ABSTRACT
The question of when and how children learn to perceive and judge others (and themselves) in terms of ‘social status’ is hardly a new one. Research on how children identify symbolic markers of class status, judge the relative value of different occupations, learn to distinguish between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ or use social status in their general assessment of people as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ goes back as far as the Interbellum. Using a wide variety of methods, 95 published studies have explored how and when children come to understand the world as a structured, hierarchical and unequal universe. Interestingly, sociologists are a minority in this field, which has been invested by scholars from psychology, economics, education, social work and even marketing. This chapter presents a meta-analysis of existing studies, exploring whether studies identify key formative phases in the development of children’s social sense and whether particular aspects (like recognizing status cues) develop before others (such as grasping occupational relationships). It also examines how research methods influence findings, and whether or not our faculty for social differentiation is itself socially differentiated, that is, develops at a different pace according to gender, class or ethnicity.
