money, class, parenting
When I blogged about the "privilege meme," I promised a post about the differences, and overlap, between privilege as measured by money and privilege as measured by social class. I keep postponing that post, because it’s a complicated topic and I want to get it right. But if I wait until I get my thoughts totally sorted out, I’ll never get to it. So here goes with some rough thoughts, and hopefully it will at least get the conversation started.
As noted before, the privilege meme included a bunch of questions that are mostly about money — did your parents own their own home, were you aware of bills, did you have a phone at home, do you have student loans, did you get to travel abroad — and a bunch of questions that are more about social capital — did your parents read to you, did they take you to museums, did they attend college. Some people got very heated about this, arguing that they shouldn’t be considered "privileged" even though they were read to, had books, etc, because their family was very poor, and it was just because their parents prioritized education that they had these things.
So, the first thing to lay on the table is that these are in fact two different dimensions of social class, and it’s possible to be privileged in one respect but not the other. But, the next thing to point out is that, in practice, there’s a great deal of overlap between the two. I’m thinking of the chapter in David Shipler’s The Working Poor about the upper-middle class mother who is impoverished by her divorce and her subsequent choice not to work full-time, so as to be able to spend more time with her children. She’s quite low-income as a result, but is able to leverage her social capital to get her children scholarships at fancy private schools and other middle-class privileges. Her experiences prove that you don’t have to have lots of money to have privilege, but it’s also quite clear that she’s got a lot of things going for her that the typical low-income single parent doesn’t.
There’s a couple of different explanations for the overlap between poverty and lack of home-based educational experiences, and depending on which one you think dominates, you come up with very different policy solutions for fixing this (if, in fact, you think there’s a need to fix it):
- One school of thought argues that it’s really about the money — if a parent can’t afford food, then books are a luxury, and parents who are working 80 hours a week to pay the rent don’t have the time to do things like attend parent teacher conferences. This points towards cash transfer solutions.
- Another explanation is that parental characteristics like lack of English skills or learning disabilities lead to both poor labor market outcomes and to inability to navigate systems (such as libraries or schools) on their children’s behalf. This points towards two-generational approaches, and education aimed at parents.
- A third explanation is that it’s cultural. This has lots of variations, ranging from the stereotypical — poor parents don’t value educational opportunities for their children — to the sophisticated — Annette Lareau’s work on "accomplishment of natural growth" versus "concerted cultivation." This points towards lots of tongue-clucking and finger-pointing, and possibly towards conditional cash transfers, which give low-income parents cash incentives for desired behaviors.
And I guess the fourth option is to say that it doesn’t matter the explanation, but what we need is better schools and preschools so that even kids whose parents don’t provide educational opportunities and support have a chance to get ahead.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Paul Fussel, I think, in his book “Class,” lays out, in addition to the straightforward progression from low prole to UMC, a group he calls Class X. A lot of the people who insist they weren’t upper class, despite the museum trips and daily books, may well fall into that group – academics, teachers, and the like, especially.
I know that my family’s income put me into the lowest quintile at my Big Ten state university back in ’88, yet on those lists I come out pretty privileged. MY dad was a high school teacher, both parents were college graduates, the house was full of books, and rather than saving for a set of snowmobiles and a family trip to Disney, like the auto worker next door, my parents saved to spend a month wending our way across England, or visiting every Civil War battlefield in Virginia… it was not just culture, it was a totally different mindset about what is entertainment, what is fun, and what is “work.”
I don’t know how preschools or cash rewards can tilt that balance for lower income kids. Because I think at some point it goes beyond the rubric of “valuing education.” The neighbors valued education. The kids were told to go to school and keep their noses clean, the parents backed up the teachers when the kids acted out, did everything asked of them by the schools, and expected the same of their kids. But … to think it was more fun to visit some old walls built by Romans than to go to the *Magic Kingdom?* Heck, for that matter, most UMC folks I know feel the same way….
Maybe the answer is to pay nerds like my family to provide cultural experiences to others?
February 12th, 2008 at 4:55 am
well thought!!!….but where people lack is execution…:)
http://www.goodparenting.co.in
February 12th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Well, they are all three good. But I’m going to vote for Door #2, remembering the utter incompetent who worked with me in the ambulance company in Oakland. Incompetent in life, incompetent in raising his kid (whom he had dropped on his head twice before age 2, by the way). The rest of us called him ‘Breathless’ because his excitement at Being On The Radio In The Ambulance got in the way of coherent discussion with the dispatcher. A stupid man, with little sense of the future, and who put his tiny pay into flashy tires for his car. How to rescue that kid? Incoherent family, no value to knowledge, no future orientation. I think he had landlord troubles, too, and moved around a lot, so any school would have trouble having any continuity with him.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:31 am
I suspect that immigration complicates the picture further, in that entire groups of people might fall into that David Shipler category of people who have certain upper-class privileges in their sending countries but who find themselves at the bottom of the income ladder, here. Layer that with barriers of race and language, and there might be a legacy of upper-class aspiration that is impeded by day-to-day poverty conditions.
As a nation, there tends to be a discounting of the lateness of our European immigrant past — the last peak was in the 1900-1910 period for many European groups, and those immigrants had their own cultural effects into the 1960s and beyond (in terms of household values, etc). Not that I’m at all clear on how this cuts across this discussion, but when people write about the abundance of books in otherwise non-privileged homes, I want to know who their grandparents were and where they came from.
I have no idea what the solutions are, but I think preschool and, by extension, infant/toddler childcare are the two arenas where the research supports further investment the most. And I would guess that the involvement, or at least daily attendance, of parents in those environments plays a role, too. Thanks to busing, once your child reaches elementary school, there’s very little a school can do to create regular points of contact between parent, child, and teacher.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Family income plays a big role, but the ability of a community, city or state to financially support programs for children plays just as an important role. One thing that quiz did not contain was geographic opportunities. My father grew up one of three kids in a tenement on the lower east side NYC to two low-educated, lower class immigrant parents that never learned English. His older brother graduated from NYU, my father went to college (did not graduate) and a sister took non-matric creative arts classes. How does one explain that without community resources and good schools. I know that they relied on programs such as the Boys Club, libraries and museums without parental support or involvement. Both parents were working days and nights.
I also have to discount explanation of number 2 because I see many immigrant, non-speaking parents rely heavy on their children’s ability to speak English for day to day tasks of translation.
Someone mentioned grandparents in a comment. I think extended family support plays a huge role in this discussion. In the past and presently people are still coming to the U.S. in the same pattern of family support.
I think the more investment in schools and universal pre-k is the best approach.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Here’s a spectacular example of someone who came with social capitol from his upbringing and $25, and got himself out of poverty in a year: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0211/p13s02-wmgn.html
How do you graft on social capitol for folks who don’t get it from home? Raising a child with middle class values is probably the best thing I can do to keep the wolf from his door – Barbara Feinman’s book It Takes A Village (published with Hillary Clinton’s name credited as author) suggests that supportive community is the best thing, and I tend to buy that.
February 12th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I had some very similar thoughts to the privilege meme. And I do think that there is an academic elite in this country (well despised, for the most part) that doesn’t necessarily correspond to the monetary privilege. However, I also think the cash-poor academic elite gets smaller each year, as money as an indicator of class status continues to grow – and the number of poor/lower middle class students attending highly competitive universities shrinks.
I found Mr. Leavitt’s analysis in Freakonomics on what attributes actually correlate to student acheivement to be fascinating. While many would like to believe that reading to their children will correlate to better success in school – that just isn’t the case. Mr. Leavitt pretty convincingly shows that the number of books in one’s house is a better indicator of academic success. Same thing for parent’s taking their children to museums, parks, etc. Not a correlator to academic success. I think the actual correlating attributes would surprise many people, and would highly recommend any who are interested to check the book out.
Now, obviously, I am talking about statistical correlation, there will always be individuals that don’t fit within that model. However, I think one of the greatest weaknesses in discussing these issues is that too many people who individually don’t fit the model want to use their personal anecdotal situation to ‘disprove’ the statistical evidence. Which is ridiculous but often used to try to short circuit a conversation about the actual cause/effect and what measures might be taken to help the statistical majority. Its great that some people who read your blog grew up ‘poor’ (though many of the examples they gave of poverty made me laugh my ass off as someone who grew up much poorer than anyone who commented – on welfare, and lived in/near a community where many people had no running water/electricity in their homes) and yet were able to still buy books at garage sales, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps to afford b/w tvs as teenagers, pay their own way through college, etc.
It would be nice to have people realize the amount of social capital and actual resources they had in order to be able to achieve that which they did. Instead of thinking that they really represent the average poor person…many of whom wouldn’t have the slightest clue about how to apply to college, don’t have the money to play the application fee if they wanted to apply and have no clue that there are programs design to overcome that issue, wouldn’t be going to a school that would/could adequately prepare the students to handle college level work, and don’t have the basics of life (like underwear, for crying out loud) let alone the ability to get a job that would pay for luxuries like a personal tv. A TV, which at this point isn’t a luxury at all, but one of the few ways for poor, possibly functionally illiterate people to not be completely disenfranchised from the larger world outside their world of poverty.
Now, as for what needs to happen to affect change? A nice start would be for non-poor people to stop claiming allegiance to a social caste level they don’t inhabit in order to
negate the experiences of those who do. While I grew up cash poor – I was not under-privileged and therefore do not try to go slumming in some search for personal cred, or to make my current upper class privilege somthing I somehow deserved over other people who didn’t work hard enough/just weren’t as good as I. And once the slummers have moved off, let’s actually look at the real behavior of poor/underprivileged. Annette Lareau has done some amazing work, as has Heather Beth Johnson, Jonathon Kozol, Ruby Payne, Kathryn Edin, Maria Kefelas and a host of others.
February 12th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Is there a baseline assumption here that everyone should be culturally middle class? That if you’re not reading in the home, not interested in seeing cultural works while on vacation, that your kids are doomed to move constantly, to be denied health care, etc? Could one not argue that the problem is with a lack of work for those who are not white collar, which then strips them of their money? This is a structural problem and very different from saying that if you don’t like to read for pleasure you’re a screw-up and need to be “fixed” with money transfers, forced education, etc.
I am reminded of one of my nieces. Three years ago she finished high school. She had hated school, absolutely detested it, joked about having never read an entire book. She is not stupid — she just hated book learning and the “desk job” environment of modern schools. And I am telling you, no one knew what to do with her. If she was not headed towards college she was written off as being without a future. In reality, college was just not for her.
I believe *we* as a society failed *her*, not because we did not educate her or give her parents more money, but because we are so locked into our mindset of white collar, white collar, white collar is the future. My niece eventually got a job at a dentist’s office, where they loved her boundless energy and her knack for chatting up the patients. She trained to be a hygienist, married a very charming guy who installs cable for people.
I can’t help but notice in many of the examples given that people talk about a parent’s ability to ready their kids for the white collar world — that’s what makes them privileged. The desire seems to be to change the world so that even more parents are able to ready their kids for the white collar world. But the things that would really help my niece would be things that made blue collar life less risky. Like universal health care, like scholarships for trade schools, like plentiful jobs that pay a living wage.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Chicago mama, I am really confused about your point. I grew up in NYC and saw on a daily basis immigrants that came here with literally nothing and rise to middle class and upper class levels. Some had educational advantages, others did not. Most started on welfare, food stamps, etc. and somehow managed to get out of poverty. I really wish someone would explain institutional poverty because in NYC there are a plentitude of job options to get out of it along with free cultural opportunities to expand one’s mind.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Views from D-Ed Reckoning, from a post from yesterday: http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2008/02/improving-socio-economic-status.html
February 12th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Jen:
I have a friend who teaches kids, and gets frustrated by the same thing you are describing. She teaches, remember, so she’s on the front lines, actually working with the kids (some of whom are like your niece). And she just doesn’t believe the manthra that everyone must be prepared for a college education, any more than she thinks everyone should learn how to run a four minute (or, shall we say 8 minute) mile. She thinks some folks would be better off being taught a skill that will let them earn a living (rather than “love of learning and the ability to constantly reinvent yourself in a changing environment.” Paired with that, though, you have to have jobs (the jobs we used to consider union jobs), ones that let you work, and pay for what you need.
But, what does that kind of job look like in a modern global society (because globalization isn’t going away. When it’s cheaper to cross the pacific ocean than to cross the American country side, can there really be jobs for people who want a trade? in the long run?
bj
February 12th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
bj – installing air conditioners, yes. making cars, no. nursing, yes. radiologists, no. I think wages here are unavoidably going to drop, and across occupations – but they will rise in China, already are. When they converge, we will be (a lot) poorer, and China will be a lot richer.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Christine
Every author I listed deals with the subject of institutionalized poverty to some extent, for those like Ruby Payne and Heather Beth Johnson – it is the basis of their work. I am a little confused about your point with immigrants coming to the US and some doing very well. What exactly are you trying to point out by that? What standard of “doing well” are you using? And statistically…which immigrants are doing well? If we are talking about immigrants who come to this country with strong educational background, then yes, many of them do quite well, even if they start with limited financial resources. However, literally millions of immigrants who come to this country (both registered and unregistered) do very poorly, even if the money they make is huge compared to where they are coming from. A lack of education, lack of understanding how to utilize resources available (and not knowing that resources exist), and an inability to access quality education for themselves or their children can hamper their efforts. In addition, institutionalized racism and anti-immigrant sentiments hamper the efforts of many immigrants who enter this country.
If you have some meaningful statistics on immigrant achievement, I would love to read it/hear more about it. But if you are giving us another set of anecdotal evidence, well then I would like to know what you think the limited number of people you see ‘making it’ has to do with the millions of people who aren’t making it.
In addition, I am not sure what your point about free cultural experience is either. Can you really not comprehend the fact that there are millions of people who live in the US for whom the concept of “free cultural experiences to expand their world” are outside their reality? Do you really think that those children who don’t have underwear or socks to wear to school, who don’t eat every day, whose parents cannot read, etc – do you think those families have the time, ability or desire to seek out and utilize those free cultural experiences?
It is incredibly expensive and time consuming to be poor. Even if you know about resources available to help you out of poverty, the amount of time, energy and cultural capital you need to utilize these resources is huge. Going to social service, filling out applications, waiting for benefits to be given, stretching the limited benefits that are received, shopping where your food stamps are accepted, satisfying the requirements to stay eligible for benefits, re-applying if you are incorrectly denied benefits. There are so many places the system can break down for those who need it (especially if we add in any number of possible roadblocks such as illiteracy, drug dependency, mental illness, homelessness, abuse). And we are only talking about getting basics, food, clothing, shelter. This gets even harder when/if we are talking about generational poverty…where outside resources and cultural capital is even less. The idea of poor/under privileged families (some who are homeless and spend hours each day just trying to find a shelter that has room for them to spend the night) having the time or desire to find free cultural experiences would be pretty funny, if it weren’t so filled with unknowing privilege. If you really are interested in this subject – please read some of the authors I recommended (or go to the library – there is a wealth of research on this subject) because to try to explain this in a comment on someone’s blog is almost impossible.
Because right now, what you are saying sounds an awful lot like, “Let them eat cake!”
February 12th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
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February 12th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Chicagomama,
How about the Smithsonian, the National Building Museum (great little kids’ play area), or the U.S. Arboretum, or all those other free things in DC? It’s not like they’re hard to find, and they’re open on Sunday and lots of days when normal offices are closed and you can’t do all that bureaucratic stuff you mention. (The cafes are a big ripoff, so you would have to pack a snack.) I wonder if anyone does surveys of the demographics of usage of the Smithsonian by DC locals.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Chicago mama, I suppose what I am asking is if povery is such a dominant force how do you explain the ability for many immigrants to reach a higher class? What do you think are the specific factors that propel some out or keep some in poverty? You write as if there are more people living on the street than in homes. I have read a few of the people you listed and I am not in full agreement with their theories particularly Lareau. I must admit my background is in educational theory (Ferrer, Hirsch, Ravitch, etc.) not poverty. But I find research based on a study of hand-selected groups not to be a consensus for the whole. Can you recommend anyone who has done studies on the factors of people who have come out of poverty. Another point, poverty in America is quite different than poverty in some parts of the world. Everything is relative. I have read some immigrant achievement statistics based on the public education system, but they are not available online. Basically, it rates the success of public school based on h.s. graduation and college extrance rates for immigrant students. It is good compared with other immigration waves in the U.S.
What I meant by free cultural experiences is the parks, the library, museums (some are free), parades (commercial, cultural, national), etc.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I bet Christine could say a lot more, but a very important factor is pedagogy. As I’ve heard on kitchentablemath.blogspot.com, there’s a definite trend in elementary math education towards producing math assignments that parents can’t make head or tail of. Unfortunately, at the same time, there’s also a tendency to encourage “parental involvement,” i.e. create homework assignments that children can’t do alone. With these two factors, children with educated, involved parents will shoot ahead, while children without those advantages will wonder what exactly a lattice is, and then decide that it can’t be that important. Anytime a school is using ineffective teaching methods and expecting uneducated parents to make up for deficiencies in instruction, it is unnecessarily widening the gap.
February 13th, 2008 at 12:02 am
I agree with Jen that there seems to be little preparation or understanding for those who don’t want to enter the white collar world. I have a cousin who despite a truly impoverished childhood tested into a major private high schcool at 14 – and dropped out the next year. Books aren’t him. ANd he took a really long time to find his way in the world because of it.
The issue of reading and books as a marker has always been interesting to me, because so many people I know across *all* classes *don’t* read. My high school english teacher boasted that she only owned four books, and two of them were her bible and her dictionary. In that “what do you do for fun?” dichotomy I brought up above, what jumps out is that much of what my family thinks of as fun – reading, writing, libraries, research on topics that interest us — is what schools paint as “work.” And in teh white collar world, “work” is increasinly being merged with “home.” You’re always on, you’re always connected to the workplace, you’re never *not* working. My blue collar neighbors (who were far from poor; the auto workers made a lot more than dad, even after the teachers were unionized) lived in a world where work and fun were clearly separate entities, and work was what you did to pay for what was fun.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I think privilege is that which insulates you from misfortune (and poor decision-making). What would happen to you if your house burned down tomorrow? What would happen if you were pulled over for driving drunk?
On the flip side: privilege means that you are able to get the things you want without very much effort.
Privilege can come from money, a supportive family, innate intelligence, skin color, etc.
*
The second half of your post confuses me. Are you saying that middle- and upper-class parents provide their kids with “good home-based educational opportunities,” and that those opportunities are required for academic success? So you’re wondering how to encourage or allow lower-class parents to give their kids those opportunities, too?
Well, the answer to that depends on what qualifies as a good home-based educational experience. Is it just one thing, like a yearly trip to an art museum? — Or are you really talking about the parents’ day-to-day attitude toward education and book learning?
February 13th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Jennifer, I was pondering that question also. Because alot of people talk about parental involvement in schools and home education experiences, but alot of people are against homeschooling. It is interesting how the attitude shifts in terms of homeschooling.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
How about saying that effective middle class parents homeschool their children, but also send them to school?
February 14th, 2008 at 5:25 am
This discussion has ended up being partly about what to do for (and, to an extent, IF to do for) children from families which aren’t oriented towards middle-class values/ scholarship/ ‘life-of-the-mind’, and partly about our own experiences and strategies to duplicate our middle-class values/ scholarship/ ‘life-of-the-mind’ in our own children. Both worthwhile and useful discussions, but they are different subjects.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Elizabeth, if you like parody sites, here is another one!
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/
“It is a poorly guarded secret that, deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them. In fact, the only reason that poor people make the choices they do is because they have not been given the means to make the right choices and care about the right things.”