Social Class Issues in Family Life Education

Abstract

Beginning with an examination of cultural and structural frameworks for considering social class, we examine the research evidence regarding social class differences in parenting and marriage. Additionally, family life education literature is reviewed regarding how families in different social classes respond to various forms of intervention. Finally, we offer recommendations about how to include social class issues in the content and delivery of family life education. SOCIAL CLASS ISSUES IN FAMILY LIFE EDUCATION* Robert Hughes, Jr. and Maureen Perry-Jenkins** From an ecological perspective, family life educators have been increasingly oriented towards the development of prevention and intervention models that consider families in context. Within this framework, there has been an increased emphasis on understanding the diversity of family experiences that has challenged researchers and family life educators to pay closer attention to issues of race, class, and gender as they affect families. These three deeply interrelated social categories place families within a hierarchical social system that offers differential rewards and resources to those members at different levels of the hierarchy. Although there has been some attention to these matters in our research on families, there has been less attention to these issues in family life education. In a recent handbook devoted to family life education, Arcus and Thomas (1993) state, gender, class and ethnicity have received little attention as factors that might affect family life education programs (p. 23). In those cases in which there has been attention to these issues, ethnicity and gender have received most of the attention. Indeed, in the same handbook (Arcus, Schvaneveldt, & Moss, 1993), there are chapters on gender and ethnicity in regards to family life education, but there is no chapter on social class. The purpose of this article is to begin to examine the meaning of social class in the lives of families. Specifically, our first aim is to discuss how social class can lead family members to assign different meanings and values to their behaviors and life circumstances. As Kohn (1977) and others have shown, social class fosters values which, in turn, affect our daily interactions with spouses, children, and friends. Our second aim is to address the importance of social class as a critical issue to be considered by family life educators as they seek to support families. CONCEPTUAL AND MEASUREMENT ISSUES Theoretical Perspectives on Social Class Despite the fact that most of us have an intuitive sense about social class and can even describe our position in this social hierarchy, it has proven to be a slippery idea for researchers to conceptualize. Two distinct theoretical approaches to understanding social class have been proposed in the literature. The cultural approach views class differences as indicative of subcultural variation among those of different socioeconomic levels who hold different cultural values (Baca Zinn & Eitzen, 1990). Historically, this approach has often led to comparisons across social categories, with the middle class representing better or more adaptive values, such as selfdirection and independence, as compared to working or lower-classes. A criticism of the cultural approach is its susceptibility to being used evaluatively; that is, there is a tendency to blame individuals in certain social conditions for their situation. The rationale for this view is that if these individuals had good or the right values they could succeed in this society. In opposition to the cultural view, a structural approach places emphasis on external social forces that situate families at certain positions within the hierarchy. Baca Zinn and Eitzen (1990) argue that, although many family patterns may be differentiated by social class, we cannot assume that these cultural norms are stable traits specific to a class level or that they are passed from generation to generation. …