Unequal Childhoods Chapter Summary

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Introduction Unequal Childhoods written by Annette Lareau, discusses what social stratifications we face in the United States. Social stratification is a system by which society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy. We see this in the United States a lot and you may notice that it is clear that some groups have more power and wealth than others do which led to social stratification. Lareau focuses on certain socio-economic classes, the middle-class, the working-class and the poor. Lareau examined 12 families focusing on the 10-year-old in each family. She gathered a team of graduate students and they spent a month studying the child and their family to fully understand what their life was like compared to others. During her time studying …show more content…
Social classes are discussed throughout the book and have a big influence on people’s lives and how they are treated. Income, race, gender, education level, and where they live all factor into what determines an individual's social class. “Social class differences in a children’s life experiences can be seen in the details of life. In our study, the pace of life was different for middle-class families compared to working-class and poor families. In the middle class, life was hectic. Parents were racing from activity to activity…. In working-class and poor families, the organization of daily life differed from that of middle-class families. Here, there was economic strain not felt by middle-class families…. Although money was short in supply, children’s lives were more relaxed, and more importantly, the pace of life was slower” (Lareau, 2011, pg. 35). Growing up, I was raised by a single mom in a middle-class home. She worked as a full-time accountant. Her days were much longer than 9am-6pm and needed something to keep her three children busy all day. Since she was able to afford to put us in lessons, she was running all over town dropping off one kid at tennis, one at gymnastics, and another at dance. She did this because she felt the need to keep us busy all day while she was off working. If we were raised in a working-class home, she would have been unable to get us to our lessons and we would have been more likely to stay home and play with friends or siblings all day. In Unequal Childhoods, they discuss how the children in working-class and poor families, they tend to spend more time with family and play closer to home than those in middle-class families. This relates to how my family is. My mom, sisters and I did not become close with one another until we got older when we were all out of organized sports after school and
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