ABSTRACT
Middle-class parents who comply with current professional standards and engage in a pattern of concerted cultivation deliberately try to stimulate their children’s development and foster their cognitive and social skills. For example, across families, key resources are unequally distributed. Parents’ income and wealth, educational accomplishments, and quality of work life all vary dramatically. Middle-class children also learned (by imitation and by direct training) how to make the rules work in their favor. Indeed, Americans are much more comfortable recognizing the power of individual initiative than recognizing the power of social class. Parents’ social class position predicts children’s school success and thus their ultimate life chances. Specifically, studies are required that investigate wide swaths of social life in order to determine how social class makes a substantial difference in children’s lives and also acknowledge those areas of life that may be largely immune to class influence.
