Unequal Childhoods by Annette Lareau

Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Annette Lareau follows twelve families through interviews and observations to highlight how class and race play into the rhythms of family life and the ‘logic of child rearing’ in their homes. Unequal Childhoods is an ethnography that centers on the naturalistic observations in the homes and daily activities of selected 10-year-old students in neighborhoods surrounding Philadelphia. Her research team conducted interviews of the students, their parents, their teachers, and included audio and video taped observations of daily activities like watching television, interactions with siblings and relatives, and accompanied the students to scheduled sporting events. Each chapter in Unequal Childhoods narrates the hours of recorded field notes with each target participant. Research assistants closely documented the conversations and relationships within each familial structure and with outside members of their communities. The author/researcher talks about the ideas of concerted cultivation of middle class parents in their efforts to mold their children’s activities closely, while also pointing out the more natural growth that was prevalent in poor- working class families, where children had more freedoms and negotiated a majority of their time independent of adult supervision. Using a categorical analysis method, Lareau highlights themes of language, activity, and interaction with institutional structures for middle class and poor-working class families. She concluded that race didn’t play as large a part in her study as she anticipated, which steers me in the direction of her methodology. It seems to me for the population she targeted, race should have played a more primary role in her study, as well as having a greater impact on her findings. The methodology appears to be rigorous and valid, but I do question the reliability of this study based on about how each child was selected as a spotlight in this book. Of the 88 children interviewed, only 12 were highlighted and included in her findings. As with any study, researcher bias might be a factor throughout, and I wonder if another researcher would attempt to replicate this study, how the data would be reported and what themes would emerge. Unequal Childhoods was a good read, and serves as a model study when considering ethnographies. I look forward to reading the extended version of this study, where Lareau follows up with these families.



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