'Unequal' Children, All Grown Up
By Peter Monaghan
The notion that people are born unequal is as un-American as
nationalized health care.
And yet social scientists have long known not only that Americans
start life with varying degrees of privilege but also that
socioeconomic differences tend to persist throughout life.
Hauling oneself up by one's bootstraps is, after all, impossible,
according to Newton's laws of motion.
Even in scholarly circles, though, awareness of class dynamics in the
United States has glimmered only faintly. From the 1970s to the 1990s,
American social theorists concentrated on issues of race and gender.
Those emphases redressed a "perhaps mechanistic 1930s definition of
class, where only white men were working class," says Stephanie
Coontz, a noted historian of American social life, and a faculty
member in history and family studies at Evergreen State College. But
the race-and-gender emphases "crowded out class in a lot of discussion
of contemporary issues and in a lot of teaching," she says.
Then came Annette Lareau, and her acclaimed 2003 book, Unequal
Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (University of California
Press), which has now been reissued with additional chapters updating
her research.
Enlarge Image 'Unequal' Children, All Grown Up 2
In the new edition, Lareau gauges whether the subjects of her original
study continued on the life courses that their childhoods seemed to
have laid out for them. Her key earlier finding, based on rich
ethnographic observation, was that in the United States, socioeconomic
status closely predicts how parents will raise children and what they
will prize in them, what skills children will take into adult life,
and what socioeconomic conditions they will enjoy—or endure.
Her findings made a splash in American intellectual and social-policy
circles that academics rarely accomplish. And yet Lareau, as much as
many colleagues, is quick to state that her findings were not really
anything new. Rather, she says, "the goal of the book was to provide
rich details on processes that social scientists had presumed existed
but hadn't been able to spell out in sufficient detail."
Coontz says the book achieved that goal. She recalls, she says, that
Unequal Childhoods captured the social-science imagination just as
Betty Friedan's 1963 best seller, The Feminine Mystique, had captured
the public imagination in restating the arguments for feminism.
After conducting a study of the lives of 88 children from across the
socioeconomic and racial spectrums, Lareau homed in on 12 families—
black, white, middle class, working class, poor.
She described stark class differences. Middle-class families, white
and black, practiced "concerted cultivation"—shuttling their children
from one organized activity to another and striving to keep them from
vegetating at video-game consoles. The goal was to nurture children's
skills and talents in ways deemed useful for later socioeconomic
success. Parents took for granted that the approach would provide
children know-how and even a sense of privilege in dealing with such
institutions as schools, government agencies, and workplaces.
Children could emerge from that process bratty and bored because they
lacked the skill to direct their own activities; and it could exhaust
parents. By contrast, parents of poor and working-class families—often
the one parent—lacked the wherewithal or the time off work to teach
middle-class skills to their children, and instead practiced a
doctrine of "the accomplishment of natural growth," wrote Lareau. That
term—preferable to "benign neglect" and its whiff of class
condescension—described an approach that left children to find their
own pastimes, often clear of parental observation.
But the approach also accomplished family cohesion where concerted
cultivation sought to breed individuation. Lareau found that poorer
children enjoyed closer, friendlier family ties than did wealthier
children, each with a bedroom retreat.
Why an updated second edition? Lareau, now a professor of sociology at
the University of Pennsylvania, says she was motivated in part by
affection for her subjects, with whom she and her research assistants
spent many hours for the original study
"We encouraged families not to worry about entertaining us," Lareau
wrote in the first edition, "we told children to feel free to curse in
front of us if they would do so normally, and we asked that other
normal 'guest' rules be dissolved."
But the research protocols did not prevent getting to know the
subjects well. "At some level, the families all felt comfy and cozy
and loving and all felt like home," she says by phone. (Not, she adds,
that the fieldwork was painless: "I remember that if I went to two
families in one day, I'd get a headache, they were so different. It
was almost like you got the bends.")
In the intervening years, she kept in touch with many families, but
not all—and there's one rub of ethnographic research. "The book hurt
some people's feelings on issues where they were vulnerable or where
they had feelings about how people saw them," Lareau says. She spoke
with one mother six years after the book appeared, and even at that
stage, the woman wept.
That was not Lareau's only disappointment. "When the children were 10,
the middle-class kids seemed old and blasé and hard to impress, and
the working-class kids seemed younger and more bouncy and more
youthful. Ten years later, that pattern had been reversed: The working-
class kids are worn down and they have car payments and kids and
boring jobs, while the middle-class kids are young, dependent on their
parents, and plan to travel. They're all hopeful."
In fact, she says, she found that the class expectations, high and
low, had played out as if by some inexorable algorithm. "Of course, I
knew all the statistics going into it, so I wasn't surprised. But I
felt it was like watching a car accident. You know that car accidents
happen every day, but it's another thing to have one happen right in
front of you, where you see someone get severely injured."
What life's course had done to her poorer subjects, "I had
theoretically anticipated," she says, "but when it happened, it was
quite powerful."
Like so many social-science instructors, Lareau reports that her
students have little conception of such dynamics. She notes that
surveys show that only one in five Americans believes that race and
class are barriers to advancement, and her experience during 25 years
of teaching sociology bears that out: "Students really clearly and
deeply believe in the American dream. They take it very seriously. And
when you try to suggest that there are other factors, that there are
social structures that influence life chances, my experience is that
students resist this information."
Coontz agrees. Lareau's book, and now its second edition, will remain
valued tools in the social scientist's teaching kit, Coontz says. "She
provided a very accessible, detailed, personalized way of talking
about class issues that sometimes seemed very abstract to students."
On Sep 12, 8:58 am, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> No, it was not racism. I am a huge fan of Serena. My six year old daughter
> even more so. We were all rooting for Serena. However, Stosur played much
> better and had an answer for everything Serena threw at her. In the end, I
> don't think the disputed point made a difference. It gave Stosur one break
> out of her total 4. And at that point, Serena had already lost the first set
> and was looking a little shaky in the second. The umpire applied the
> rules--perhaps a little too zealously, but she was right. The rules are the
> rules and they are there to be enforced. Some umpires call screaming in the
> middle of a point, some let it go, but mostly if it's an outright winner.
> Serena clearly screamed in the middle of that point before Stosur engaged
> with the ball. It was not an outright winner--Stosur got a racket to it. So,
> all told, the umpire was well within the rules in making the call, although
> it should also be said that Serena screamed only because she thought it she
> had hit an outright winner (it wasn't), not because she wanted to throw
> Stosur off. It's a call that was right but one that the umpire should
> perhaps have let go, since Serena was clearly losing and looking shaky. I
> wonder, though, if the controversy would not be bigger if she hadn't called
> it and Serena had held serve and mounted a successful come back. I prefer
> erring in favor of strict (and consistent) enforcement of the rules, even if
> that costs my favorite player a point.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:25 AM, Abdul Bangura <th...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Stosur stuns Williams 6-2, 6-3 in US Open final
> > [image: Serena Williams]
>
> > September 12, 2011 ? NEW YORK (AP) ? Feeling wronged again at the U.S.
> > Open, Serena Williams couldn't let it go.
>
> > "That's totally not cool," she shouted at the umpire. Then, a few minutes
> > later, she told her, "You're a hater, and you're just unattractive inside."
> > Problem was, the real trouble for Williams was standing on the other side of
> > the court.
>
> > Sam Stosur pushed the 13-time Grand Slam champion all over Arthur Ashe
> > Stadium on Sunday and took what she wanted, along with what the umpire gave
> > her, winning the U.S. Open in a result that was as surprising for who won as
> > how lopsided it was.
>
> > The ninth-seeded Australian won her first Grand Slam title with a 6-2, 6-3
> > dismantling of No. 28 Williams, the three-time U.S. Open champion who hadn't
> > lost a set en route to the final. She lost two quick ones to Stosur. And,
> > for the second time in three years, Williams did not leave Flushing Meadows
> > quietly.
>
> > This time, the drama began when Williams, down a set and facing break point
> > in the first game of the second, flushed a forehand deep to Stosur's
> > backhand side and screamed out 'C'mon!' ? figuring she had hit a shot that
> > Stosur wouldn't reach. But Stosur stretched out and got a racket on the ball
> > and the umpire, Eva Asderaki, called Williams for a hindrance, awarding the
> > point, and thus the game, to Stosur.
>
> > What followed was nowhere near as menacing as 2009, when Williams berated
> > and brandished her racket at a referee who called a foot fault in her
> > semifinal against Kim Clijsters. But memorable nonetheless.
>
> > Williams went over to talk to Asderaki, saying, "I'm not giving her that
> > game," then, "I promise you, that's not cool. That's totally not cool." The
> > fans, sitting on their hands as they watched an unexpected first-set
> > flattening of the American, got riled up and so did Williams, breaking
> > Stosur's serve on the next game, then holding her own serve for a 2-1 lead.
>
> > But on the next changeover, Williams took things up again with Asderaki and
> > she made it personal. "You're out of control," she said. "You're a hater,
> > and you're just unattractive inside." Then, a few moments later: "You're out
> > of control." And, "Really, don't even look at me."
>
> > And as quickly as she had gained the momentum and the support of the crowd,
> > they were gone, leaving Williams to explain and deflect ? and wait to hear
> > if there will be further consequences. Asderaki issued a code violation
> > warning for verbal abuse and the U.S. Tennis Association said officials
> > would decide Monday whether Williams would be fined.
>
> > "I don't even remember what I said," Williams said. "It was just so intense
> > out there. It's the final for me, and I was just ... I guess I'll see it on
> > YouTube." What she'll also see, if she watches long enough, is a rare
> > example of a player who doesn't feel beaten before she even walks onto the
> > court against Williams.
>
> > That's Stosur, a one-time doubles specialist, who has revamped her game
> > over the past several years and moved her way into the top 10 in singles.
> > She became the first Australian woman to win a major championship since
> > Evonne Goolagong Cawley at Wimbledon in 1980. Stosur received a text from
> > the former player that read: "Twinkletoes, you finally have got what you
> > deserved."
>
> > It's been building for a while, now. Stosur was the French Open runner-up
> > last year, though maybe the most notable stat on her ledger coming into the
> > final was her 2-4 record against Williams ? not bad, all things considered.
>
> > "I knew I had to go out there and play well and actually do it," Stosur
> > said. "But I think having those victories in the past, for sure, made me
> > feel a little bit more comfortable." Almost from the get-go on a cloudy day
> > in Ashe Stadium, where Queen Latifah led an emotional rendition of the
> > national anthem to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks,
> > Stosur looked like the more comfortable player.
>
> > Williams sprayed groundstrokes long and wide, raising her hands in
> > frustration, and also had trouble harnessing her powerful first serve,
> > getting only 29 of 56 of them in. Stosur, meanwhile, moved Williams from
> > side to side and forced her into mistakes. The Aussie had 20 winners and 12
> > unforced errors ? a virtually unbeatable combination ? while Williams hit 19
> > winners against 25 unforced errors.
>
> > While Williams was dealing with the emotion of the call and the rift with
> > the umpire, she was also wondering if Stosur, who joins Li Na and Petra
> > Kvitova as first-time Grand Slam winners this year, would come down to
> > earth.
>
> > "I thought, OK, at some point you could level out, because I know sometimes
> > it happens," Williams said. "But I've played a couple Grand Slam finals
> > where I never leveled out, so I definitely thought about it."
>
> > As was the case with Clijsters two years ago, Stosur was a confused
> > bystander when Williams got into it with the referee. But as was the case
> > with Clijsters, Stosur didn't need any help. Even Williams agreed with that.
>
> > "I hit a winner but I guess it didn't count," she said when asked about the
> > call in her on-court interview. "It wouldn't have mattered in the end. Sam
> > played really well." Williams, who made this run after missing the better
> > part of a year with injuries stemming from the night last summer when she
> > stepped on broken glass in a restaurant, has had her shining moments at the
> > U.S. Open. She won in 1999, 2002 and 2008.
>
> > But she has an equal penchant for memorable losses. In 2004, a poor call
> > during her quarterfinal loss to Jennifer Capriati was cited as a main reason
> > for the introduction of replay technology in tennis. Then the Clijsters
> > match. Now this.
>
> > "It's just always something," said Williams' mother, Oracene Price. "And it
> > seems to happen to us."
>
> > --
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> --
> There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's
> greed.
>
> ---Mohandas Gandhi
>
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>
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