Concerted Cultivation Research Articles

Parent educational investment and children’s general knowledge development

Drawing on longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999, this study used IRT modeling to operationalize a parental educational investment measure based upon Lareau’s notion of ‘concerted cultivation.’ The analysis used multilevel piecewise growth models regressing children’s general knowledge achievement from kindergarten through the first grade on a measure of concerted cultivation and indicators of the family context. The measure of concerted cultivation explained over 30% of the SES gradient and an additional 20–25% of the race/ethnic general knowledge gaps at kindergarten entry after controlling for SES, and was larger than the SES coefficient in magnitude. These findings (a) lend partial support to Lareau’s contention that concerted cultivation explains SES learning advantages; (b) contradict the argument that net of SES, concerted cultivation is mostly unrelated to race/ethnic gaps; (c) and raises questions about the importance concerted cultivation for learning disparities after school entry.

Grappling with the Medicated Self: The Case of ADHD College Students

Drawing on interview data, this article is a case study of the “medicated self.” Specifically, we analyze how ADHD‐diagnosed college students construct how they are shaped by the behavioral effects of medicine. Students may perceive that pharmaceutical enhancement is necessary in the context of a competitive academic ethic. In this context something akin to Lareau's concept of concerted cultivation thrives as students practice what we call concerted medicalization in an attempt to literally embody the academic ideal. However, while medicine may enable students to manage academic performance and take control of “disordered bodies,” many remain uneasy about the extent to which they feel controlled by a drug. In the context of medical ambivalence, ADHD students engage in reflexive identity management and strategic pharmaceutical use to achieve some semblance of self‐control and self‐preservation during their college years. As their college education comes to a close, many prepare to return to what they construct as their “authentic,” nonmedicated selves as they enter the work world.

“Concerted cultivation” and unequal achievement in elementary school

We used ECLS-K data for White first graders in 1999 to quantitatively test Lareau’s [Lareau, Annette, 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. University of California Press, Berkeley] theory of the role played by parental concerted cultivation as a mediator of the positive effect of parental SES on children’s school achievement. We measured concerted cultivation using a scale of 29 items, each of which was a parental response to one of the following: perceptions of parental responsibilities towards their child, leisure time activities scheduled for the child, parental relationships with the child’s school, and the number of children’s books at home. We also included measures of parental educational expectations, the teacher’s judgment of the student’s school-related effort and organization, and socio-demographic control variables. We used two distinct measures of achievement—reading test scores, and the teacher’s judgment of the student’s language and literacy skills. In support of Lareau’s theory, we found that parental SES is positively and very strongly associated with concerted cultivation. We also found that concerted cultivation is positively associated with both test scores and the teacher’s judgment of student language and literacy skills, and explains a portion of the effect of parental SES on these achievement measures. However, the portion attributable to concerted cultivation is modest in size.

Educational Investment, Family Context, and Children's Math and Reading Growth from Kindergarten Through the Third Grade

Drawing on longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999, this study used IRT modeling to operationalize a measure of parental educational investments based on Lareau's notion of concerted cultivation. It used multilevel piece-wise growth models regressing children's math and reading achievement from entry into kindergarten through the third grade on concerted cultivation and family context variables. The results indicate that educational investments are an important mediator of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities, completely explaining the black-white reading gap at kindergarten entry and consistently explaining 20 percent to 60 percent and 30 percent to 50 percent of the black-white and Hispanic-white disparities in the growth parameters, respectively, and approximately 20 percent of the socioeconomic gradients. Notably, concerted cultivation played a more significant role in explaining racial/ethnic gaps in achievement than expected from Lareau's discussion, which suggests that after socioeconomic background is controlled, concerted cultivation should not be implicated in racial/ethnic disparities in learning.

Day Care Differences and the Reproduction of Social Class

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in two day care centers—the Green Mountain Child Care Center in College Town, Vermont, and the Rocky Mountain Christian Day Care in Coalville, Wyoming—the authors demonstrate differences between centers serving different segments of the population. The authors rely on Annette Lareau's (2003) concepts of “concerted cultivation” and the “accomplishment of natural growth” as a way to describe these differences. The authors then reflect on the potential consequences of different styles of child care for the skills, attitudes, and orientations developed by young children.

Adult Participation Sports as Cultural Capital

This study extends recent tests of Bourdieu’s theory of sports as cultural capital using data from the 1998 US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) on adult Americans’ frequency and intensity of participation in 15 sports. Most of the previous tests of Bourdieu’s theory have been limited to general measures of sport participation, and have provided general support for the thesis that sports operate as cultural capital. The NHIS data allow inferences about the principles of distinction dividing social classes in the field of participatory sports. More extensive tests of the ‘prole’ and ‘omnivore’ theses are also presented. The analysis shows that many sports are highly class exclusive and that the principles of exclusion fit closely with Bourdieu’s theory of the relational structure of the field of adult participation sports. The dominant classes use strenuous aerobic sports, moderate levels of weight-training, and competitive sports that restrict direct physical domination and/or are aerobically strenuous, in order to draw boundaries between themselves and the middle and lower classes. Competitiveness and demonstrating the ‘will to win’ within ‘civilized’ constraints on physical domination appear to be an important secondary principle of distinction. The evidence also supports a gendered ‘ascetic vs luxury’ divide between the culturally and economically weighted fractions of the dominant class. There is strong support for the cultural omnivore thesis, but the ‘prole’ thesis is not supported. These finding are also congruent with both Lareau’s description of the upper middle class cultural logic of ‘concerted cultivation’ and Lamont’s findings with regard to upper-middle-class boundary-making around ‘self-actualization’ and ‘moral character’.

LAREAU, Annette. UNEQUAL CHILDHOODS: Class, Race, and Family Life

LAREAU, Annette. UNEQUAL CHILDHOODS: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 2003, 331 pp., $21.95 softcover and $55.00 hardcover.Unequal Childhoods is an important contribution to the literature on social class and its effects on children's upbringing and life chances. Through observation and interview in ten family based vignettes, Annette Lareau illustrates the gradual transformation of the internal dynamics of families - for both the poor and the privileged. Focusing on the daily activities and routines of families, Lareau illustrates how differential access to resources of all kinds translate into class based differences in child rearing practices, especially when interfaced with community of residence, schooling, recreational patterns and relations with extended family.Among North American families, education and skill based disparities in income and opportunity are growing along with the erosion of equalizing social supports. Forty years ago John Porter noted in The Vertical Mosaic (1965) that middle class life styles rest on the consumption of unevenly distributed values - real middle class status did not rest on gadgetry but rather the ability to consume value associated goods. Lareau suggests such goods are having a transformative impact on child rearing practices.In her formulation of parenting styles, Lareau distinguishes between the middle class preoccupation with concerted cultivation and the working class and poor belief in overseeing the natural growth of children. The former encourages children to be competitive - even with siblings, acquire expertise in multiple tasking, and learn to interact with adults and adult institutions in an instrumental fashion - with parents as back up. Overall, such children acquire a sense of entitlement absent in their working class and economically disadvantaged peers. Just as parents of their disadvantaged peers insist on authoritarian compliance, they in turn interact with schools, government services, and the like, as subordinates rather than aggressive advocates for their children.Lareau's middle and upper middle class children are involved in a broad array of extra curricular activities. Commitments to music lessons, sports teams, and academic clubs are amassed in such quantities that scheduling and participation sap the energy of children and parents. It would seem that some of Lareau's families are indeed overscheduled, with parent's lives revolving around their children's activities. Enhancing their children's Human Capital for the future seems to be the primary parental motivation, but children often enjoy these activities make friends through them, and using their own internal calculus, position themselves for the next step in social and educational development. …

Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families

Although family life has an important impact on children’s life chances, the mechanisms through which parents transmit advantages are imperfectly understood. An ethnographic data set of white children and black children approximately 10 years old shows the effects of social class on interactions inside the home. Middle-class parents engage in concerted cultivation by attempting to foster children’s talents through organized leisure activities and extensive reasoning. Working-class and poor parents engage in the accomplishment of natural growth, providing the conditions under which children can grow but leaving leisure activities to children themselves. These parents also use directives rather than reasoning. Middle-class children, both white and black, gain an emerging sense of entitlement from their family life. Race had much less impact than social class. Also, differences in a cultural logic of childrearing gave parents and their children differential resources to draw on in their interactions with professionals and other adults outside the home. Middle-class children gained individually insignificant but cumulatively important advantages. Working-class and poor children did not display the same sense of entitlement or advantages. Some areas of family life appeared exempt from the effects of social class, however.

Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families

Although family life has an important impact on children's life chances, the mechanisms through which parents transmit advantages are imperfectly understood. An ethnographic data set of white children and black children approximately 10 years old shows the effects of social class on interactions inside the home. Middle-class parents engage in concerted cultivation by attempting to foster children's talents through organized leisure activities and extensive reasoning. Working-class and poor parents engage in the accomplishment of natural growth, providing the conditions under which children can grow but leaving leisure activities to children themselves. These parents also use directives rather than reasoning. Middle-class children, both white and black, gain an emerging sense of entitlement from their family life. Race had much less impact than social class. Also, differences in a cultural logic of childrearing gave parents and their children differential resources to draw on in their interactions with professionals and other adults outside the home. Middle-class children gained individually insignificant but cumulatively important advantages. Working-class and poor children did not display the same sense of entitlement or advantages. Some areas of family life appeared exempt from the effects of social class, however.