Becoming accomplished: concerted cultivation among privately educated young women1

Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point the concept of concerted cultivation as coined by Annette Lareau. It examines whether a focus on concerted cultivation adequately captures the various practices observed in young women’s experiences of being privately educated in four schools in one area of England. We suggest that a variety of practices of cultivation are evident in the reasons reported as influencing the choice of private education, the ways schools present themselves and organise the curriculum, the manner in which young women in such schools relate to one another, and the experiences young women have in securing different forms of accomplishment. Regardless of whether this accomplishment is ‘effortless’ or more worked at, the outcomes of these practices support young women in having a high degree of surety in the self. This surety is facilitated through family and school practices and is grounded, for the most part, in educational and economic security. Together, these processes support the reproduction of various forms of privilege in and through young women’s lives.