White families and race colour-blind and colour-conscious a.docx

White families and race: colour-blind and colour-
conscious approaches to white racial socialization
Margaret Ann Hagerman
(Received 24 February 2013; accepted 16 September 2013)
This paper examines the role that social context plays in
mediating racial socialization in
upper-middle-class white families. Outcomes of white racial
socialization, as well as the
process itself, depend in large part on the distinctive racial
contexts designed by parents in
which white children live and interact. I examine variation in
white middle-school-aged
children’s common-sense racial knowledge and discuss the
importance of exploring the
social reproduction and reworking of racial ideologies and
privilege in childhood.
Keywords: racial socialization; children; whiteness; ideology;
privilege; social context
Introduction
How do white children come to understand race? And how does
the context in which
they are embedded shape that understanding? While
psychologists have long
recognized the content and impact of racial prejudices, little
research has investigated
how whites form ideas about race in the first place.

Specifically, the role that social
context plays in the process of white racial socialization
remains unexplored. Because
whites occupy dominant positions within social institutions and
because racial
ideologies ‘justify or challenge the racial status quo’ (Bonilla-
Silva 2006, 11–12),
understanding how young whites develop racial common sense
is important in terms
of transforming or cultivating these ideas in ways that lead to
actions that promote
racial equity. Bringing a sociological perspective to bear in a
field otherwise
dominated by psychologists, this ethnographic study of white
families offers new
insights into the central role that social context plays in
mediating white racial
socialization.
While some research documents how white children form ideas
about race at
school and with peers (Bettie 2000; Kenny 2000; van Ausdale
and Feagin 2001; Perry
2002; Lewis 2003), less research has explored the role that
family plays in white
racial socialization. This is ironic given that research on racial
socialization focuses
primarily on the strategies parents use to ‘prepare children to
negotiate experiences
associated with social position’ as well as to ‘foster an
understanding and awareness
of race, racism and racial privilege’ (Rollins and Hunter 2013,
141). Within the field,
scholars frame familial ‘race-related communications’ to be
‘important determinants
of children’s race-related attitudes and beliefs’ (Hughes 2003,

981).
Further, although numerous studies have examined racial
socialization in families,
they have focused primarily on families of colour and thus
important questions remain
© 2013 Taylor & Francis
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2014
Vol. 37, No. 14, 2598–2614,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.848289
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.848289
about how white children develop ideas about race.
Understanding how white youth
today make sense of racial dynamics is of particular interest
given the current
sociopolitical moment in which we are experiencing many
demographic and
ideological transformations. These transformations include a
growing ‘minority’
majority (Feagin and O’Brien 2003; Krysan and Lewis 2004);
contested notions in
popular culture about how or when race matters (Bonilla-Silva
2006); and widely
divergent ideas among adults about whether racial inequality is
even a problem in the
USA anymore (Bobo 2001). For example, recent research on
adults has found a
growing predominance of colour-blind racial ideology, a racial
common sense that
‘explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of
nonracial dynamics’

(Bonilla-Silva 2006, 2; see also Frankenburg 1993; Bonilla-
Silva and Forman 2000;
Gallagher 1997; Forman and Lewis 2006; McDermott 2006).
This work tends to
include a number of assertions about how white children
develop racial ideas (Kinder
and Sanders 1996; Sears and Henry 2003) but such assertions
remain largely untested.
Further, although self-retrospective research with white adults
and college students
offers theoretical suggestions about how racial socialization
works in childhood
(Feagin and O’Brien 2003; McKinney 2005; Bonilla-Silva
2006), limited ethno-
graphic research has examined the experiences of families who
are in the midst of this
process. The literature that has studied white youth focuses on
kids in preschool (van
Ausdale and Feagin 2001), elementary school (Lewis 2003) or
high school (Bettie
2003; Kenny 2000; Perry 2002). Developmentally, ages ten to
twelve, or middle
childhood, is a period when children ‘acquir[e] a social
perspective of ethnicity’ and
begin to form an increased sense of social justice and the ability
to think ideologically
(Hughes 2002; Meece 2002, 443). While ideas about race
undeniably form
throughout the life course, middle childhood is an important
developmental period
to explore, one that has heretofore not received the attention
that it deserves.
To fill these gaps in existing research, I present findings from
an original

ethnographic study of the racial contexts in which white, upper-
middle-class parents
and their white children live and interact. Focusing on the
choices that parents make
about schools and neighbourhoods as well as the everyday ways
that they talk to their
kids about race, I demonstrate that white parents approach
racial socialization through
the construction of different racial contexts of childhood. I
show empirically that the
outcomes of white racial socialization, as well as the process
itself, depend in large
part on the distinctive racial contexts in which white children
live. I then draw
connections between these racial contexts of childhood and the
ideas about race that
children form within them.
Racial socialization
Historically, racial socialization has focused on how black
parents prepare children for
experiences of racial discrimination (Bowman and Howard
1985; Peters 2002; Rollins
and Hunter 2013). Studies of racial socialization have
broadened in scope over the
last two decades, documenting racial socialization as an
‘important component of
childrearing’ (Hughes 2003, 982) among black, Latino, Japanese
American and
biracial families (Phinney and Chavira 1995; Brega and
Coleman 1999; Rollins and
Hunter 2013). Given the nature of racism, families of colour
teach their children
Ethnic and Racial Studies 2599

lessons about race with the goal of helping their children
develop strategies for
countering racism and to build resilience and empowerment
(Knight et al. 1993;
Phinney and Chavira 1995; Brega and Coleman 1999).
Although much is known about the content and mechanisms of
racial socialization
for children of colour (Bowman and Howard 1985; Knight et al.
1993; Brega and
Coleman 1999; Hughes and Chen 1999; Hughes 2002; 2003),
less research has
focused on this process in white families. Recent research on
the racial socialization
of biracial children views the process as part of an ecological
system, a model that is
useful in developing a more concrete theoretical understanding
of white racial
socialization. In a cultural ecological model, the focus of
socialization is ‘the racial
context to which individuals are embedded, and it includes
social position variables
that influence experiences of racism, prejudice, discrimination,
oppression, and
privilege’ (Rollins and Hunter 2013, 141).
As this paper demonstrates, white upper-middle-class parents
with access to nearly
unlimited resources construct different racial contexts for their
children, which are
often informed by their own racial logic and parenting
priorities. Children interact
within these contexts, interpreting the social world around them

and producing ideas
about race as a result. This process is based on Corsaro’s (2011)
theory of interpretive
reproduction and emphasizes the agency of children in
socialization processes.
Methods
Studying processes of racial socialization involves both
identifying and interpreting
the meanings that white children attach to race as well as
understanding how these
meanings are produced and employed. Given that scholars
studying white racial
subjects in recent years have often found them to experience
and discuss race in ways
that are often contradictory and elusive, ethnography is
particularly useful method for
exploring how race is discussed and lived. As Lewis (2004, 637)
argues:
Ethnographic work remains a potentially fruitful strategy in that
it allows us not only to
examine what people say in more depth but to examine what
they actually do in their
daily lives…. Especially today when racial thinking and
behavior remains pervasive but
operates in much more covert ways, ethnographic work in white
settings, on the
‘everydayness’ of whiteness is essential.
Thus in order to access the ‘distinctive interpretations of
reality’ of white children and
the adults in their lives (Emerson 2001, 30), I conducted
ethnographic research in a US
Midwestern metropolitan community. Between January 2011

and October 2012, I used a
triangulated approach to collecting ethnographic data through
conducting semi-structured
in-depth interviews with thirty white families including forty
white parents and thirty-
five middle-school-aged children, systematic observations of
families and the commu-
nities in which they were embedded, and a content analysis of a
range of sources of
information about local dynamics including local newspapers,
websites and blog posts
(For a similar methodological approach, see Hughey 2012). My
role in the field included
offering childcare duties, coaching a sports team and simply
being a member of the local
community.
2600 M.A. Hagerman
Families were recruited through a snowball-sampling method.
Emails were sent
to parents introducing the study as ‘research on how white kids
learn about race’. In
each of the thirty families, I interviewed at least one parent
along with their child.
Given still persistent gendered divisions in household labour,
and similar to other
studies, most of the parents who participated in interviews were
mothers (Lewis
2003; Lareau 2011). I interviewed ten fathers. In seven families,
I interviewed both
parents. Here, parents generally shared similar views, which
helped allay fears that
interviewing only mothers would distort findings. I conducted

observations of the
families in everyday public spaces such as parks, community
events and restaurants,
and in private spaces such as within homes and country clubs,
while driving
children places and at birthday parties. I spent approximately
four hours observing
most families in their homes, although I spent significantly
longer periods of time
with some families. I also immersed myself in the community
by working as an
athletic coach. However, given my focus on families, I did not
collect data in
schools, but I did interview a few teachers as informants to
explore emerging
themes.
This paper analyses data from families living in two distinct
communities within
the larger Petersfield metro area (Table 1). (Names are
changed.) The first community
I study, Evergreen, is a neighbourhood located within
Petersfield; the second,
Sheridan, is in a nearby affluent, white suburb. Property values
in both neighbour-
hoods range from $400,000 to $3,700,000 and less than 1% of
the residents are non-
white.
Although Evergreen and Sheridan are predominantly white, the
public schools in
Evergreen are racially integrated. Sheridan schools are almost
exclusively white
(Table 2).
After an inductive process of learning how communities within

the area were
symbolically and literally distinct, I built relationships that led
to multiple nodes for
snowball sampling. I recruited potential families by sending an
informational email.
Families in my study identify as white and possess economic
privilege, or what I call
‘upper-class status’, defined as families in which at least one
parent: (1) holds a
graduate/professional degree; (2) has a professional-managerial
career; and (3) owns a
home. Families in Sheridan and Evergreen, from my assessment,
have access to the
same general array of upper-class choices and resources.
Table 1. Petersfield County race demographics.
Race %
White 84
Black 6
Latino 5
Asian 4
Native American <1
Findings and discussion
Colour-blind approach: the Sheridan context
Neighbourhood and school choices: the Schultz family
The Schultz’s Tudor-style home is part of a new, sprawling

housing development in
Sheridan, a small suburb with a new public high school, a
historic downtown and a
strong sense of community. Ninety-nine per cent of residents
are white. The median
annual household income is $90,000. While median property
values in Sheridan are
$350,000, the families in my study live in homes that well
exceed this average.
The Schultz’s home has seven bedrooms, a large yard and an
equestrian trail at
the back perimeter of the lot, weaving throughout the
neighbourhood. Mrs Schultz,
a petite blonde, has stylishly designed the interior of the family
home. She is
currently a stay-at-home mum, although previously involved in
state politics. Mr
Schultz is rarely home, as he is a well-renowned and busy
surgeon. The four
Schultz kids, Joelle (fifteen), Erica (thirteen), Natalie (eleven)
and Danny (eight),
are blonde, outgoing, athletic children.
Like most parents interviewed, Mrs Schultz moved to Sheridan
for the sake of her
children’s education:
We initially chose Apple Hills [an affluent, white
neighbourhood in Petersfield]… we
wanted to be in a community where you had sidewalks…, where
it was a small close-
knit community… we were very, very happy there… it came
time for our oldest to start
high school, … so we looked for the best high school we could
and decided that’s where

we would move. That was the only decision… We moved to
benefit our children’s
education. We didn’t need to leave… it was the high school that
drove us… to Sheridan.
Apple Hills is an exclusive, predominantly white neighbourhood
in the city of
Petersfield. This community is ‘close-knit’ and has its own
country club. Most of the
Table 2. School profile comparisons.
Evergreen Middle Sheridan Middle Evergreen High Sheridan
High
% white 57 93 42.7 96
% black 25 1.9 26.8 1.2
% Latino 13.7 1.6 14.5 2
% Asian 14.2 3 10.5 1.3
% low
income 49.2 3.5 56.5 4
Average
scores
81% math-proficient
eighth graders; 90%
reading-proficient
eighth graders
93% math-
proficient eighth
graders; 95%
reading-proficient
eighth graders

ACT: 22.6;
SAT CR: 631,
SAT Math: 628
ACT: 23.3;
SAT CR: 629,
SAT Math: 625
Note: The ACT and SAT are standardized tests taken by high
school students. Scores on these tests are often an
important component to the college admissions process. CR
stands for the Critical Reading portion of the test,
which is different than the Math portion.
2602 M.A. Hagerman
kids who live there attend private elementary and middle
schools in Petersfield.
However, high school presents different challenges as the
private schools in town do
not offer as many sports, advanced placement (AP) courses, or
activities as the public
schools. Mrs Schultz describes Evergreen High, the public high
school that Joelle
would have attended if they had remained in Apple Hills, in
negative terms:
We had some concerns about the school because we had heard
negative things, but we
wanted to go check it out… But there was no one who would
make any arrangements
for us to come and tour…. Finally one day, I just called the
principal, and said… ‘We’re
just going to come’… and we just forced our way in. It wasn’t a

welcome mat.
Mrs Schultz specifically points to an African American student:
We were out in a hallway talking to a… teacher. And an African
American student came
up to her and starts talking… We just mentioned that, ‘We’re
going to this Mr Donald’s
class’… And this African American student says, ‘You’re going
to that asshole’s
classroom? I can’t stand that bastard.’ Well, the teacher’s
mortified, right? I can see the
look of shock on her face… And she’s trying to shut this girl
up, who’s just talking and
talking, really inappropriately, really loudly, to parents!
Prospective parents!
When describing this experience, Mrs Schultz sits on the edge
of her chair, clearly
impassioned and astounded at the perceived lack of adult
control in the school:
What stunned us was that… the teacher did not have control of
the situation. And that
frightened us a little bit… Who’s in charge? Who’s running the
ship here? So then we go
to Biology, and we’re sitting through [the] class, which we
enjoyed thoroughly… after
class, [the teacher] took us aside… he said, ‘What other schools
are you looking at?’
And I said, ‘…I‘ll be touring Sheridan tomorrow.’ And he said,
‘I’ve been a summer
school teacher in Sheridan for the past 17 years. … I know
those families, I know that
community, I know those students, and I will tell you right
now… if she were my

granddaughter, she’d be going to Sheridan in a minute. That is
an excellent school with
excellent students and an excellent, excellent community. Get
her out of Evergreen.’
This is their number one teacher telling me this! I’m like, okay
then.
Paradoxically, despite the schools’ reputations, both have
similar ACT (ACT is a
standardized test used as a college readiness assessment
measure) scores and AP
offerings, and in fact, EvergreenHigh has higher average
SATscores than SheridanHigh
(see Table 2). However, the reputation of Evergreen High,
especially in white, affluent
circles, is that it is not a good school but rather a dangerous and
unsafe environment:
Maggie, there were policemen on every single floor… We were
walking down halls and
kids would physically hit our bodies, …at Sheridan… kids
moved out of our way. One
boy even held the door for us. They’d say, ‘excuse me,’ It was a
much more respectful
environment… I just felt like at any moment, things could
explode at Evergreen… and
become an unsafe situation. I don’t want my kids to worry about
safety. I want them to
concentrate, focus, and direct their energies at school, nothing
else. So I went to
Sheridan the next day and thought, ‘This school would fit for all
of our kids because all
our kids are very mature, focused, children.’

Mrs Schultz’s concerns about Evergreen High centre on safety,
the behaviour of the
children who attend the school and her perception that the
teachers and administrators are
unable to maintain control. While none of this discussion is
overtly about race, Evergreen
High’s racial demographics are undeniably different to those of
Sheridan: many more
students of colour attend Evergreen. Prioritizing a particular
type of school and community
experience for their children, the Schultz family, like many
others, moved to Sheridan.
Erica, Natalie andDannymoved from their private
elementary/middle school to the public
Sheridan Middle School, which is 96% white, while Joelle
attends Sheridan High. I ask
Mrs Schultz if she thinks about the lack of racial diversity in
her children’s lives:
[Sheridan] is lily-white… [but] no, we don’t talk about it. It’s,
you know, it’s a non-issue
for us. I would welcome more people of color, but I just want
everyone who’s here to be
on the same page as all the parents like me. I want to be in a
community that all feels the
same as we do, which is, we value education. And that is what
this community is –
we’ve found a community that really supports education.
While the Schultz’s choice reflects priorities of safety and
quality education, the
choice is also connected to racialized local understandings
about who values
education, what kinds of communities support education, and

how different groups
of children behave. The biology teacher’s comments about the
‘excellent community’
and ‘those families’ in Sheridan in contrast to the African
American girl’s words in
the hallway, while subtle, reflect the local racial common sense
shared by many
members of the white community in the Petersfield area, as do
Mrs Schultz’s
comments above about who values education. As a result of
these choices, informed
in part by local, shared, white racial common sense, the Schultz
kids, like many of
their peers, live and interact in a segregated, white context.
They live in
predominantly white neighbourhoods, attend predominantly
white schools, and have
exclusively white friends. Living and interacting within this
context of childhood,
constructed by white parents through choices around schools
and neighbourhoods,
shapes the ideas that their children form about race.
(Not) talking about race: the Avery family
When asked how they talk to their children about race, most
Sheridan parents tell me
that ‘the conversation has never really come up’ or ‘we don’t
really talk about it
because it isn’t part of our life’. As Mrs Bentley, a mother of
three, puts it: ‘It’s really
cool that kids don’t think race is a big deal… we as parents try
not to say much of
anything about it.’ Similarly, Mrs Preston, an outgoing mother
of two boys, explains to
me: ‘I tell [my kids], it doesn’t matter what color you are, it’s

really just what your goals
are and how hard you work.’ Mrs Avery, a nurse, tells me: ‘If
you asked my daughter
about Obama, she doesn’t even see the big deal of it! Race just
doesn’t matter to her. I
think that’s really wonderful.’ Like the Schultzs, the Averys
moved to Sheridan for the
schools: to ‘escape the problems of Petersfield’ and for ‘the
best education possible’. I
ask Mrs Avery, while sitting in her large, modern kitchen, if she
thinks about the
diversity in her children’s lives: ‘They get very little racial
diversity in Sheridan… we
try to take different opportunities to expose them to different
things. I look for those
examples to teach them because they are not living it every
single day.’
2604 M.A. Hagerman
I encourage Mrs Avery to describe some of the opportunities
that she has taken to
engage with her children in discussions about human difference:
I tell the kids stories about [how] depend[ing] on the color of
your skin, well The Help,
Alicia and I read the book… I have probably more of a
knowledge base about that stuff
than Alicia does, but both of us were reading the book, …and
you’re just horrified.
You’re like, ‘Oh my god! Seriously? That is what they dealt
with?’… We all went to see
the movie… there are parts of it where your mouth is just
hanging open because you just

can’t quite believe what you are seeing…, and [Alicia] will say,
‘Oh my gosh, thank god
I didn’t live then! Thank god we live now where it doesn’t
really matter what the color
of your skin is.’
Mrs Avery acknowledges that her children do not have exposure
to much diversity in
their daily lives, and she believes that racism has largely ended.
I ask Mrs Avery if she
ever thinks about being white. She tells me:
I just think it’s a box that I check on a form… I think that’s
what we have taught our kids
too – it doesn’t matter whether you are a girl or a boy, it
doesn’t matter if you are brown,
black, blue, purple, um, it’s what’s inside that counts.
Mrs Avery talks to her kids about race, drawing on dominant
colour-blind rhetoric.
Parents’ decisions with respect to neighbourhoods, schools and
what conversations
to have (or not have) with their children reflect their approach
to white racial
socialization. While Sheridan parents, like Mrs Schultz or Mrs
Avery, may not appear
on the surface to be engaging in racial socialization with their
white kids, the context
that they have created shapes the racial common sense that their
kids develop. In
short, these parents construct a colour-blind racial context of
childhood in which race
is a ‘non-issue’ once the context is constructed. Ironically
however, racial common
sense has played a central role in how that context was initially

designed.
Colour-conscious approach: the Evergreen context
Neighbourhood and school choices: the Norton-Smith family
Homes in Evergreen are expensive, eclectic and built very close
to one another.
Popular public parks are found every few blocks. A few family-
run restaurants are
within walking distance of these homes, as are yoga studios and
a cooperative
supermarket. Evergreen is located in close proximity to a
neighbourhood that has four
times the poverty rate than the rest of the city and is 17% black,
in comparison
with the 4% city-wide black population. Evergreen parents
report that they
value the existence of human difference and want their children
to grow up in a
diverse space.
The Norton-Smiths live in a large purple Victorian house
surrounded by wild
flowers; a compost pile and picnic table are in the backyard.
Mrs Norton-Smith works
as a civil rights attorney and her husband works as an
immigration attorney and law
professor. Mrs Norton-Smith explains why they chose to live in
Evergreen:
People are here because they want to be in a more open

situation where there is an
awareness that exposure to people who are not well-off and who
come from very
different racial backgrounds and who may make you
uncomfortable is really important. I
like to think that my son is in some kind of position to better
negotiate that discomfort…
I think that is a really useful sort of skill…
While they joke that they feel like outcasts wearing business
suits in their ‘earthy-
crunchy’ neighbourhood, these parents explain that they try to
diversify and
complicate the racial context in which their children live. Mrs
Norton-Smith, like
other Evergreen parents, wants her children to feel social
discomfort at times,
prioritizing diversity over reputation or status:
I’m not really focused on someone being top of their class, or
getting into the best
college, or making the most money, or being the most famous,
which I feel there is more
of that [in Sheridan] and it makes me happy to be here… It is
more important that my
child knows how to interact with all kinds of people around
him.
Similarly, Mr Norton-Smith tells me about the flourishing social
activism of
Evergreen:
We liked the idea of what the neighborhood was and the people
who lived here…
there are a lot of people here who live what they believe. It’s
totally impressive. They

live it in the community, they live it in their own families, they
live it individually…
that’s what this neighborhood means. There is more racial
diversity and sexual
preference diversity too.
Mrs Norton-Smith describes how ‘fortunate’ she feels that
Evergreen is located in
close proximity to a more diverse neighbourhood as this leads
to racially and
economically integrated public schools – ‘a rare occurrence in
America’, she tells me
while we cook dinner together one evening.
While some worry about the cost of living in Evergreen and the
relatively few
people of colour living there, respondents still view this
community as diverse. Janet
McMillan, mother of one daughter and an environmentalist, tells
me:
I like that my daughter sees black people in our house and on
our street. We have friends
who are black, and we have friends who have adopted from
Ethiopia and another
neighbor from Guatemala. And you know, in this area, there’s a
fair number of gay and
lesbian couples so she’s used to seeing that. It’s just integrated
into her life.
Almost all of the Evergreen families tell me that they choose to
live here and to send their
children to the affiliated public schools deliberately because
they want more opportunities
for their kids’ to engage with human diversity for purposes of
social activism.

Talking about race: the Norton-Smith family
Mr and Mrs Norton-Smith explain their everyday approach to
talking about race with
their kids:
2606 M.A. Hagerman
I think recognizing people’s differences and backgrounds is
really important… I want
[our son] to be an empathetic human being as he goes through
the world, and in order to
do that, you have to appreciate what someone else’s experience
might be vis-à-vis yours.
Conor is a white male from a privileged household and he needs
to be very cognizant of
that so we talk about race and gender a lot.
Conor, a superb trombone player, goes to an integrated, well-
funded public middle
school in Petersfield, has ‘equal-status’ friends who are black
and Latino (Feagin and
O’Brien 2003, 90), and participates in interracial social
activities and extracurriculars
regularly. The Norton-Smiths also participate in the programme
Big Brothers Big
Sisters, through which they have been paired with a black child
for over five years:
Mrs Norton-Smith: It’s not always easy to talk about race… one
of the things we did
was… participate in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. We
have a partner in that and

she is a part of our family. This brings up a lot of questions of
inequality and race… we
talk about that a lot with the kids.
Mrs Norton-Smith continues to describe how she talks about
race with her son:
He’s aware when certain arenas are dominated by certain
people. That’s not lost on him.
So why try to be subtle? … We will get questions from him like,
‘Why are basketball
teams predominantly black?’ or ‘Why are there so many black
homeless guys on Main
Street?’ They are asking because they notice… you can’t just be
like, ‘Huh, isn’t that
funny.’ No. It’s serious. So we talk about it.
Beyond talking openly about injustice, these parents push their
kids towards social
action. As Mr Norton-Smith tells me: ‘You can’t really be
content until other people
have the same opportunities you have and you gotta be
somebody in that space. You
can’t just feel bad. You gotta do something.’
Other Evergreen parents ‘call out’ their children when they
think the kids are
‘dissing someone or a group of people’. As Celia Marshall,
artist and mother of two,
tells me: ‘Of course my kid is racist! And I’m going to try to
call him out when he
needs it! Even if that makes him uncomfortable.’
These families also travel internationally to experience different
cultures. They talk
frequently about politics and ‘help the kids understand the

world’. As parents, their
goal is to expose their children to human diversity as a means of
encouraging their
kids’ critical thinking about and recognition of privilege. This
colour-conscious racial
context that they work to create also offers the potential for, but
does not guarantee,
implicit racial socialization, including lessons on how to
operate in diverse spaces and
what it feels like to experience social discomfort.
Part of constructing a colour-conscious racial context also
includes continuous
intervention. Mr Norton-Smith, on the sidelines of his son’s
football game, worries
about the messages that his son is interpreting:
I remember him articulating confusion and asking questions
like, ‘Why is it that it’s
always the black kids that are getting in trouble?’ And we had
to talk through that. So I
have an awareness that this is what he is learning. That black
equals getting in trouble.
He goes on to tell me that he prompts open conversations with
his son because ‘it’s
better to have real conversations about difficult subjects than to
avoid them altogether.
That’s how ignorance forms.’ Other parents echo these
concerns, worrying about the
lack of black teachers and administrators as well as what
associations between black

families and poor families their children are forming at school.
Overall, Evergreen
parents construct a colour-conscious context through school and
neighbourhood
choices, although they also intervene on a daily basis when their
children articulate
ideas about race that parents perceive to be problematic.
Despite their commitment to equality, white Evergreen families
continue to
maintain an incredibly privileged status within their community
as the result of
individual behaviours as well as structural conditions. While
some parents intention-
ally supplement gaps in public schooling, they all send their
kids to integrated schools
with students who have unequal lives, and kids likely play an
active role in enacting
privilege at school (Calarco 2011). Further, all of these parents
participate in
concerted cultivation, which as Lareau (2011) demonstrates,
reproduces inequality
in everyday life. Given that most of the students of colour are
impoverished in the
Evergreen schools while most of the white students are affluent,
Lareau’s class-based
argument maps onto this racial division. These Evergreen
observations parallel other
school-based research findings that many white parents who are
committed to
integrated, urban public schools tend to ‘rule the school’,
pushing their own agendas
while ignoring the voices of minority parents (Lewis 2003;
Noguera 2008; Posey
2012), as well as research on how private businesses and
policymakers seek to retain

middle-class families in urban schools, valuing them more
highly than their working-
class or poor peers (Cucchiara 2013).
The colour-conscious context that parents in Evergreen
construct is thus distinct
from, and in some ways more complex than, the colour-blind
context constructed by
parents in Sheridan. On the one hand, colour-conscious parents
construct contexts that
are more diverse, they speak openly to their children about
privilege, they intervene
constantly, and they are socially active. On the other hand,
many of these parents are
faced with a structural conundrum of privilege – even when they
want to teach their
kids to recognize and fight against injustice, how much
commitment is enough,
especially when this commitment implicates their own
children’s futures or includes
elements perceived to be beyond their control?
Parents living in Evergreen use a colour-conscious approach to
white racial
socialization, and they acknowledge that they do so. Evergreen
parents have chosen to
live in Evergreen and to send their kids to the local racially
diverse public school,
although they contemplate the politics of these choices
regularly. They believe that it
is important to teach their privileged kids about the existence of
social hierarchies so
these parents talk openly to their children about inequality.
Choices that parents make about neighbourhoods and schools
influence not only

the reproduction of various forms of inequality as Johnson
(2006) and Lacy (2007)
document, but also the process of childhood racial socialization.
My data show that
living and interacting within these two different contexts leads
white children to talk
about and make sense of race differently. This is not to suggest
that parents directly
dictate the racial views of their children; rather, parents use
their resources to
construct different racial contexts of white childhood, and
children ultimately form
2608 M.A. Hagerman
their own ideas based on their interpretations of these contexts
and the experiences
that they have within them. Thus, the social reproduction of
ideas about race is an
active, bidirectional socialization process (Hughes 2003). Still,
growing up in these
two different contexts produces differences in white children’s
ideas about race.
Kids’ voices
‘Is racism a problem?’
Existing research demonstrates that white children who spend
time in segregated,
white spaces do not notice their whiteness (Lewis 2001; Perry
2001; Lewis 2003). I
found the same for Sheridan children. For instance, this
common experience occurred
while interviewing an otherwise enthusiastic twelve-year-old:

Maggie: Do you think racism is a problem in your school?
Charlotte: No. Not at all.
Maggie: Do you think that racism is a problem in America?
Charlotte: Nope.
When I ask eleven-year-old Jacob Avery the same question, his
response is: ‘Well, I
don’t really know because, [it’s] not where I live, but… I mean,
isn’t the KKK still
around?’ While Jacob does not entirely agree that the USA is
racism-free, he
identifies racism as existing only within certain communities,
and certainly not his
own. Charlotte, Jacob and many of their Sheridan peers do not
see racism in their
lives and have no reason to believe that racism exists. This is
what they learn through
subtle and implicit interactions within the racial context that
their parents have
constructed. Exceptions to this are found in the data, especially
when Sheridan kids
insist that they have observed acts of racism; however, this
important discussion is
beyond the scope of this paper.
When I ask the same question to kids in Evergreen, I receive a
much different
response:
Conor: I think [racism] is a way bigger problem than people
realize. It’s nowhere near
what it used to be… it’s just different and white people don’t
realize it… I think it’s still
there. It’s just not as present and people want to hide it.
Because they are scared to talk

about it.
Conor not only speaks to the invisibility of racism to white
people but he recognizes
that his peers are scared to talk about race for fear that they
might ‘mess up’. The
complexity of his response is largely a result of the context of
childhood that his
parents have constructed. He attends a middle school that is
racially and economically
diverse, he speaks openly with his parents about inequality, and
he has meaningful
relationships with people of colour.
Children growing up in colour-conscious contexts are better
able to identify and
discuss what they perceive to be acts of racism in their daily
lives. Lindsay, for
example, a football star and pianist, tells me a story about her
teacher and her black
friend Ronnie:
My third grade teacher was racist… she kept making fun of this
one kid who was my
friend Ronnie. He’s my buddy… he didn’t really do well in
school… she would hold up
his work and then make fun of it in front of the whole class…
And she would yell at
him… she only did that kind of thing to that race! … One time,
he was late to school. It
was in the middle of winter, and so him and his brother were
getting yelled at. … I

overheard… them say that the bus never came, so they had to
walk to school… they
didn’t have any boots, so their shoes were all wet, and they
didn’t really have coats.
When Lindsay told her parents about what she was observing at
school, her parents
talked openly about what Lindsay perceived as ‘racist’ and took
subsequent action.
Children growing up with colour-conscious racial socialization
more frequently
think about their own behaviour in racialized terms. Ten-year-
old Sam, who loves
debating current events, tells me:
[We] were at the beach and… there were a bunch of people who
looked like they were
Hispanic… they were wearing gangster-kind-of-looking clothes,
they were drinking
alcohol… [My friend] Brian was going, ‘Sam, we have to leave
now’ and so we biked
for while… eventually we were able to get away… afterwards
we were saying, ‘Oh my
god, that was the scariest thing ever’ and we were going into all
these different things
like [if they would] attack us…. Brian was like, ‘Maybe they’re
just trying to see how
racist we are.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ He said, ‘If you think about
it, you’re not going to be
as threatened by people who are white wearing gangster outfits,
drinking alcohol’ … and
I thought about that for awhile and I guess it kind of made sense
but it just didn’t really
feel right to think that that made sense because it doesn’t really
make sense. But at the

same time it does.
The conversation between the two white boys leads to Sam’s
recognition of what he
believed to be racism within himself. He tells me that he
discussed this incident with
both his parents. Clearly, in Sam’s world, talking openly about
race with other
white people and being aware of his own racial biases is part of
his socialization
experience.
Finally, I observed a marked difference in the way that children
from these two
contexts of childhood use immigration and the police as
evidence for the non-
existence or continued existence of racism, which reflects
differences in how these
children think about race. Eleven-year-old Ryan, who lives in
Sheridan and loves
snowboarding, explains:
I think we have moved beyond [racism]. But like, uh, but like
down on the Mexican and
American border, I think it is wrong to let illegal immigrants
come in without having a
green card and steal our money. We work hard in America. They
can’t just come here
and be lazy and take it. But for racism, yes, I think as a country
we have moved
beyond it.
Ryan uses anti-immigration rhetoric in order to displace any
possibility of continued
racial conflict onto non-whites. When I ask Conor the same
question, he also brings

up immigration, but he attributes responsibility for racial
conflict to policies drafted
and enforced by whites:
2610 M.A. Hagerman
In Arizona, I know they passed a law that you have to… carry
around your photo ID or
something and police, they’re always stopping Latinos because
they don’t believe that
they’re Americans. They believe that they’re illegal immigrants
but really they’re just
picking on people that are a different race… I think it’s really
wrong and racist.
These statements come from two boys who are very similar but
have been exposed to
different racial contexts of childhood. And while these boys are
both recipients of
structural white privilege, they are constructing distinct
ideological understandings of
race and privilege. Similarly, other Evergreen children tell me
that ‘police are more
aggressive toward black people’ and that ‘white kids… have
more power… so
disciplinary actions aren’t brought down as hard upon them’,
while Sheridan children
comment that ‘people of all races get in trouble equally’.
‘Does being white give you any advantages in society?’
Unlike colour-blind ideology that makes whiteness invisible and
normalized, colour-
conscious racial logic urges children to recognize their white
privilege and connect it

to other forms of privilege. For example, twelve-year-old Ben,
who lives in Evergreen
and is a member of a debate team, compares white privilege to
male privilege: ‘[Being
white] gives you an advantage! Just like gender, you’ll get an
advantage just by being
a white male rather than a black female.’ Eleven-year-old Chris,
while playing chess
with me, explains: ‘I think [white people] just kind of have the
upside… much of
society is run by white people… like, you know, if you look at
the CEOs of oil
companies, they’re all white men.’
These boys recognize that systems of privilege intersect with
one another, a
strikingly distinct finding compared to responses from Sheridan
children, whose
answers to this question are uniform and straightforward: ‘No.’
While many of the kids in Sheridan articulate the core beliefs of
the American
dream, associating hard work with upward social mobility,
many kids in Evergreen
are sceptical of the rags to riches story. As Sarah tells me: ‘If
you’re black and your
ancestors were slaves back then, you never really got a chance
to like sit upon a large
sum of money…. I would easily say 99.9999% of the upper
class are probably white.’
Chris also discusses the challenges to social mobility: ‘Look at
the oil tycoons, they
don’t even like do anything! They just sit there and be a face.
So I don’t think it’s
hard work as much as luck almost and just kind of… where you
start out.’ When I ask

Chris what race he thinks most ‘oil tycoons’ are, he says,
without hesitation, ‘white’.
Implications and future directions
Given the differences found in the racial logic of child
participants, this study
suggests that the reproduction of white privilege at the
ideological level is connected
to the racial context in which kids live and interact, especially
in middle childhood.
Parents design contexts that are racialized differently; kids
produce multifarious ideas
about race as a result of interacting within these contexts. While
this study makes no
claims about generalizability of findings, given the documented
predominance of
colour-blind ideology, as well as patterns of severe racial
segregation in the USA, it
would follow that the way that children in Sheridan are learning
about race is more
common than that of the Evergreen kids. Future studies ought to
examine the
prevalence of these approaches to racial socialization.
Findings from this research also challenge assertions made by
the white racism
literature that suggest that all white children, like sponges,
adopt hegemonic
ideological racial views. This study illustrates the variation in
white children’s racial

common sense, demonstrating that kids participate in their own
socialization through
interactions within a racial context, a view on the social
reproduction of ideology that
includes children’s agency (Hughes 2003; Corsaro 2011). This
agency is important
when considering how ideological positions on race can be
reworked rather than
reproduced, which has significant implications for launching
challenges against the
racial status quo. Future research ought to evaluate the extent to
which white children
who adopt these counter-hegemonic ideological positions in
middle childhood retain
them as they grow throughout the life course.
While none of the Evergreen children are literally dismantling
racism, their ideas
suggest that a link can be found between how white children
construct racial ideas
and the racial context in which they interact. Racial ideologies
are one ‘mechanis[m]
responsible for the reproduction of racial privilege in a society’
(Bonilla-Silva 2006,
9). Thus, children with colour-conscious racial views possess
the rhetorical tools and
agency necessary to challenge and rework dominant racial
ideology, demonstrating
the participatory role that children play in social change and
hopeful possibilities for
future racial justice.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Amanda Lewis, Eric Vivier, Michelle Manno
and two anonymous reviewers

for valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.
Funding
This research was supported by the Race and Difference
Initiative Graduate Student Research
Grant program along with the Laney Graduate School
Competitive Professional Development
Funds Grant program at Emory University.
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MARGARET HAGERMAN is a PhD Candidate in the
Department of Sociology at
Emory University.
ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, Emory University, 208
Tarbutton Hall, 1555
Dickey Drive, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. Email:
[email protected]
2614 M.A. Hagerman
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0735-2751.2004.00237.x
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mailto:[email protected]AbstractIntroductionRacial
socializationMethodsFindings and discussionColour-blind
approach: the Sheridan contextNeighbourhood and school
choices: the Schultz family(Not) talking about race: the Avery

familyColour-conscious approach: the Evergreen
contextNeighbourhood and school choices: the Norton-Smith
familyTalking about race: the Norton-Smith familyKids'
voices'Is racism a problem?''Does being white give you any
advantages in society?'Implications and future
directionsAcknowledgementsFundingReferences
Topic: Disorders of the Musculoskeletal System
You will be assigned a topic from one of the lists below. For
your assigned topic, discuss the following:
MY TOPIC: LOW BACK PAIN
· Incidence, prevalence, and risk factors
· Clinical manifestation/physical exam performed
· Differential diagnosis
· Diagnostic tests needed
· Pharmacological (first line of treatment) and non-
pharmacological management strategies for the condition
· Referral
· One research article that is not more than 5 years old
(evidence-based) which may address one of the following
(diagnosis, assessment, treatment or management of the
condition)
American Sociological Review
2014, Vol. 79(5) 1015 –1037
© American Sociological
Association 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0003122414546931
http://asr.sagepub.com
Children are not passive players in the repro-
duction of social inequalities. We know that

children’s behaviors vary with social class
and generate stratified profits in school
(Calarco 2011; Farkas 1996; Streib 2011).
Less clear is how children learn to activate
class-based strategies and how those lessons
contribute to stratification. Scholars typically
treat cultural acquisition as an implicit pro-
cess in which class-based childrearing prac-
tices automatically shape children’s behavior
(Arnett 1995; Heath 1983; Lareau 2011).
Given parents’ active management of chil-
dren’s lives (Edwards 2004; Lareau 2000;
Nelson 2010) and children’s active resistance
to parents’ desires (Chin and Phillips 2004;
Pugh 2009), however, cultural transmission
may involve more agency than implicit
socialization models imply. Furthermore,
while scholars assume that parents’ cultural
coaching reproduces inequalities (e.g., Lar-
eau 2011), research has not linked these
efforts to their payoff for children in school.
To investigate these possibilities, this
study examines how parents actively transmit
culture to children, how children respond, and
how those responses generate stratified prof-
its. I base these analyses on a longitudinal
ethnographic study of middle- and working-
class families in one elementary school. I
conducted observations and in-depth
interviews with the children, their parents,
546931 ASRXXX10.1177/0003122414546931American
Sociological ReviewCalarco
2014

aIndiana University
Corresponding Author:
Jessica McCrory Calarco, Indiana University,
Department of Sociology, 1020 East Kirkwood
Avenue, Ballantine Hall, 744 Bloomington, IN
47405-7103
E-mail: [email protected]
Coached for the Classroom:
Parents’ Cultural Transmission
and Children’s Reproduction
of Educational Inequalities
Jessica McCrory Calarcoa
Abstract
Scholars typically view class socialization as an implicit
process. This study instead shows
how parents actively transmit class-based cultures to children
and how these lessons reproduce
inequalities. Through observations and interviews with children,
parents, and teachers, I
found that middle- and working-class parents expressed
contrasting beliefs about appropriate
classroom behavior, beliefs that shaped parents’ cultural
coaching efforts. These efforts led
children to activate class-based problem-solving strategies,
which generated stratified profits
at school. By showing how these processes vary along social
class lines, this study reveals a
key source of children’s class-based behaviors and highlights
the efforts by which parents and
children together reproduce inequalities.
Keywords

culture, inequality, education, family, children
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1177%2F00031224
14546931&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2014-08-25
1016 American Sociological Review 79(5)
and their teachers. I found that parents con-
tributed to social reproduction by actively
equipping children with class-based strategies
that generated unequal outcomes when acti-
vated at school. Parents’ relationships with
the school varied by social class and shaped
their beliefs about teachers’ behavioral expec-
tations. Those beliefs led parents to adopt
contrasting strategies for managing problems
at school and to coach their children to do the
same. Specifically, working-class parents
stressed “no-excuses” problem-solving,
encouraging children to respect teachers’
authority by not seeking help. Middle-class
parents instead taught “by-any-means” problem-
solving, urging children to negotiate with
teachers for assistance. These ongoing and
often deliberate coaching efforts equipped
even reluctant children with the tools needed
to activate class-based strategies on their own
behalf. Such activation, in turn, prompted
stratified responses from teachers and thus
created unequal advantages in school.
This study has important implications.
First, it clarifies class-based socialization
models by showing that children’s acquisition
of class-based behaviors is neither implicit

nor automatic; rather, cultural transmission
involves active efforts by both parents and
children. Second, it helps explain class-stratified
childrearing patterns, suggesting that parents’
efforts reflect beliefs stemming from their
positions in the social hierarchy. Third, it
demonstrates that by examining how cultural
transmission varies along social class lines,
and by linking these processes to their payoff
in schools, we can better understand the
mechanisms of social reproduction.
ClAss, CulTuRE, And
REPRoduCTIon of
InEquAlITIEs
Scholars conceptualize culture in myriad ways
(Small, Harding, and Lamont 2010), but here I
view culture as a “tool kit” that includes both
“strategies of action” (Swidler 1986) and “log-
ics of action” (DiMaggio 1997). Strategies of
action are skills or behaviors used in social
situations (Bourdieu 1990; Lareau and
Weininger 2003). Logics of action are frames
for interpreting situations (Harding 2007;
Small 2004). This view of culture recognizes
that individuals might behave differently in the
same situation because they possess different
strategies for use in that situation, or because
they interpret the situation differently and thus
choose to activate different strategies.
While cultural tool kits have numerous
dimensions (e.g., gender, age, race, and eth-
nicity), research on tool kits generally focuses

on social class (Bourdieu 1990; Lareau 2000).
To identify social classes, tool-kit scholars
typically use educational and occupational
attainment (Aschaffenburg and Maas 1997;
Condron 2009).1 In doing so, they find that
middle- and working-class individuals per-
ceive themselves differently in relation to
dominant institutions and also possess differ-
ent strategies for navigating those settings
(Lamont 1992, 2009; Lubrano 2004; Stuber
2012). Compared to their working-class coun-
terparts, middle-class individuals experience a
stronger sense of belonging in schools and
other institutional arenas (Carter 2005; Khan
2010; Lareau 2000; Lubrano 2004). They also
see their status as equaling or surpassing that
of institutional professionals and are thus
more comfortable demanding accommoda-
tions from institutions (Brantlinger 2003;
Cucchiara and Horvat 2008; Lareau 2000).
Class-based cultural tool kits are closely
linked to inequalities (Bourdieu 1990; Lareau
and Weininger 2003). Within a social setting,
behaviors will generate profits if they con-
verge with the culture of that setting. Poorly
aligned behaviors, in contrast, will produce
few or no advantages, and may even result in
sanctions.
Research shows, for example, that chil-
dren’s activation of class-based tool kits can
generate unequal advantages. In school, chil-
dren tend to behave in class-patterned ways
that produce stratified consequences (Heath
1983; Nelson and Schutz 2007; Streib 2011).

Middle-class children more readily voice
their needs and, in doing so, attract more
immediate attention and more complete sup-
port from teachers (Calarco 2011). These
Calarco 1017
inequalities reflect teachers’ and administra-
tors’ expectations that students will behave in
“middle-class” ways (Carter 2005; Farkas
1996; Mehan 1980; Wren 1999). While
working-class students must play catch-up,
middle-class students come to school ready to
meet these expectations (Bernstein 1990;
Foley 1990; Lubienski 2000) and to reap the
benefits—including higher grades and higher
competence ratings from teachers (Farkas
1996; Jennings and DiPrete 2010; Tach and
Farkas 2006). What research on culture and
classroom interactions has not examined,
however, is how children learn these different
strategies or why they activate them in the
classroom.
fAMIlIEs And
REPRoduCTIon of
InEquAlITIEs
Socialization scholars imply that children’s
class-based behaviors emerge automatically in
response to class-based childrearing practices
(Arnett 1995). Middle- and working-class
parents typically adopt different childrearing
styles, and their children behave in different

ways (Chin and Phillips 2004; Edwards 2004;
Heath 1983). Lareau (2011:6), for example,
shows middle-class parents allowing children
to negotiate and assert themselves and their
children displaying an “emerging sense of
entitlement.” Working-class parents, in turn,
emphasize obedience and deference to author-
ity, and their children demonstrate an “emerg-
ing sense of constraint.” Lareau concludes that
children’s behaviors are likely an implicit and
automatic response to class-based childrearing
practices.
Such explanations, however, have two
important limitations. First, they ignore the
possibility of more active cultural transmis-
sion (Elder 1974; Pugh 2009; Thorne 1993).
Research shows that parents and children can
both be very strategic in their actions. Middle-
class parents, for example, intervene for their
children at school (Brantlinger 2003; Lareau
2000; Nelson 2010), and working-class par-
ents try to manage how their families are
perceived by others (Edwards 2004). Yet,
because scholars pay little attention to the log-
ics of action that guide childrearing decisions,
it is unclear whether or how parents deliber-
ately try to equip children to manage their
own challenges. Similarly, while scholars
have documented children’s rejection of par-
ents’ wishes (Chin and Phillips 2004; Pugh
2009; Zelizer 2002), they have not fully
explored how children come to accept and
utilize parents’ class-based lessons. Lareau
(2011), for example, observed children only in

interactions with parents and did not conduct
interviews with them. Thus, she cannot say
how children behave in their parents’ absence
or how children make sense of and internalize
what they learn.
Second, socialization research has done
little to link class-based cultural transmission
to social reproduction. Lareau (2011), for
example, assumes that class-based childrear-
ing patterns matter for inequalities. Yet, she
does not show how children’s entitlement or
constraint generates stratified profits. Overall,
while existing research highlights important
social class differences in childrearing, chil-
dren’s behaviors, and classroom advantages,
we know little about how the active efforts of
parents and children contribute to cultural
transmission or how this transmission repro-
duces inequalities.
This study examines these possibilities,
considering how parents prompt children to
activate class-based behaviors and how those
efforts contribute to social reproduction. I do
so by answering the following research
questions:
1. How do parents’ understandings of
appropriate classroom behavior vary
with social class?
2. How do parents actively teach children
class-based behaviors?
3. How do children come to activate par-

ents’ preferred behaviors?
4. How does this activation reproduce
social inequalities?
I answer these questions with data from a
longitudinal, ethnographic study of middle-
and working-class, white families whose chil-
dren attended the same elementary school.
REsEARCh METhods
Research Site and Sample
Maplewood (all names are pseudonyms) is a
public elementary school near a large, Eastern
city (see Figure 1). While most of Maple-
wood’s families are middle-class, many (~30
percent) are working-class. This allowed me
to compare how middle- and working-class
parents and children interact with each other
and with the same teachers. My connections
to the community (a close relative is a Maple-
wood employee) facilitated access to the site
and acceptance of the project.
At Maplewood, I chose one cohort (four
classrooms) of students to follow from 3rd to
5th grade. The minority population at Maple-
wood was small and stratified, including middle-
class Asian Americans and working-class

Latinos. Thus, to avoid conflating race and
class, I focused on white students. I also
excluded students who moved away. See
Table 1 for sample characteristics and recruit-
ment procedures.
I used surveys and school records to iden-
tify students’ social class backgrounds,
MAPLEWOOD
Public School
500 students
Grades K–5
82% White
9% Latino
6% Asian American
3% African American
Home Types: Apartments, mobile
homes, small single-family homes
Home Values: $150K to $250K
Jobs: Plumber; daycare provider;
sales clerk; waitress; truck driver; etc.
Home Types: Medium to large
single-family homes
Home Values: $250K to $2M
Jobs: Doctor/nurse; lawyer; teacher;
business manager; accountant; etc.
MIDDLE-CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS

WORKING-CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS
figure 1. Research Site
Calarco 1019
grouping them by parents’ educational and
occupational status (Aschaffenburg and Maas
1997; Condron 2009). Middle-class families
had at least one parent with a four-year college
degree and at least one parent in a professional
or managerial occupation. Working-class fam-
ilies did not meet these criteria; parents typi-
cally had high school diplomas and worked
in blue-collar or service jobs. These were
“settled-living” working-class families
(Edwards 2004; Rubin 1976) with steady jobs,
stable relationships, and neat, clean homes.
There were, however, a few single-parents in
both class groups. While these parents some-
times felt overwhelmed with responsibilities,
their efforts to teach their children closely
paralleled those of two-parent families from
similar class backgrounds.
Data Collection
The longitudinal study included in-school
observations; in-depth interviews with chil-
dren, parents, and teachers; parent surveys;
and analyses of students’ school records.
Table 2 provides details. I observed during
the students’ 3rd-, 4th-, and 5th-grade school
years, visiting Maplewood at least twice

weekly, with each observation lasting approx-
imately three hours. I divided time equally
between the four classrooms in each grade
and rotated the days and times I observed
each class. During observations, I used ethno-
graphic jottings to document interactions I
observed and to record pieces of dialog from
informal conversations with teachers and stu-
dents. After each observation, I expanded
these jottings into detailed fieldnotes.
Ethnographers must make hard choices. In
this study, I focused my three years of obser-
vations in classrooms so as to see the payoff
of parents’ efforts. As a result, the study does
not include systematic home observations.
Still, I was able to observe parent-child inter-
actions during school events and during inter-
views in family homes. These observations
corroborated the numerous reports of parent-
child coaching that I gathered from inter-
views with children, parents, and teachers.
All interviews were audio-recorded and
transcribed. I used these interviews to under-
stand children’s home lives, school experi-
ences, and interactions with parents, teachers,
and classmates. When speaking with parents
and students, I concluded each interview by
asking interviewees to respond to four
Table 1. Participants by Role and Type of Participation
Classroom
Observationsa In-Home Interviewsbc

Parent
Surveys
Students
White, Working-Class 14 9
White, Middle-Class 42 12
Parents
White, Working-Class 9 14
White, Middle-Class 15 42
Teachers 17 12
aI solicited parents’ consent for observation of all students in
the target cohort at Maplewood, receiving
permission for all but 19 children. For this analysis, I excluded
minority students (n = 10) and children
who moved away during the study (n = 12).
bI interviewed parents and children from the same families,
selecting families from those who were
already participating in the observation portion of the study. I
contacted all 14 working-class families
and a randomly selected group of 15 middle-class families to
participate in interviews. Although 27
families agreed to participate, scheduling conflicts prevented
some interviews from taking place.
cMost parents interviewed were mothers (I asked to speak with
children’s primary caregivers). The
sample includes two single fathers (both working-class) and
three married fathers (all middle-class) who
participated in interviews with their wives. Most participants
were in married, two-parent families; six
parents were divorced (three working-class, three middle-class).

vignettes. These vignettes described typical
classroom challenges (e.g., “Jason is strug-
gling to understand the directions on a test”)
and were based on situations I had observed
or learned about through conversations with
teachers. With each vignette, I asked inter-
viewees to describe how the characters should
respond to the situation (e.g., “What do you
think Jason should do?”). I also asked partici-
pants to discuss similar experiences in their
own lives. I then coded these open-ended
responses and used them to compare respond-
ents’ attitudes across social class and genera-
tional lines. I present some of these
comparisons to highlight patterns documented
in the larger ethnographic study.
Data Analysis
I conducted an ongoing process of data analy-
sis, regularly reviewing fieldnotes and
interview transcripts and writing analytic
memos (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995). I
used the memos to identify emerging themes
in the data, discuss connections to existing
research, and pose additional questions. After
creating a preliminary coding scheme from
themes in the memos, I used ATLAS.ti to
code sections of fieldnotes, interview tran-
scripts, documents, and seating charts. While
coding, I also developed data matrices (Miles
and Huberman 1994) to clarify comparisons
and identify disconfirming evidence.

PAREnTs’ undERsTAndIngs
of APPRoPRIATE BEhAvIoR
Before examining parents’ coaching of class-
based strategies, it is important to understand
how social class shaped these efforts.
Research highlights social class differences in
parents’ interactions with their children (Chin
Table 2. Study Overview and Timeline
Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5
Period of Study March 2008 to
June 2008
August 2008 to
June 2009
August 2009 to
June 2010
Observationsa 4 Classrooms 4 Classrooms 4 Classrooms
(~20 students each) (~20 students each) (~20 students each)
Twice weekly Twice weekly Twice weekly
3 Hours per visit 3 Hours per visit 3 Hours per visit
Interviews 4 Teachersb 4 Teachers 4 Teachers
21 Studentsc
24 Parentsd
Parent Surveyse 56 Families
School Recordsf 52 Students 52 Students 52 Students

aI observed students in their regular classes and ability-grouped
math classes; during enrichment
activities (art, gym, library, music, and Spanish); during lunch
and recess; and during assemblies and
other school activities.
bTeacher interviews were conducted mid-way through each
school year. Interviews took place in
teachers’ classrooms and lasted approximately 60 to 90 minutes.
cStudent interviews were conducted during the summer after 5th
grade, when students were 10 or 11
years old. Interviews took place in children’s homes and lasted
about 60 to 90 minutes.
dParent interviews were conducted during the summer after 5th
grade. Interviews took place in parents’
homes (except one, which took place in a parent’s office) and
lasted approximately 90 to 120 minutes.
eParent surveys collected information on students’ family
backgrounds, school achievement,
friendships, and after-school activities.
fStudents’ school records included grades, standardized test
scores, and teacher comments, as well as
records of e-mail, phone, and written contact between parents
and teachers. Four families closed access
to their children’s school records.
Calarco 1021
and Phillips 2004; Lareau 2011) and with
their children’s schools (Cucchiara and Hor-
vat 2008; Lareau 2000; Nelson 2010). Yet,
scholars say little about the origins of such
patterns. At Maplewood, I found that middle-
and working-class parents had different strat-
egies for managing problems at school. Those

differences reflected parents’ positions in the
status hierarchy, which influenced their com-
fort interacting with the school and led them
to adopt different class-based logics of action
for interpreting the “appropriate” form of
behavior in those settings.
Middle-Class Parents: Modeling
By-Any-Means Problem-Solving
Middle-class parents adopted a by-any-means
approach to solving problems with their chil-
dren’s schooling. They actively intervened to
request support and accommodations, lobby-
ing to have children tested for gifted or spe-
cial needs programs and often writing notes
excusing their children from homework and
other activities. Ms. Bell sent this note to her
son’s 3rd-grade teacher, Ms. Nelson, when he
left his homework at school:
Dear Paula,
Aidan forgot his homework folder yester-
day. As a result, he was not able to do his
homework last night. I will have him com-
plete it this evening. I apologize for the
inconvenience. Last night I had him read
and do math problems from a workbook to
replace homework time. Again, sorry he
won’t be prepared today.
Susan
Middle-class parents seemed to expect their
interventions to generate benefits, and they
were usually correct in that assumption. Ms.
Nelson, for example, generally required stu-

dents to stay in for recess if they forgot their
homework. Given Ms. Bell’s note, however,
Ms. Nelson allowed Aidan to submit the
homework the next day with no penalty.
Middle-class parents adopted this by-any-
means approach to problem-solving because
they interpreted classroom interactions through
a logic of entitlement. Given their educational
and occupational attainment, middle-class par-
ents appeared to perceive themselves as equal
or greater in status relative to children’s teach-
ers. As a result, they were very comfortable
intervening and questioning teachers’ judg-
ments regarding classroom assignments, abil-
ity group placements, testing procedures, and
homework policies. One interview vignette
described a student, “Brian,” who came home
complaining about being “bored” in math
class. As Table 3 shows, parents’ responses to
this vignette divided sharply by social class.
While all the middle-class parents saw the situ-
ation as requiring immediate requests for
accommodations, working-class parents
tended to view deference to teachers’ judg-
ments as the appropriate response.
When asked open-ended questions about
how Brian’s parent should respond in this
situation, all the middle-class parents said
they would talk to the teacher or encourage
Brian to talk to the teacher. Ms. Matthews’s
response was typical of middle-class parents:
I would ask for a higher math class. I think

that would be the obvious first step. And if
that’s not a possibility, then I think asking
for additional work, or asking if Brian could
mentor one of the other children. That way
he could use the knowledge that he has to
help another child learn. I think that would
be a good lesson for him.
Although the teachers worked hard to deter-
mine the appropriate math level for each stu-
dent, Ms. Matthews, like many middle-class
parents, perceived herself as a better judge of
her child’s needs. These parents also believed
they were entitled to negotiate with teachers,
seeing such requests as an “obvious first
step.” At Maplewood, teachers were reluctant
to change students’ placement. Yet, many
middle-class students (but no working-class
students) were moved up due to their parents’
persistent requests.
This entitlement to intervene prompted
middle-class parents to be highly involved at
school and granted them insider status at
Maplewood. Many middle-class mothers at
Maplewood were full-time parents, but even
employed mothers helped run volunteer pro-
grams, bake sales, and evening events that
raised more than $50,000 annually for the
parent-teacher organization (PTO). In light of
their involvement, middle-class parents were

often deeply familiar with school expectations,
procedures, and personnel. They also readily
exchanged this information with other (typi-
cally middle-class) parents during play-dates,
soccer games, school events, and phone con-
versations. As a result, middle-class parents
knew the sequence and timing of state assess-
ments, the weekly school schedule, and the
procedures for requesting accommodations.
That insider status shaped middle-class
parents’ beliefs about teachers’ behavioral
expectations. They understood that—unlike
when they were in school—teachers valued
questions and requests from both parents and
students. As Ms. Shore, who works full-time
but contacts her children’s teachers regularly
by e-mail, explained:
It’s become more than just a gentle encour-
agement. It’s official. You’re a high-quality
learner if you’re willing to ask questions
when you have one, and [the teachers] actu-
ally reward the asking.
Middle-class parents recognized that although
their own teachers might have balked at such
requests, school expectations had changed.
They assumed that teachers would reward
proactive help-seeking, and thus they adopted
a logic of entitlement in managing problems
at school.
Working-Class Parents: Modeling
No-Excuses Problem-Solving

Unlike their middle-class counterparts, working-
class parents adopted a no-excuses approach
to educational challenges. In light of their
limited educational and occupational attain-
ment, working-class parents generally trusted
the school to decide what was best for their
children. Even when working-class parents
were frustrated with teachers’ decisions, they
Table 3. Summary of Open-Ended Responses to Vignette 1 by
Social Class
vignette 1: Brian, a 5th grader, usually gets good grades in math
and does well on tests.
Brian comes home from school one day and tells his mom that
he is often bored during
math class.
Prompt: What do you think should happen with Brian?
Middle-Class Working-Class
Response by descriptive category Parents Children Parents
Children
Brian’s mother should ask the teacher to move
him up or give him extra work
9 5 2 0
Brian should ask the teacher to give him extra
work
3 4 0 0
Brian’s parent should ask for the teacher’s
advice at conferences

0 0 2 0
If it’s really an issue, the teacher would notice
and help Brian
0 0 3 1
Brian just needs to be more focused 0 2 2 5
Brian just does not like the material 0 1 0 3
Total 12 12 9 9
Note: Responses to vignettes were open-ended. I coded
responses into categories to highlight patterns.
Coded responses are presented here for ease of comparison.
Calarco 1023
tended not to intervene. Ms. Campitello’s son
Zach, for example, often went to school with
incomplete assignments. In our interview, Ms.
Campitello explained that while she tried to
help Zach with his homework, both she and
Zach struggled with the material. Tears brim-
ming in her eyes, she recalled:
Zach gets so frustrated that he just won’t do
it. And I tried, but it was really, really hard. It
got to the point, honestly, where I just gave
up. . . . I wish the teachers would just help
him at school. Cuz they get this stuff. They
know what the kids are supposed to be doing.

Ms. Campitello believed the school could do
more to help Zach with homework and with
his understanding of the material. Yet, like
other working-class parents, she did not
inform Zach’s teachers or ask for additional
support.
Working-class parents adopted this no-
excuses approach to problem-solving because
they interpreted classroom interactions through
a logic of constraint. Given their educational
and occupational attainment, they perceived
themselves as less knowledgeable than “expert”
educators and thus avoided questioning teach-
ers’ judgments. Responding to the Brian
vignette, for example, none of the working-
class parents said they would ask the teacher to
move Brian to a higher math level (see Table
3). Similarly, in 2nd grade, Ms. Trumble noticed
that her son, Jeremy, was not reading as well as
his older siblings had at that age. Ms. Trumble
worried, but she did not intervene:
I thought maybe there was something
wrong, but I didn’t wanna say anything. I
think the teachers are pretty good. If there’s
any kind of problem, I think they’d jump on
it right then and there to help. Like [in kin-
dergarten] they figured out that Jeremy had
some speech problems and they got him into
speech therapy.
Even when their children were struggling,
working-class parents “didn’t wanna say any-
thing.” They assumed that teachers had a

better understanding of children’s academic
needs, and that they as non-professionals
were not equipped to influence decisions
about children’s schooling.
This reluctance to intervene prompted
working-class parents to be less involved at
school and relegated them largely to outsider
status at Maplewood. Working-class parents
occasionally attended conferences or con-
certs, but they spent relatively little time vol-
unteering. Even the few working-class parents
who did not work full-time were not a regular
presence at school. As a result, working-class
parents tended not to be very familiar with
school expectations, procedures, and person-
nel. This lack of familiarity was compounded
by the fact that working-class parents gener-
ally had few social connections with teachers
or other Maplewood parents.
That outsider status shaped working-class
parents’ beliefs about teachers’ behavioral
expectations. Without inside information,
working-class parents tended to rely on their
own experiences in school as a guide. During
an interview, Mr. Graham remembered a
formative incident from 5th grade:
The teacher gave us a test and none of us
understood. We were like, “What are you
talking about?” I mean, it was like she
thought she explained it clear as day. And
we read it, but it just didn’t jive.2
When I asked Mr. Graham what happened

next, he continued, shaking his head:
Well, she was upset because we asked her
about it. She yelled at us, cuz she just didn’t
understand why we didn’t get it! That was a
rough little time in school. I mean, a number
of us were upset about it, crying upset about
it. I think I probably took the brunt of it, cuz
I was the one that challenged her.
While the teachers at Maplewood did repri-
mand students for offenses like being off-
task, name-calling, and running in the
hallways, I never saw a teacher punish a stu-
dent for seeking help. Middle-class parents,
by virtue of their insider involvement, recog-
nized that school expectations around question-
asking had changed over time. Working-class
parents, drawing only on their own school
experiences, assumed that teachers would
perceive requests as disrespectful, and thus
they adopted a logic of constraint in manag-
ing problems at school.
PAREnTs TEACh ClAss-
BAsEd BEhAvIoRs
Parents’ class-based logics shaped not only
their comfort interacting with teachers, but
also their beliefs about how to manage chal-
lenges appropriately at school. Such beliefs
prompted parents to coach their children to

activate similar strategies when interacting
with teachers. Although parent-child coach-
ing exchanges were generally serendipitous
rather than planned, their messages were
more deliberate and their intended conse-
quences were more explicit than research on
social class and childrearing typically implies
(Arnett 1995; Heath 1983; Lareau 2011).
Middle-Class Parents: Coaching By-
Any-Means Problem-Solving
Middle-class parents actively coached their
children to adopt a by-any-means approach to
dealing with classroom challenges. In 1st
grade, Danny Rissolo was being bullied by a
classmate. As Ms. Rissolo explained:
The kid he was sitting next to was a bully,
and was making fun of him. Danny wanted
me to fix it for him, but I said to him, “You
know what Danny, I’ll do that for you, but I
want you to do something first. I want you
to go to Ms. Girard, and say something like
‘Ms. Girard, can I talk to you for a min-
ute?’” I said, “Ask her what she thinks you
should do.” At first [Danny] was like: “You
want me to do all that?” And I said: “You
can do it! You’re a smart guy. You’re very
articulate. You can do this. And if it’s still a
problem, I’ll call her also, but you need to
do this first.”
Smiling, Ms. Rissolo went on to describe
proudly how Danny—barely 7 years old at
the time—successfully convinced Ms. Girard

to change his seat and move him away from
the bully:
Well, he did it. He talked to Ms. Girard and
asked her what she could do. And she was
able to say: “You know what, I’m gonna be
changing where you’re all sitting next week.
Why don’t we change tomorrow instead?
And no one has to know why.” And his
problem went away. And so he saw, he
learned, early on, how to advocate for
himself.
Ms. Rissolo could have just contacted
Ms. Girard on Danny’s behalf. Instead, and like
other middle-class parents at Maplewood, she
coached her son to seek assistance for himself.
Middle-class parents’ coaching efforts
reflected their belief that children should
draw on all available resources when manag-
ing problems at school. In interviews, these
parents stressed that children should be com-
fortable approaching teachers with questions
and requests for individualized support. These
beliefs were particularly apparent in middle-
class parents’ responses to an interview
vignette describing “Jason’s” struggles to
understand a science test question. As Table 4
shows, parents’ responses to this vignette
divided sharply along social class lines. Middle-
class parents all stressed that Jason should
solve the problem by-any-means, whereas
working-class parents all emphasized a no-
excuses approach.

When asked “What should Jason do?”
middle-class parents all said that Jason should
“go to the teacher” for help. Ms. Long, for
example, expressed sentiments commonly
echoed by middle-class parents:
Jason should ask the teacher to clarify for
him. Cuz if Jason was having the problem
then everybody else is probably having the
same problem. You want a kid to be able to
answer the question, to make sure that he
understands, rather than just not doing
Calarco 1025
anything. So I think Jason should ask the
teacher and the teacher should tell the whole
class.
The middle-class parents at Maplewood
expressed that children should readily seek
assistance, and that teachers are obligated to
provide such support.
As with Danny and the bully, the coaching
efforts that stemmed from these beliefs
equipped middle-class children to activate
by-any-means problem-solving strategies.
Similarly, when Gina Giordano began getting
Bs and Cs on tests in 4th grade, Gina’s par-
ents coached her to go to her teacher for help:
We always tell her, “You go up and you talk
to the teacher. You find out—you don’t use

your friends. You go to the teacher and find
out.” Like, Gina was [struggling] . . . and I
told her, “Well, go ask your teacher what
that means. That’s your resource.”
Parents’ active coaching efforts inspired
middle-class children to “use their resources”
when confronting problems in school. As
Gina explained:
Like, I was having trouble staying orga-
nized, and I kinda talked to my parents
about it. They told me to go talk to my
teacher, Ms. Hudson. . . . [So] I asked her if
she could help me with my organization and
stuff, [and] . . . she just brought me to the
back of the class and showed me a few
things.
Gina recognized that her parents taught her
valuable strategies for managing problems,
and she regularly enacted those strategies at
school. During a 5th-grade math class, Gina
was working with her (middle-class) partner
Beth. Following instructions, Gina and Beth
found a recipe (for six servings), and using
what they had learned about multiplying frac-
tions, tried to determine how much of each
ingredient they would need to feed 25 people.
These complex calculations soon had the
girls arguing. Frustrated, they sought out
Ms. Dunham:
As they approach, Gina calls out loudly,
“Ms. Dunham!” Ms. Dunham turns, and
Gina begins to explain: “We don’t really get

how to do this. We don’t know what we
Table 4. Summary of Open-Ended Responses to Vignette 2 by
Social Class
vignette 2: Mr. Patrick’s 5th-grade class is working on a science
test. Mr. Patrick is at his
desk, grading papers. Jason, one of the students, gets to the
third question and reads it
silently to himself. It says: “Make a chart comparing the
atmospheres on the earth and on
the moon.” Jason is confused—he isn’t sure how to answer the
question, or what to include
in the chart.
Prompt: What do you think Jason should do?
Middle-Class Working-Class
Response by descriptive category Parents Children Parents
Children
Jason should go to the teacher for help 12 10 0 2
Jason should try his best 0 0 5 4
It depends on the teacher’s rules 0 2 2 2
Jason should wait; the teacher will likely
notice him struggling and offer help
0 0 2 1
Total 12 12 9 9
Note: Responses to vignettes were open-ended. I coded
responses into categories to highlight patterns.
Coded responses are presented here for ease of comparison.

need to multiply by to get to 25 servings.”
Ms. Dunham walks them through the pro-
cess of multiplying the amount of each
ingredient by 25/6, and then reducing each
fraction to its simplest form.
Gina could have continued working or asked
a classmate for help. Instead, she went straight
to the teacher. In doing so, Gina drew on the
by-any-means problem-solving strategies she
learned at home. As with most of the middle-
class students, I also observed Gina become
more confident in deploying those strategies
over time.
Working-Class Parents: Coaching
No-Excuses Problem-Solving
Unlike their middle-class counterparts,
working-class parents coached their children
to adopt a no-excuses approach to problem-
solving. Ms. Trumble, for example, noted that
her son Jeremy sometimes “will forget stuff.”
She went on to describe how she uses these
situations to teach Jeremy to be more
responsible:
And I’ll say, “You have to tell your teacher
that you forgot it, and stay in for recess and
get it done then.” And that’s what he ends
up doing. Because I tell him, “There’s noth-
ing I can do. You forgot your homework. I

don’t know what it was.”
These explicit messages seemed to lead Jer-
emy to activate a no-excuses approach when
managing problems at school. In 5th grade,
the day his book report was due, Jeremy
arrived without it:
Slumping into his seat between Riley and
Alan (both middle-class students), Jeremy
laments, “I finally finished my book report
last night, and then I left it at home . . . ”
Riley, head cocked, looks at Jeremy. She
asks, puzzled, “Can’t your mom bring it for
you?” Jeremy drops his chin down and
shakes his head. “She has to work, so if I
forget things, she says it’s my responsibility.”
Riley blinks, bewildered. Later, when Ms.
Dunham checks his homework, Jeremy apol-
ogizes and admits that he does not have his
project. Ms. Dunham says disappointedly:
“You’ll have to stay in for recess.”
In similar situations, middle-class students
generally adopted a by-any-means approach,
asking to call a parent to bring in the assign-
ment or to receive an extension on the dead-
line. Like other working-class students,
however, Jeremy followed his mother’s
instructions and accepted his punishment
without excuse.
Working-class parents’ coaching efforts
reflected their belief that children should
draw only on their own resources and avoid

inconveniencing teachers by seeking help.
These beliefs were particularly apparent in
working-class parents’ responses to the inter-
view vignette describing Jason’s struggles
with the science test. After reading this
vignette, working-class parents typically
responded by saying that Jason should work
hard and try his best (see Table 4). As Ms. Marrone
explained:
Jason should just try his best. I tell my kids
to work hard. And they all learned how to
do it. Like with Shawn, he reads better now.
So he doesn’t ask me for help as much.
Like, he can do his homework by himself
now.
Some working-class parents believed that help-
seeking would undermine their children’s will-
ingness to work hard. Others noted that children
might “get in trouble” for seeking help, and
thus they encouraged their children to “skip it
and come back” or wait for the teacher to offer
assistance. Although they varied somewhat in
their reasoning, working-class parents consis-
tently emphasized that children should avoid
proactively making requests.
As with Jeremy and the forgotten project,
the coaching efforts that stemmed from these
beliefs prepared working-class children to
activate no-excuses problem-solving strate-
gies. This can also be seen with an example

Calarco 1027
from the Graham family. In an interview,
Mr. Graham recounted a problem with his
daughter Amelia’s 3rd-grade report card. He
described how they read the report card
together, and how Amelia noted that one of
the teacher comments “didn’t seem to make
sense.” As Mr. Graham recalled: “I told Ame-
lia not to ask about it, cuz the teacher proba-
bly wouldn’t be too happy.” Explaining this
approach, Mr. Graham noted:
I just want my kids to be respectful and
responsible. . . . My kids, I always told ’em:
“Look, if you’ve gotta give somebody a
hard time, give it to me. Don’t give it to
your teachers. Don’t give it to other par-
ents.” And I’ve never had a teacher com-
plain. Or, if my kids go and play at somebody
else’s house, I’ve never had a parent say:
“Your child can’t come back.” You know?
My kids are good for the teachers and for
other parents.
These active coaching efforts taught working-
class children to work hard and avoid “com-
plaining” when confronting problems in
school. In my conversations with teachers,
they would often bemoan middle-class stu-
dents’ “lack of problem-solving skills” and
their reluctance to tackle difficult challenges.
In these same conversations, teachers would
often praise working-class students like
Shawn and Amelia for their “work-ethic.”

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