embracing the trappings of the ideas of hypothesis, variable, and other terms suited for quantitative work, which, he thinks, can end up ensnaring the researcher in approaches which will be suited to the qualitative research process. By clarifying the nature of these multiple dimensions, Ralph LaRossa is advancing the conversation that needs to take place among qualitative researchers.
There is a dearth of methodological guidance on how to conduct participant observation in private spaces such as family homes. Yet, participant observations can provide deep and valuable data about ...family processes. This article draws on two ethnographic studies of family life in which researchers conduct in-depth interviews, recruit families, and ultimately enter the family as a quasi-stranger for daily observations lasting a fixed period (e.g., three weeks). We term this approach “intensive family observations.” Here, we provide concrete methodological advice for this method, beginning with guidelines for recruitment and gaining consent. We also discuss logistics of conducting family observation (e.g., scheduling, spatial positionality in the home, role in the field, among other issues). We elaborate on the key challenges, specifically issues of intrusion, power, and positionality. Last, we reflect on how this method provides opportunities for accurately capturing deeply intimate moments as well as unexpected insights.
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