This is an except from a paper I wrote that I've realized, since gaining a little bit of teaching experience, is very, very true and evident among kids in a classroom. Plus I felt the need to add something to my blog and am not feeling particularly creative today.
Social reproduction theory can be defined as the transmission of values, attitudes, and skill sets from one generation to the next through various cultural logics of and systems of child rearing. Middle class families interact frequently with central societal institutions such as schools so it is no wonder that their strategy for raising children is the concerted cultivation of the attitudes and skills needed to succeed within that society. This practice is valued by these social institutions whereas as the working class strategy of child rearing, the “accomplishment of natural growth” (Lareau 350) becomes devalued as it is out of sync with the standards of these institutions.
Middle class parents tend to expose their children to a wide variety of activities and situations so as not to miss out on opportunities for advancement within the culture. Through these varied experiences, as well as through imitation and direct training, middle class children learn the rules of society's game and how to make the rules work for them. This gives the children a sense of entitlement which allows them to negotiate with adults for special requests or accommodation. Working class children are often not raised in this way. In their view, authority figures have the final word and they tend to accept this without feeling entitled to negotiate for their personal benefit. This often leads to a sense of powerlessness or constraint.
Because working class children are often allowed to determine on their own how they will spend their leisure time, they have much less guidance in what is widely accepted within society and what skills and attitudes are valued. They also have much more free time. This likely plays a role in their choices of activities. While of course not all or even most working class children are involved in crime, as within every subculture, some are. Because they live in situations not seen as ideal by the dominant culture within society, this aspect becomes highlighted and plays a crucial role in the perception of, and identity development within, for example, the projects.
Middle class children’s activities are seen as much more valuable, as is the strategy of concerted cultivation which promises greater social and cultural capital (your personal social network and the familiarity and knowledge of the way a culture functions and the ability to make that system work to your advantage). Middle class parents also "try to stimulate their children’s development and foster their cognitive and social skills” (Lareau 352) and this, paired with these children’s frequent interaction with adults, makes them quite comfortable with adults. Bourdieu notes that children of the working class sometimes appear uncomfortable having an adult relate to them (Bourdieu 61).
Many of these children and teens have not had the opportunity to experience the way things work outside their culture, and also don’t have the social capital of middle class students. One implication of this is that they lack employment, and therefore the resources and support readily available to students of higer-income families.
Bourdieu, P. (et al.) (1999). With two young men from the north of France. In The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Societies. (pp. 61-76). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Lareau, A. (et al.) (2007). Unequal childhoods. In M. L. Andersen (Ed.), Race, Class, & Gender: An Anthology, Sixth Edition (pp. 348-358). Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth.
This is just an edited excerpt from somewhere in the middle of my paper, but I decided to reread it and was almost surprised at just how true my words turned out to be (we all know what it's like to do partial research/partial analysis papers... usually on subjects we've no direct experience with. Just for the record, later in the paper I address that stereotypes, lack of resources and support, development of identity, and perceived expectations for success playing a large role in these outcomes, among a large number of other factors, so don't read this thinking that these were my only points, they're just the ones that weren't referring specifically to the case study I used to analyse the theories of social reproduction theory and stigma :)
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