Unequal Childhoods In the course of child rearing, social class plays a pivotal role in the way children are raised. I am the youngest of three, raised by a single mother in the working class. My Mother worked for low income housing, managing the property, and cleaned houses on the weekends to make ends meet. Based on my experience and other evidence, Laureau’s argument about social classes and child rearing is generally accurate. Laureau reveals that children from the upper and middle classes have access to a variety of activities and adult interaction that causes parents to treat them differently than working and poor class families treat their children, known as “concerted cultivation”. For example, leisure activities partaken by children in the upper and middle classes are supervised by the parents while the working and poor class children engage in unsupervised activities which force them to organize their own time and decipher which activities are given lesser priorities. As a child growing up in the working class I found her statement on activities and time management to be true. When my brother, sister, and I returned home from school we were left to our own devices, managing our free time and academics as we pleased. While on the other hand, the upper and middle class parents have a strict and planned schedule for their children, automatically managing time and priorities.
This also confirms Laureaus’ statement that working and poor class parents are unaware of school situations, such as homework completion. According to The National Center for Education Statics’ research chart, 95.6% of students are assigned homework outside of school, and 62.8% of those parents are checking their child’s work. My mother was in the 33% of parents who were unaware of her children’s homework completion. Laureau characterizes the behaviors of working class and