Social Reproduction and Resistance in Four Infant/Toddler Daycare Settings: An Ethnographic Study of Social Relations and Sociolinguistic Codes

Abstract

This study aims to refine our understanding of inequalities in wealth and power, by examining sociolinguistic codes and social relations in daycare settings populated by children of four different social fractions. In developing this analysis we seek to include daycare settings along with workplaces, family settings, and school contexts as relevant foci for studies of social and cultural reproduction, resistance, and change. Such a broadening of focus is particularly salient in light of the dramatically increased use of daycare facilities, in the United States at least, by families of almost all social groups (Kammerman, 1983). At the same time we argue that the relationships between social class, social relations, and sociolinguistic codes are more complex than has been suggested by the familiar dichotomy of class versus Each of the four daycare centers that we studied was populated predominantly by a different social fraction working class, lower or traditional middle class, upper middle or professional/managerial class, and executive elite or capitalist class. Our observations suggest that particular forms of social relations and attendant social control mechanisms do not have a oneto-one correspondence with particular sociolinguistic codes. In our investigation we also sought to study the links between gender relations and social class. We thus examine the extent to which gender serves as a category of differentiation in the social relations constructed in the four settings.