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Chapter Four
Looking Forward
Families and the Economy
The Growing Importance of Education
Diverging Demographics
Age at Marriage
Childbearing Outside of Marriage
Marriage Market
Divorce
Differences in Early Adulthood
Family Life and the Globalization
of Production
Developed Countries
Developing Countries
Defining Social Class
Bringing in Gender and Family
Social Classes and Status Groups
The Four-Class Model
Three Status Groups
Social Class Differences in Family Life
Assistance from Kin
Kinship among the Poor and Near Poor
Chronic Poverty and Kin Networks
The Limits of Kin Networks
Kinship among the Nonpoor
Social Class and Child Rearing
Social Class and Parental Values
Concerted Cultivation versus Natural
Growth
Social Class and the Family
Looking Back
Study Questions
Key Terms
Thinking about Families
Families on the Internet
Boxed Features
FAMILIES AND THE GREAT RECESSION:
Job Losses and Financial Strain
FAMILIES AND PUBLIC POLICY: Homelessness,
by the Numbers
Social Class
and Family
Inequality
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110 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
In the fall of 2011 the Census Bureau released its annual report on income and
poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011f). With the country still in the throes
of the Great Recession, the numbers were predictably bad. Between 2007 and
2010 the income of the median household had declined by 7.1 percent. (The
median household income is the midpoint: half of the other households had
higher incomes and half had lower incomes.) As for poverty, 15.1 percent of
Americans lived in households with incomes below the federal poverty line
in 2010. Poverty was even worse for American children: 22.0 percent of them
lived in households below the poverty line. But one other figure drew the
attention of the media: The average male full-time worker earned less in 2010
than did his counterpart in 1973. A generation had gone by in which the size of
the American economy grew and the productivity of the work force improved.
And yet the average worker had made no progress.
Who is that average worker? It is typically someone with a high school
degree but no college degree. A generation ago, we called these workers
“blue collar,” after the iconic chambray shirt that workers wore to their factory
jobs. Today, many of those factory jobs are gone. Every old city has seen the
closing of factories that had formerly provided fulltime jobs at good wages to
workers without college educations. The Singer Sewing Machine Company
dominated Elizabeth, New Jersey, from its founding in 1873 until it closed in
1982—its market reduced by ready-to-wear clothes and its competitive edge
lost to plants in developing countries that paid workers far lower wages. One
longtime worker told anthropologist Katherine Newman:
I worked there forty-seven years and one month. I was one of many people in
my family. My niece worked there. My two brothers, my father. You see, Singer’s
in the old days, it was a company that went from one generation to the other.
(Newman, 1988)
Advances in communications and transportation allowed managers to close
plants such as Singer and import their goods from factories in developing
nations in Latin America, South Asia (for example, India), Southeast Asia (for
example, Indonesia or the Philippines), or East Asia (for example, China)
where wages were much lower. American factory workers lost their jobs,
while opportunities grew for the well-educated managers who imported and
marketed goods. In other industries, computers allowed employers to replace
less-skilled workers with machines, including workers who used to answer
1. How have changes in the American economy since the
1970s affected families?
2. How have the family lives of people with college degrees
diverged from the family lives of those with less education?
3. How has the globalization of production affected family life
in developed countries and in developing countries?
4. What factors determine the social class position of families?
5. Are there social class differences in kinship?
6. Are there social class differences in how parents raise
children?
Looking Forward
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 111
the telephone. When I call Amtrak to make a train reservation, a perky voice
answers by saying, “Hi, I’m Julie, Amtrak’s automated agent,” and continues
to give me options until I yell “operator” several times and am finally connected
to a human being. Julie could not function without a voice recognition
system that depends upon fast, powerful computers and complex software
that did not exist until about two decades ago. Before then, sales agents, most
of whom did not have college degrees, answered the phones. Jobs like theirs
are also disappearing. At the same time, jobs for the well-educated people
who design systems like Amtrak’s are increasing.
The result has been a polarization of the labor market since the 1970s:
Job opportunities have increased for the most-educated workers and for the
least-educated workers, while declining for workers with moderate levels of
education and skill (Autor, Katz, & Kearney, 2006; Kalleberg, 2011). Managers
(such as business executives) and professionals (such as lawyers) are still
needed, as are the low-skilled service workers (such as restaurant staff) who
cook their meals and the sales workers (such as cashiers) who sell them their
clothes. Managers and professionals tend to have high salaries, while service
and sales workers typically have low wages. Meanwhile the percentage of
workers who have jobs in manufacturing has declined as plants like Singer
closed. And the percentage who work in moderately-skilled white-collar jobs
like the people who used to answer Amtrak’s phones has declined, too. The
American occupational structure looks more and more like an hourglass,
bulging at the top and the bottom but narrow in the middle.
Employment has also become more precarious, with less security and
shorter periods of employment. For example, employers increasingly contract
out work to temporary agencies instead of hiring their own workers. They
downsize quickly when demand for their products or services drops. Workers,
in response, feel less loyalty to their employers and are more likely to change
jobs when an opportunity arises. What some call the psychological contract
between employers and employees—employers promise job security and
advancement while employees promise loyalty and hard work—strengthened
in the mid-twentieth century as American manufacturing prospered; but it has
since broken down (Kalleberg, 2011). As a result of the greater polarization
and precariousness of employment today, people feel anxious and insecure
about jobs. Young people entering the labor market, especially those without
college degrees, have less confidence that they can find a good job today. And
that feeling of insecurity can lead them to postpone starting a family. These
developments were made even worse in the late 2000s by the Great Recession.
(See: Families and the Great Recession: Job Losses and Financial Strain.)
polarization (of the labor
market) a growth of job
opportunities at the top and
bottom of the job market but
a lessening of opportunities
in the middle
Families and the Economy
In fact, since the 1960s, average wages have stayed the same or decreased
for workers without a college education because of the movement of factory
jobs overseas and the spread of automation. Only the college educated
workers have experienced substantial wage growth since then (Katz & Autor,
1999). The result is a great increase in what I will call family inequality, the
extent to which some families obtain more income and wealth than do others.
family inequality the extent
to which some families obtain
more income and wealth than
do others
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112 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
Families and the
Great Recession Job Losses and Financial
Strain
As the Great Recession hit, the unemployment
rate rose sharply, doubling
between 2007 and 2009 and remaining
near 9 percent through 2011. And if
you had any doubt that the Great Recession
caused a jump in unemployment
among family members, a glance at the
graph on this page will convince you. It
shows the percentage of families with at
least one member who was unemployed
for each year from 1995 to 2010. The
American economy was in good shape
in the late 1990s, and the percentage
dropped below six in the year 2000. It
varied up and down after that until it rose
in 2008—just as the recession hit—and
then spiked to 12 percent in 2009.
It increased further in 2010.
What did unemployment mean for
families? Sociologists Anne H. Gauthier
and Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., reported on
the responses to a 2009 national survey
of adults who had children under age 18
living with them (Gauthier and Furstenberg,
2010). The authors noted that many
families were already stressed prior to
the recession. As discussed elsewhere in
this chapter, some of the jobs that used to
support workers without college degrees
have moved overseas or disappeared
into computer chips. As a result, families
in the middle of the American income
distribution have had their share of the
economic pie squeezed; in contrast,
families near the top of the distribution
have seen their share of the pie grow.
Moreover, the amount of debt families
owe has also risen, as credit card usage
increased and as banks, in the run-up to
the recession, offered home mortgages
to families with limited means to pay
them. Thus, when the recession struck,
many families already were operating
with little margin for error. When asked,
“If somebody in your household were
to lose his/her job (including yourself),
how many months do you think your
family could manage without borrowing
money?” 31 percent of individuals in the
survey responded none.
So when unemployment increased,
many already-stressed families took a
hit. When individuals in the survey were
asked, “Have the last 12 months been
better, worse, or the same when it comes
to the financial situation of your family?”
half replied that it had been worse.
Although people at all levels of education
reported a rise in unemployment,
the situation was worse for those with
less education. For instance, individuals
with a high school diploma were almost
twice as likely to feel financially strained
as were individuals with college degrees.
The consequences of financial strain
were tangible. For example, 5 percent
of those who reported financial strain
had experienced the foreclosure of their
homes. Now, 5 percent may not seem
like a lot, but it means that if you lived
in a neighborhood where most residents
felt the strain of the recession, one out of
every twenty neighbors would have lost
their homes. Another 5 or 10 percent,
according to the survey, had put their
house up for sale. And 2 to 5 percent
declared bankruptcy. Multiply these
effects across all of the distressed neighborhoods
in America and you will quickly
see how severe the financial effects of
the recession were. And that was just in
2009. As the economic downturn lasted
through 2012, many more American
families lost their homes or went bankrupt.
The Great Recession refused to
leave. And two economists projected
that the percentage of Americans
living below the poverty line would
remain above the pre-recession level
until the end of this decade (Monea and
Sawhill, 2011).
Year
Percentage
Percentage of families with at least one unemployed member, 1995–2010
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 113
Moreover, we will see that families that are doing well are increasingly headed
by married, well-educated couples, whereas the ones that are not doing as
well are increasingly headed by cohabiting couples or single parents, most of
them without a college education.
THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION
Over time, the amount of education that people obtain has become a stronger
predictor of the types of families that they live in and how well-off they are.
In contrast, education was a much less important factor in determining family
income a half-century ago. Figure 4.1 shows the median income for a typical
family of four, by education of the family head, for the period 1950 to 2000.
You can see that the lines start closer together, and then in the 1970s they begin
to move farther apart. As the lines diverge, the income advantage of families
with college-educated family heads increases over families whose heads had less
education; and the income disadvantage of families whose heads did not graduate
from high school grows. In 1950 a family whose head had a college degree
earned about twice as much as a family whose head had not completed high
school. In 2000 that family earned about three times as much.
There is another important reason why the families of the college-educated
were pulling away from other families: they were more likely to have two parents
in the household. Over the past several decades, single-parent families
have increased in the United States due to rising rates of divorce and to more
childbearing outside of marriage. But the increase has been faster among the
less-educated. Of all families with children whose heads had a college degree
in 2011, 13 percent were headed by an unmarried mother. In contrast, 30
percent of families with children whose heads did not have a college degree
were headed by an unmarried mother (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011s).
Single-parent families must rely on the money that one parent brings in;
FIGURE 4.1
Adjusted family-of-four
income medians, by
education, 1950 to 2000.
(Source: Fischer & Hout, 2006)
Note: Income expressed in
1999 dollars and adjusted
for family size (see Fischer &
Hout, 2006).
$0
$25,000
$50,000
$75,000
Year
MedianIncome
$100,000
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
less than high school
high school degree
some college
college degree
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114 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
moreover, women’s earnings (most single-parent families are headed by
women) are usually lower than men’s. Two-parent families, in contrast, can
pool the incomes of both adults. Since the 1980s, the median income of married-couple
families in which both spouses work has increased much more
rapidly than has the median income of other types of families (U.S. Bureau of
the Census, 2011t). Because the families of the college educated could rely on
two earners more than families with less education could, the gap between
the incomes of the college educated and the less educated widened (Western,
Bloome, & Percheski, 2008).
• Family inequality has increased over the past several decades.
• The kinds of jobs that used to allow high-school-educated adults to support a family have
become scarce because of automation and the globalization of production.
• Widespread higher education is a recent phenomenon; high-school degrees were uncommon and
college degrees rare in 1900. College attendance rose rapidly in the second half of the 1900s.
• The incomes of families, where the head of the family is college-educated, have risen more
rapidly than the incomes of families when the head of the family is less educated.
• A person’s education is a more important predictor of the kind of family life he or she leads than
it was in the past.
Quick Review
DIVERGING DEMOGRAPHICS
Since about 1980, the family patterns of people with college degrees have
moved in a different direction than those of people with less education.
Today, college-educated Americans are more likely to marry (although they
take longer to do it), more likely to wait until after marriage to have a first
child, and less likely to divorce than are less-educated Americans.
Age at Marriage People with four-year college degrees are displaying a
pattern we might call catch-up marriage: Until age 25, relatively few of them
marry, which is consistent with the societywide trend toward later marriage.
But in their late twenties and thirties, their rates of marriage exceed those of
the less educated (Martin, 2004). By the time they are in their forties, a higher
proportion of them have married than is the case for people without college
degrees (Goldstein & Kenney, 2001). In other words, if you just followed a
group of young adults until their mid-twenties, you would conclude that college
graduates have lower marriage rates, and you might even predict that
fewer of them will ever marry. You would be missing, however, the action
that occurs later on, after men and women have completed their higher education
and begun to establish careers, which more than compensates.
Childbearing Outside of Marriage Most college-educated women also
wait to have children until after they are married—childbearing outside of marriage
remains almost as uncommon among them as it was a half-century ago
(Ellwood & Jencks, 2004). Among women without college degrees, however,
and especially among women who have never attended college, far fewer
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 115
wait until marriage to have children than was the case a half-century ago.
Figure 4.2 shows how the percentage of women who are married when they
give birth varies by education, based on a 2002 national survey. You can see
how sharply the percentage falls as education decreases. It is as if marriage
and childbearing—so closely linked in Western culture—have become separate
phenomena among the least educated, with childbearing often preceding marriage
by years. One way of thinking about this difference is to view Americans
as following different ways of fitting childbearing into the life course.
A study of young women in low-income Philadelphia-area neighborhoods
found that many of them think it unlikely that they could find suitable marriage
partners (Edin & Kefalas, 2005). They see few men who are earning
steady, decent incomes—still a requirement for a husband in the United
States—and who are free of the problems such as substance abuse and illegal
activity that often come with limited earning potential. Consequently, they
think that to postpone having a child until one is married carries a high risk
of never having children—a risk they are unwilling to take. And they do not
think that having a child outside of marriage will hurt them subsequently in
the marriage market. Moreover, they do not expect to attend college. So they
often follow the strategy of having children at a relatively early age without
marrying and then thinking seriously about marriage many years later. The
authors, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas (2005), write:
Unlike their wealthier sisters, who have the chance to go to college and embark
on careers—attractive possibilities that provide strong motivation to put off
having children—poor young women grab eagerly at the surest source of
accomplishment within their reach: becoming a mother.
Young women who are confident that they will graduate from college, on
the other hand, can reasonably expect to find a suitable husband afterwards
and to have children after they marry. Most of them can make the conventional
strategy—finish your education, marry, and then have children—work
successfully. Thus, the most- and least-educated groups tend to follow different
strategies for ensuring that they will have children. The groups in the
middle of the educational distribution ranges are somewhat more likely than
FIGURE 4.2
Percentage of women who
were married when they
gave birth, by education,
1997–2001. (Source: Kennedy
& Bumpass, 2008)
0
20
40
60
80
100
College degree Some college High school degree No high school degree
Percentage 93
57
39
71
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116 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
the college educated to have children outside of marriage, and they increasingly
do so in cohabiting unions rather than marriage. I will discuss the role
of cohabitation in more detail in Chapter 7.
The Marriage Market Education has become a more important factor in
who marries whom over the past half-century or so. Sociologists call the tendency
of people to marry others similar to themselves assortative marriage.
In the 1930s, religion was a more important determinant of who marries whom
than was education: A college-educated Protestant was more likely to marry
a Protestant high school graduate than to marry a college-educated Catholic.
But since the middle of the twentieth century, college graduates have become
much more likely to marry each other than to marry people with the same
religion but less education. Religion remains a factor, but the college educated
have largely removed themselves from the rest of the marriage market
(Kalmijn, 1991). And since the 1970s, people who did not complete high
school have become less likely to marry people with more education; rather,
they have become more isolated in the marriage market (Schwartz & Mare,
2005). In the middle of the educational distribution, on the other hand, more
marriage across educational groups exists (for example, a marriage between a
high school graduate who did not attend college and someone who attended
college but did not get a bachelor’s degree). In sum, the marriage market
today seems to be stratified by education into three submarkets of people who
choose partners primarily like themselves: people with college degrees; people
who graduated from high school and may have attended college but did not
get a bachelor’s degree; and people who did not graduate from high school.
To be sure, some marriages still cross these boundaries, but on the whole
these divisions exist.
Divorce The trends in divorce also show a divergence. In the 1960s and 1970s
the risk of divorce was rising for all groups, but starting about 1980 the risk
began to decrease. The drop was greatest for college graduates. By the 2000s,
college graduates had a substantially lower lifetime risk of divorce than the lesseducated;
perhaps one-third of all marriages will end in divorce. Those with a
high school degree but not a college degree may have the highest rates (Isen
and Stevenson, 2001; National Center for Family and Marriage Research, 2011b).
So, as is the case with marriage, the risk of divorce also seems to be stratified,
with a college-educated group at the low end. We will consider divorce in more
detail in Chapter 12.
Differences in Early Adulthood To sum up this picture of diverging demographics,
several trends in marriage, childbearing, and divorce suggest that
the family patterns of individuals with different levels of education have
moved in different directions in the past few decades:
• College graduates delay marriage but ultimately have a higher lifetime
probability of marrying than do people without college degrees.
• People increasingly choose a spouse with a similar level of education.
• College graduates are much less likely to have a child without marrying.
• The chances of divorce have been declining for college graduates.
assortative marriage the
tendency of people to marry
others similar to themselves
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 117
A couple sees their children
off  to school before going to
work.  Dual-earner families
have shown the greatest
income gains in recent
decades.
It is likely that the restructuring of the American economy, which improved
the life chances of those with the most education and reduced them for those
with the least education, influenced this divergence. But it did not act alone;
rather, a broad cultural shift probably played a role: Alternatives to marriage
(having a child as a single parent or cohabiting) have become more acceptable,
and the meaning of marriage has changed. I will return to the theme of
cultural change in marriages and partnerships in Chapter 7.
In any event, people with different levels of education increasingly experience
the life stage of early adulthood in different ways. The college educated
continue their schooling into their twenties, postpone both marriage
and childbearing, but eventually marry and have a lower risk of divorce. Individuals
who did not graduate from high school are increasingly isolated in the
marriage market, and are much more likely to have a child prior to marrying.
In addition, when and if they marry, their risk of divorce is high. Finally, individuals
with a high school degree and perhaps some college credits are in the
middle range with regard to marriage, childbearing outside of marriage, and
may have the highest risk of divorce.
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118 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
FAMILY LIFE AND THE GLOBALIZATION
OF PRODUCTION
Overall, the globalization of production—the movement of manufacturing and
clerical jobs to developing countries—has altered family life in the developed
countries that have sent jobs elsewhere and in the developing countries that
have received jobs. The effects are different but profound in both. They show
that the globalization of production is having a world-wide effect on family life.
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
In the developed countries that have lost jobs to the developing world,
there is a growing economic gap between the college-educated and the
less-educated, as shown by the diverging demographics we have just reviewed
for the United States. A sharp educational differential in childbearing within
marriage is also apparent in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, other
European countries (Kiernan, 2011). College-educated individuals still have
access to the managerial and professional jobs that have remained in the
developed nations even as factory and clerical work has left. As a result, this
group is doing relatively well economically. In the United States, at least,
the college-educated are increasingly living family lives that we might call
neo-traditional. Marriage rates are high; and most children are born to married
couples; and divorce rates have dropped. This marriage-centered style of
life harks back to the mid-twentieth century, although with some differences:
unlike the 1950s family, couples may cohabit before they marry, and most
wives work outside the home. Far from being a cultural vanguard, collegeeducated
young adults are leading more conventional family lives.
High school educated Americans, on the other hand, face a much weaker
job market because the kinds of mid-level jobs that their parents used to take
have moved to countries where workers earn far less. Consequently, they
hesitate to marry and increasingly have children before marrying. Their risk
of divorce is higher. Meanwhile, for Americans without high school degrees,
globalization has not altered family life as much. As was true before globalization,
their work opportunities are largely confined to low-level service
jobs that do not pay well, have few fringe benefits, and are often insecure.
neo-traditional a style
of family life centered on
marriage but which may be
preceded by cohabitation and
in which wives work outside
the home
• Since about 1980, the family patterns of people with different levels of education have diverged
in several ways.
• People with college degrees have been delaying marriage but ultimately marrying at higher rates,
waiting until they are married to have children, and experiencing declining divorce risks.
• People who have not graduated from high school are more likely to have children prior to
marrying, less likely to marry, and if they marry, more likely to divorce.
• Over the past several decades, people have become increasingly likely to choose a spouse with a
similar level of education.
• The less educated are increasingly following a path of having children before marrying, whereas
the well educated tend to follow the conventional path of finishing their education, marrying, and
only then having children.
Quick Review
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 119
Their levels of marriage remain low and a majority of them have children
outside of marriage. In sum, college-educated adults and their families are
emerging as the most advantaged group in the globalization of production in
the United States and probably in other developed countries as well (although
the Great Recession has hurt all young adults lately). In contrast, this great
transformation of employment has constrained the family lives of less-educated
adults and their families, leaving them disadvantaged by globalization.
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
But what about family life in the developing countries that have been on the
receiving end of the globalization of production? Here, too, family lives are
changing. The most important factor is the increasing employment of women.
Employers in many developing countries seem to think that women will work
for lower wages than men and that they are easier to control than are men
(for instance, less likely to complain or to go on strike) (Benería, 2003; Trask,
2010). Women dominate the work force in occupations such as assembling
electronic goods or making clothes. Some women work in the formal sector
of the economy, where jobs have characteristics such as long-term labor contracts,
legal protections, and fringe benefits such as sick leave, and where the
activities of employers are regulated by local or national law. But an increasing
number of jobs are in what is called the informal sector of the economy.
This term does not mean relaxed or laid-back; rather, it signifies that
employment is precarious and outside of the law: jobs are based on verbal
agreements rather than contracts; they are unregulated by local or national
law; they are easily ended; and they do not have fringe benefits. Among
women workers, some of these jobs are done at home, as when employers
drop off parts for electronic devices or toys and later pick up the assembled
products. It is generally less expensive for employers to use informal sector
labor because wages are lower, there is no factory to be maintained, and work
can be ended whenever demand for the products declines. Employers often
subcontract tasks to middlemen who in turn hire a predominantly female,
home-based work force.
The great increase in women working for pay has brought both benefits
and costs to family life in developing countries. As for the benefits: Women’s
wages, although very low by developed country standards, have allowed them
to raise their family’s standard of living, such as by improving their children’s
diet or purchasing a refrigerator. Studies show that when wives have control
over money they tend to spend more of it on their children than when husbands
have control of it (Lundberg, Pollak, & Wales, 1997). Women who are
earning wages have been able to gain more independence and bargaining
power in their households (as have employed women in developed countries—
see Chapter 8). Their increased earnings have made their husbands less likely
to physically abuse them, and in more extreme circumstances they have
been able to use their earnings to escape abusive marriages (see Chapter 11).
Moreover, working at home has allowed them to combine earning money
with the childcare and household work that they are still expected to do.
Yet the costs have been substantial, too. The wages are so low, and employment
so unstable, that a family may need multiple sources of income to subsist
from day to day, entailing long hours of work by both parents. Especially when
formal sector the part of
the economy in which workers
have labor contracts and legal
protections and employers are
regulated
informal sector the part of
the economy in which workers
have no labor contracts,
no legal protections, and no
employer regulation
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120 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
they are employed in the informal sector, women may have little control over
when they work and how long they work. The lack of institutionalized child care
centers or subsidies sometimes means that younger children are left in the care
of older ones (see Chapter 8). A daughter may be forced to drop out of school
in order to care for her siblings, thus ending her chance to get a good education
(Trask, 2010). Many husbands have not increased their share of the domestic
work, creating a crushing double burden for wives whose jobs may require long
working hours and six- or seven-day work weeks (Heymann, 2006).
Unlike families in the United States and other developed countries, then, families
in developing countries cannot easily be sorted into winners and losers in
the globalization of production on the basis of characteristics such as education.
Although one could undoubtedly find some families for whom the effects have
been completely positive and others for whom the effects have been completely
negative, there are many more for whom the effects have been both positive
and negative. The ability to earn money through factory work or home production,
even if wages are low, is an opportunity that women in low-income countries
cannot easily pass up. It can increase their independence and boost their
children’s standard of living. But it can also make their lives increasingly harried
by the long hours of paid and unpaid work that make up their day. It can leave
their children without adult care and can cut short the education of caregiving
daughters. It can leave women exploited by employers in the informal sector
who are not bound by contracts and labor laws. The globalization of production
is a decidedly mixed blessing for the families of the developing world.
• The globalization of production has had a world-wide effect on family life.
• In developed countries such as the United States, college-educated individuals are living a neotraditional
family life centered on marriage.
• Also in developed countries, the less-educated are marrying less, having more children outside of
marriage, and divorcing more than the college-educated.
• In developing countries women are working for pay in both the formal and informal sectors of the
economy.
• The great increase in women working for pay has brought both benefits (more independence and
bargaining power) and costs (child care problems) in developing countries.
Quick Review
Defining Social Class
It’s clear from the previous sections that people who differ in the level of education
they have attained also tend to experience the job market and family life
differently. When sociologists think about differences in economic resources,
they often use the concept of social class, an ordering of all persons in a society
according to their degrees of economic resources, prestige, and privilege.
All agree that income and wealth are core elements of this ordering. But the
German sociologist Max Weber added other standards (Gerth & Mills, 1946).
One is the broader idea of life chances, the resources and opportunities that
people have to provide themselves with material goods and favorable living
conditions. People’s life chances may be augmented by the higher education
social class an ordering
of all persons in a society
according to their degrees of
economic resources, prestige,
and privilege
life chances the resources
and opportunities that people
have to provide themselves
with material goods and
favorable living conditions
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A manager at a fast-food
restaurant chain both
supervises workers and is
supervised by higher-level
executives.
Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 121
they obtain or their family’s contacts in the labor market. Their life chances
may be limited by discrimination or racial segregation. So education can be
considered an economic resource, too. A second concept is a more subjective
category: the status group, a group of people who share a common style of
life and often identify with each other. They are sometimes distinguished by
prestige—the honor and status a person receives—such as the prestige
of medical doctors or university professors. They often differ in their level
of privilege—that is, their access to special advantages such as attendance at
elite universities. Are the concepts of social class and status groups useful in
helping us understand the variations in family life today?
BRINGING IN GENDER AND FAMILY
The great theories of class were developed at a time when relatively few married
women worked outside the home. Theorists focused on the kinds of jobs
men typically did: physical labor, factory work, supervising, or managing.
Therefore, these theories really refer to the class positions of individual men
(Acker, 2000). But if you are interested in the pooling of resources and the
sharing of living conditions, you might want to analyze the class location of a
family. For instance, if your ultimate interest is children’s living conditions, the
family would be a more appropriate unit to study than the individual parent. In
the days when most families had two parents and only one (almost always the
husband) worked for wages, one could assign to a family the class location of
the husband. One could speak of a “working-class” family and mean a family
in which the husband worked in a factory and the wife did not work outside
the home. (Note that wives’ unpaid labor inside the home isn’t counted as
“work” in these theories; we will discuss this problem in Chapter 8.)
But this simple procedure doesn’t work well any more. Because of the
great increase in married women’s work outside the home, both the husband
and the wife work for pay in the majority of married-couple families. Studies
in the United States and other Western nations suggest that, depending on
status group a group of
people who share a common
style of life and often identify
with each other
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122 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
the definition of social class, husbands and wives may belong to different
classes in up to one-third of all two-parent, two-earner families (Sørensen,
1994). Moreover, many women work in the expanding service sector
(i.e., sales, clerical, personal services) of the economy. It’s harder to assign
a class position to these jobs, in part because they tend to pay less than the
jobs that men with comparable education obtain. Consider a woman who
works as a salesclerk in a department store. She might be considered part of
the “middle class” as long as she is married to a husband with a well-paying
job. But if the marriage ends and she becomes a single parent, her standard
of living is likely to drop. Whether she necessarily leaves the middle class is
unclear—she has less income, but she retains the same level of education and
many of the same friends and interests.
Yet when people are asked in surveys whether they are “working class” or
“middle class,” they give ready answers. How, in fact, do husbands and wives
decide what social class they are in? Research suggests that both spouses consider
the husband’s and the wife’s incomes and weigh them about equally when
deciding what class they are in. But women and men diverge in their thinking
about education and occupational prestige: Women tend to consider theirs and
their husband’s more or less equally, whereas men tend to weight their own
more heavily (Davis & Robinson, 1988, 1998; Yamaguchi & Wang, 2002).
SOCIAL CLASSES AND STATUS GROUPS
Clearly, thinking about families in class terms is complex, but it also seems
unavoidable. Let us examine the four social class categories commonly used
in sociological research: upper class, middle class, working class, and lower
class. But think of them as ideal types rather than concrete realities. Introduced
by Weber, the ideal type refers to a hypothetical model that consists of
the most significant characteristics, in extreme form, of a social phenomenon.
It is useful for understanding social life, even though any real example of the
phenomenon may not have all the characteristics of the ideal type.
The Four-Class Model Americans understand the four-category scheme,
but they overwhelmingly say they are either middle class or working class.
For instance, in the 2010 General Social Survey (GSS), a biennial national
survey of adults, 3 percent of the respondents said they were upper class,
42 percent said middle class, 47 percent said working class, and 9 percent
said lower class (Davis & Smith, 2010). Both extremes apparently sound
unpleasant to people, probably because of the stigma of being “lower class”
and the embarrassment of admitting to being “upper class.” By most reasonable
criteria, however, the lower class is larger than 9 percent. As noted earlier,
15.1 percent of Americans had incomes below the official poverty level in 2010.
There is little consensus on the size of the upper class or on just how to
define it. In general, upper-class families are those that have amassed wealth
and privilege and that often have substantial prestige as well. They tend to
own large, spacious homes, to possess expensive clothes and furnishings,
to have substantial investment holdings, and to be recognized as part of the
social and cultural elite of their communities. Upper-class husbands tend to
be owners or senior managers of large corporations, banks, or law firms.
Their wives are less likely to work for pay outside the home than women
ideal type a hypothetical
model that consists of the
most significant characteristics,
in extreme form, of a
social phenomenon
upper-class families
families that have amassed
wealth and privilege and that
often have substantial prestige
as well
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 123
in other social classes, and they may be instrumental in maintaining ties to
wealthy kin.
Middle-class families are those whose connection to the economy provides
them with a secure, comfortable income and allows them to live well
above a subsistence level. Middle-class families can usually afford privileges
such as a nice house, a new car, a college education for the children, fashionable
clothes, a vacation at the seashore, and so forth. The jobs that middleclass
men and women hold usually require some college education and are
performed mainly in offices and businesses. Middle-class men tend to hold
higher-paying jobs such as a lawyer, pharmacist, engineer, sales representative,
or midlevel manager at a corporation. Jobs such as these usually have
some prestige and include fringe benefits such as health insurance, paid vacations,
paid sick leave, and retirement pensions. Women in general are underrepresented
in the higher-paying professional and managerial occupations,
although their numbers are growing. Women professionals still tend to be
found in occupations that require a college education, such as nursing and
teaching, but that don’t pay as much as male-dominated professions.
Working-class families are those whose incomes can provide reliably for
the minimum needs of what people see as a decent life: a modest house or
an apartment, one or two cars, enough money to enroll children at a state or
community college, and so forth. Working-class men tend to hold manual jobs
in factories, automobile repair shops, construction sites, and so forth, that
involve little or no authority over others. Layoffs are more common in manual
occupations than in the office and business jobs middle-class men tend to
have, so working-class men are more vulnerable to periods of unemployment.
Moreover, working-class men and women are less likely to work a full week
and have fringe benefits. Clerical jobs, such as secretary, or service jobs, such
as cafeteria cashier or hospital orderly, are common among working-class
women; a minority work in factories.
middle-class
families families whose
connection to the economy
provides them with a secure,
comfortable income and
allows them to live well above
a subsistence level
working-class
families families whose
income can reliably provide
only for the minimum needs
of what other people see as a
decent life
Middle-class families
have a secure, comfortable
income and can
afford privileges such as
a lakeshore vacation.
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124 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
Families and
Public Policy Homelessness, by the Numbers
Homelessness is the kind of issue that
tugs at people’s heartstrings. Whether they
believe that poverty is the fault of the individual
(the poor don’t work hard enough)
or of society (too little opportunity, too
much discrimination), most people think
that everyone ought to have a place to
sleep. They are troubled by homelessness
and at once appalled and fascinated by
reports of individuals and families who live
in the streets or in shelters. But although
the problem has been long on empathy, it
has been short on numbers. Ever since the
issue gained currency a few decades ago,
good information on the homeless population
has been scarce. It is, after all, difficult
to count people who sleep in alleyways and
move in and out of shelters.
Only in the past several years can we
finally get good estimates of the homeless.
That’s because the Department of Housing
and Urban Development has now set up a
system of reports from community institutions
across the country. On a single night
in January 2010, the report says, there
were 649,917 homeless people sleeping
in shelters or on the streets (U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development,
2011). Nearly two-thirds of them were
individuals, and more than one-third were
in families. Homelessness is an urban phenomenon.
For instance, in 2007 8 out of 10
homeless people in the state of New York
were in New York City. One of every five
homeless people in the country lived in New
York City, Los Angeles, and Detroit.
The 2010 study also reported that
1,593,150 individuals used shelters for the
homeless or transitional housing at some
point during 2010. Of this total, 567,334
adults and children arrived in families; the
rest arrived alone. Shelter families overwhelmingly
consist of single mothers and
their children. Single parents are more
vulnerable to homelessness because they
do not have a second adult earner to help
pay the rent. The homeless parents who
use shelters and their children tend to be
young; over half of the parents are between
18 and 30. Forty-two percent of the sheltered
homeless family population is African
American, and 22 percent is Hispanic.
Figure 4.3 shows where families in shelters
were living the night before they first
entered. Despite the image of a homeless
family walking into a shelter after a night
sleeping on the street, few families—only
3 percent—came to shelters from places
“not meant for human habitation.” Parents
try hard not to live on streets or in abandoned
buildings or in their cars because, if
they are discovered, the child welfare agencies
will sometimes take their children and
put them into foster care. An additional
19 percent of families came from another
shelter or transitional housing. This total of
22 percent of families represents the only
ones that were actually homeless before
arriving at the shelter. Twenty-one percent
had stayed at their own apartments
or houses; presumably they had just been
evicted or left because they were unable to
pay the rent or the mortgage. When they
lose their own housing, parents try to double
up with friends or relatives. In fact, 41 percent
of the families in shelters had stayed with relatives
or friends the previous night. But their
presence can strain the already-stretched
resources of their hosts’ households; and
after they have worn out their welcome, if
they have no other options, they will enter a
shelter.
Surprisingly, the number of homeless
people counted in the single-night estimates
Lower-class families are those whose connection to the economy is so tenuous
that they cannot provide reliably for a decent life, either because they work
steadily at low-paying jobs (the so-called working poor) or because they are frequently
unemployed. They may live in deteriorated housing in neighborhoods
with high crime rates. They may not be able to afford adequate clothing for
winter, and they may need government-issued food stamps to purchase enough
food. They are susceptible to homelessness (see Families and Public Policy:
Homelessness, by the Numbers). Lower-class men, who have little education
and few occupational skills, can find jobs that pay only at or slightly above the
minimum wage and that have few, if any, fringe benefits and little security.
Three Status Groups Although these four categories seem ingrained in both
social scientific research and popular thought, the definitions are so broad
that it is very difficult to draw a clear distinction between middle-class and
working-class families or between working-class families and lower-class families.
lower-class families
families whose connection to
the economy is so tenuous
that they cannot reliably
provide for a decent life
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 125
dropped between 2007 and 2010 despite
the Great Recession, which might have
been expected to increase homelessness.
The lack of increase may reflect more
effective government programs, which now
emphasize putting individuals into supportive
housing first and dealing with the
personal or family problems after that (Lee,
Tyler, and Wright, 2010). Or it could mean
that the shelters were full to capacity and
the counters missed some of the homeless
who were on the street.
Either of the two estimates of the size
of the homeless population, the number
homeless on a night in January or the
number who rely on a shelter during the
course of the year, is a small percentage of
the total population with incomes below the
federal poverty line. This doesn’t mean that
homelessness isn’t a serious problem or
that we should ignore it. On the contrary, we
should strengthen our efforts to combat it.
But the numbers do suggest that for every
poor homeless person there are many poor
people who are precariously housed—
behind on the rent or trying the patience of
a friend whose living room couch they are
sleeping on. Helping this larger number of
people stay housed is an important part of
the solution, for if the precariously housed
lose their places to live, their numbers could
overwhelm the already-stressed shelter
system. The homeless problem and the
larger poverty problem are not as separate
as they may seem.
Ask Yourself
1. Has anyone in your family ever been
forced to move into a friend’s or relative’s
home, or perhaps into a homeless
shelter? If so, what caused the
crisis?
2. What can the government do to prevent
families from becoming homeless?
What can families themselves do?
www.mhhe.com/cherlin7e
FIGURE 4.3
Living arrangements of families the night before entering a homeless shelter,
2010. (Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2011)
3%
19%
21%41%
15%
Place not meant for
human habitation
Another shelter or
transitional housing
Rented or owned
housing unit
Staying with family
or friends
Hotel, foster care,
other
Moreover, given the increasing importance of education, it may be more useful
to group people by the amount of education they have. These groupings
are more like Weber’s status groups. The first group comprises people
with a college degree. I will draw this boundary based on two arguments:
First, the restructuring of the American economy has increased the life chances
of those with college degrees to a much greater extent than those without
college degrees; and second, the college educated form a status group, in the
Weberian sense of sharing a common style of life, because their patterns of
marriage, divorce, and childbearing appear to be diverging from the patterns
of people without college degrees. About one-third of all adults between the
ages of 25 and 54 have a four-year college degree. In addition, some individuals
who have a two-year college degree are able to attain this style of life.
The second group comprises people who graduated from high school and
most of those who have attended college but did not obtain a four-year degree;
they are the most difficult to categorize in terms of social class because they
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• Social scientists use the concept of social class to order all individuals in a society.
• Max Weber maintained that one needs to consider status groups as well as classes to understand
how a society is stratified.
• Wives and husbands both consider each other’s income, education, and occupation in identifying
their social class, but wives do so more than husbands.
• Sociologists typically assume that four broad social classes exist: the upper class, middle class,
working class, and lower class.
• Differences in life chances and styles of living suggest that three status groups defined by education
may be as useful as the four broad social classes.
Quick Review
126 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
sometimes share the characteristics of the groups above and below them. The
third group comprises people who did not graduate from high school, whose
family patterns in some respects are diverging from both groups above them.
These three status groups are roughly equivalent to what people think of as
the “middle class,” “working class,” and “lower class,” respectively; but these
labels are so imprecise that I will avoid them for the most part.
Earlier in the chapter, Figure 4.1 showed that the median incomes of families
with different levels of education have diverged since the 1970s: The incomes
of families whose heads are college educated have risen compared to other
families, and the incomes of families whose heads have not completed high
school have fallen compared to other families. Subsequent sections showed that
parallel patterns of marriage, divorce, and childbearing have diverged. There
are other long-standing social class differences that are important but have not
necessarily diverged. One is the kind of assistance family members received
from relatives living in their household or elsewhere. A second is the way parents
approach child rearing. They are not completely different, of course; similarities
run across status groups that would be apparent to someone visiting
from a non-Western culture where, for instance, parents are heavily involved in
helping their children choose spouses, newly married couples move in with the
husband’s family, and adult children care for their aged parents in their homes.
ASSISTANCE FROM KIN
As differences in whether people have children before marrying show, there
is variation around the norm of the two-parent-and-children conjugal family.
Families differ not only in terms of marriage but also in terms of their ties to
other kin, both the kin that a person is born to or acquires at marriage and
the kin that some people construct from distant relatives, friends, partners,
partners’ families, and so forth. These kinship patterns differ by social class,
although some of the class differences appear to be fading or overstated.
Kinship among the Poor and Near Poor A large literature dating back
to the Great Depression shows that a husband’s place in the family is heavily
dependent on whether he has a job. (See Families and the Great Recession:
Lessons from the Great Depression, in Chapter 2.) In the cultures of all
Social Class Differences in Family Life
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 127
industrialized nations, men have been viewed as the main earners; providing
a steady income has been seen as their responsibility. Rightly or wrongly,
women’s economic contribution has been viewed as secondary, although this
perception may be changing as women increasingly work outside the home.
When wives choose not to work for pay, or when they lose their jobs, they
are not looked down upon. But when husbands lose their jobs, as happens
frequently to husbands in poor and near-poor families, their authority in their
homes decreases, their self-respect declines, and other family members treat
them with less respect as well. Chapter 9 examines in more detail how a husband’s
unemployment affects a married couple and their children.
Chronic Poverty and Kin Networks When a man’s unemployment problems
are chronic—when he is unable or unwilling to find steady employment
over many years—he may be viewed, and may view himself, as having
failed to fulfill a central role in his life. In a community with many chronically
unemployed men, young mothers rely less on marriage and more on other
kinship ties for support. Commonly, in poverty areas, young mothers, many
of them unmarried, receive help from their own mothers in raising their children.
They may also get money or assistance from sisters and brothers, friends,
and, sometimes, the fathers of their children. The result is women-centered
kinship, a kinship structure in which the strongest bonds of support and caregiving
occur among a network of women, most of them relatives, who may live
in more than one household. Mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and other female
kin hold most of the authority over children and provide most of the supervision.
The extended kinship ties of the women-centered network help its members
survive the hardships of poverty. If the members of a household have little to
eat or are evicted from their homes, relatives and friends in their network will
women-centered
kinship a kinship structure
in which the strongest bonds
of support and caregiving
occur among a network of
women, most of them relatives,
who may live in more
than one household
Women-centered
kinship ties are an
important source of
strength among many
low-income families.
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128 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
provide whatever assistance they can. Sisters or aunts who are themselves poor
will nevertheless give food or money because they know that in the future they
may need emergency help. In this way, the kinship networks of the poor spread
the burdens of poverty, cushioning its impact on any one household and allowing
its members to get by from day to day. In a widely cited study of The Flats,
a low-income African American neighborhood in the Midwest, anthropologist
Carol Stack found that individuals could draw upon a complex network of relatives
and friends that extended over many households (Stack, 1974).
The Limits of Kin Networks Yet membership in such a kinship network is
not without cost. Because an individual’s meager income must be shared with
many others, it is difficult for her or him to rise out of poverty. Stack described
what happened when an older couple unexpectedly inherited $1,500. At first,
they wished to use the money for a down payment on a house. Then other
members of their network, upon learning of the windfall, asked for help. Several
relatives needed train fare to attend a funeral in another state; another
needed $25 so her telephone wouldn’t be turned off; a sister was about to be
evicted because of overdue rent. Moreover, the public assistance office cut their
children off welfare temporarily. Within six weeks, the inheritance was gone.
The couple acquiesced to these requests because they knew they might need
assistance in the future. Even someone who finds a good job may not withdraw
from a network unless she is confident that the job will last a long time.
Moreover, it’s not clear how widespread these networks are today. Studies
show that very disadvantaged parents tend to receive less support from kin,
either because the people in their networks have fewer resources to provide
or because they are not in a network (Harknett & Hartnett, 2011). In general,
low-income parents are more likely to receive practical support from their
kin, such as child care assistance, than to receive financial support, whereas
middle-class parents are more likely to receive financial support (Swartz,
2009). Assistance from kin takes different forms among the poor and nonpoor
but seems to be important for both.
Kinship among the Nonpoor The core of kinship among the nonpoor in
the United States has been the conjugal family of wife, husband, and children,
at least ideally (Schneider & Smith, 1973). The married couple is expected to
spend their income on their children and themselves rather than to provide
financial assistance to siblings or other relatives. Any assets or savings are
passed from parents to children, rather than being spread throughout a kin
network. Income sharing is not as necessary, to be sure, because the standards
of living of kin tend to be higher than among the poor. Yet standards
of living are higher in part because it is expected that the conjugal family will
spend its savings on a down payment for a house rather than doling it out to
relatives who need train fare to attend funerals or to pay bills and because it
is expected that the family will move away from kin, if necessary, to pursue
better job opportunities.
A clever survey of adults in the Boston area in 1984 and 1985 demonstrated
people’s beliefs about the restricted kinship obligations of the conjugal family
(Rossi & Rossi, 1990). Alice and Peter Rossi presented 1,393 mostly white
people whom they identified as “middle class” with a set of “vignettes”: brief,
hypothetical descriptions of relatives and friends who were experiencing
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 129
crises that might require “some financial help” or “comfort and emotional
support.” For example: “Your unmarried sister has undergone major surgery
and will be bedridden for a few weeks. This problem is straining her financial
resources.” From a list of relatives and friends (e.g., child, father-in-law,
cousin, neighbor), eight crises (e.g., “run out of unemployment benefits and
no job in sight”), and two obligations (“to offer some financial help,” “to
offer comfort and emotional support”), a computer program selected one
relative or friend, one crisis, and one obligation at random and printed a
vignette. The process was repeated until 26 crisis vignettes had been generated
randomly to present to each of the survey respondents. We will focus on
the vignettes for which the respondent was asked to rate “How much of an
obligation would you feel to offer some financial help?” on a scale from 0 to
10, where 0 meant no obligation at all and 10 meant a very strong obligation.
The mean obligation scores for offering financial help, for 15 common relatives
and friends, averaged across the various vignettes, was plotted by Rossi
and Rossi on a “wheel of obligation,” which is reproduced as Figure 4.4. The
closer to the center of the wheel, the stronger the sense of obligation people felt:
NON–KIN
8+ 7–8 6–7 5–6 4–5 3–4 <3
“BLOOD”
RELATIVES
“BLOOD”
RELATIVES
MARITAL
RELATIVES
Parent 8.3
Child 8.3Child-inlaw
7.1Parent-
in-law
6.6
Stepchild
6.1
Ex-spouse
2.8
Neighbor
3.3
Step-
parent
5.4
Friend
4.9
Sibling
6.9
Grandparent
6.3
Grandchild
6.5
Niece/nephew
4.8
Aunt/uncle
4.0
Cousin
3.3
FIGURE 4.4
“Wheel of obligation”:
degree of obligation
felt by survey
respondents to various
relatives and friends, for
Boston-area adults,
1984–1985.
(Source: Rossi &
Rossi, 1990)
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130 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
A mean score of 10 would be plotted at the hub of the wheel, whereas a mean
score lower than 3 would be plotted in the outer circle. Note first that most of
the mean scores are close to the hub, indicating that people felt a moderate
to high level of obligation to most kin. Only neighbors and ex-spouses had
mean scores lower than four. (Of course, these are hypothetical obligations;
we don’t know whether people actually would provide financial assistance
this freely.) Since it did not make sense to ask these kinds of questions about
a person’s current husband or wife, there is no score for spouses.
Note also that the highest levels of obligation were expressed toward a
person’s parents and children. Indeed, all the relatives in the two circles surrounding
the hub are related to a person through a child, a parent, or a
spouse. This pattern suggests that adults felt the most obligation to the members
of the conjugal or single-parent families in which they grew up and
to the conjugal or single-parent families in which they have had children.
These vertical kinship ties—up and down the chain of generations from parents
to children to grandchildren—engender the strongest feelings of obligation.
They are created by direct descent and by marriage. Contrast the degree
of obligation adults felt toward more distant relatives such as aunts, uncles,
nieces, nephews, and cousins: None has an average score of five or above.
Kinship ties from a person’s marriage—even a second marriage—are stronger
than kinship ties toward these more distant blood relatives. For instance, note
that the adults felt more obligation toward a stepchild than toward a cousin or
a nephew. Obligations to the conjugal family, and to one’s parents, seem to
take precedence over those to other relatives.
The image of middle-class kinship suggested by these findings is of a tall,
solid tree trunk with skinny branches: The vertical axis is strong as one moves
from parents to children to grandchildren, but the horizontal links are weaker as
one moves from parents to uncles, or from children to nieces (Bengston, 2001).
Resources are passed from a person’s parents to his or her spouse and children,
and then to the grandchildren. Assistance to elderly parents is likely to be much
more substantial and more common than assistance to elderly aunts and uncles.
SOCIAL CLASS AND CHILD REARING
Families also differ by social class in how they raise their children. In general,
college-educated parents often act in ways that encourage autonomy and independence,
whereas less-educated parents more often encourage conformity
and obedience to (and distrust of ) authority. Not all parents fit this pattern,
of course; there is substantial variation within social classes. Moreover, as
the twentieth century progressed, parents in all social classes moved toward
emphasizing independence (Alwin, 1988). On average, though, intriguing
class differences remain.
Social Class and Parental Values Beginning in the 1960s, Melvin Kohn
pioneered a line of research showing the connections between the conditions
a person experiences on the job and his or her child rearing values (Kohn,
1969). He noted that working-class employees (by which he meant blue-collar
industrial workers), for the most part, are closely supervised, work with
physical objects (as would carpenters), and perform simple tasks repetitively
(as on an automobile assembly line). It is important for workers in these
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 131
jobs to obey their supervisors and to accept the discipline of doing repetitive
tasks. In contrast, middle-class workers (by which he meant white-collar
professional and technical workers), are less closely supervised, usually work
with data (as would computer programmers) or people (as would personnel
managers), and perform a variety of tasks (as would physicians). Middle-class
jobs, Kohn argued, encourage more independence than working-class jobs
and often reward creativity and individual initiative.
When working-class and middle-class parents are asked to select the most
important characteristics that children should have, their preferences reflect
their occupational positions. Working-class parents are more likely to select
obedience to authority, conformity, and good manners, whereas middle-class
parents are more likely to select independence, self-direction, curiosity, and
responsibility (Alwin, 1990). Working-class parents emphasize the kinds of
characteristics their children would need if they were to enter blue-collar jobs.
To work on an assembly line for 40 years requires obedience and conformity;
someone who is creative and independent might have a harder time tolerating
the job. In contrast, to be a successful manager requires independence and
initiative. Thus, each class socializes its children to fill the same positions their
In contrast to attitudes
prevalent a half-century
ago, wives (and their
husbands) view working
for pay outside the home
as a necessary and proper
activity.
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132 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
parents have filled. Because of his or her conformist upbringing, a child from
a working-class family may be less successful as a manager than a self-directed
child from the middle class. In this way, socialization by parents both is influenced
by and helps to perpetuate the social class divisions in the United States.
Concerted Cultivation versus Natural Growth More recently, sociologist
Annette Lareau intensively studied 12 families with third-graders and found class
differences in the way parents view the task of raising children (Lareau, 2003,
2011). These differences, which are consistent with Kohn’s research, applied to
both African American and European American children in her sample; at least
for these families, class, more than race, determined parents’ approaches to
child rearing. Lareau defined a group of families in which the parents had jobs
requiring college or more advanced degrees as “middle class” and a group with
jobs requiring less education as “working class” or “poor.” Middle-class families
tended to actively enhance children’s talents, opinions, and skills, a cultural
style she calls “concerted cultivation”—as if parents were cultivating a garden
so its plants would grow as well as possible. Working-class (and poor) parents,
on the other hand, did not focus on developing their children’s special talents;
Middle-class parents tend
to actively enhance their
children’s skills.
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 133
rather, they emphasized providing a safe environment and love and letting
children grow on their own. Lareau calls this cultural pattern the “accomplishment
of natural growth.” In everyday life, these different styles affected children’s
time use, language use, and family ties. Middle-class parents filled their
children’s weeks with a whirlwind of formal activities such as lessons, sports,
tutoring, and play dates, whereas working-class parents were often content to
let their children hang out at home or in the neighborhood. Middle-class parents
talked with their children more, reasoning with them rather than telling
them what to do. Children from working-class and poor families had closer ties
to uncles, aunts, and children than did middle-class children.
As a result, argues Lareau, middle-class children have advantages in school
and, later, in the job market: They are more assertive with authority figures
such as teachers and coaches, they are more verbal, and they have a more
independent sense of self. Working-class and poor children (and their parents)
are less likely to speak up for themselves and challenge authority; they
are more deferential and less trusting of authority. Middle-class children gain
a sense that they are entitled to a stimulating, rewarding daily life, whereas
working-class and poor children get a sense that their opportunities are constrained.
So as they grow up, middle-class children are in a better position to
achieve a middle-class lifestyle themselves. The main point, for Lareau as for
Kohn, is that the social class of the family you grow up in affects the way you
think about school, authority figures, and work.
• Poor families often depend on women-centered kinship networks, in large part because men
cannot consistently earn enough to support a family.
• Nonpoor families typically center on a wife, husband, and children who have obligations to their
parents and their grandchildren but are otherwise independent of kin.
• Middle-class parents tend to emphasize independence and self-direction in raising children.
• Working-class parents tend to emphasize conformity and obedience to authority in raising
children.
Quick Review
Social Class and the Family
A half-century ago, most families with children, rich or poor, had two parents
and one earner. As recently as the early 1970s, half of all poor families
consisted of married couples; by 2010 one-third were married-couple families
(U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011e). Meanwhile, a majority of well-off
families have two parents and two earners. Thus, the association between
the type of family you live in and your social class position is stronger today
than in the past. This great sorting out of families by social class has occurred
for both economic and cultural reasons. On the economic side, two developments
stand out: the movement of married women into the workforce and
the declining employment prospects of men without college educations. On
the cultural side are the rise in expressive individualism and people’s higher
aspirations for material goods.
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134 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
In the 1960s and 1970s, social commentators debated whether it was “necessary”
for married women to work. After all, standards of living had been far
lower in the first half of the twentieth century, and yet few married women
had worked outside the home. However, the economic slide after 1973
more or less ended that debate. Among those without college educations,
objections to married women working outside the home faded as decentpaying
entry-level blue-collar jobs—the kind of jobs young husbands used to
take—dwindled. Whereas in the 1970s wives’ employment was seen by many
as a sign of a husband’s failure to provide adequately for his family, now it is
seen as a necessary and acceptable contribution.
Among couples with college educations, the employment situation has been
better; still, only two-earner couples have been beating inflation consistently.
Moreover, the price of housing has risen far faster than wages, placing the
American dream of homeownership out of reach of more and more singleearner
couples. In the 1950s and 1960s, payments on a median-priced home
required just 15 to 18 percent of the average 30-year-old man’s income. That
figure rose to 20 percent in 1973 and then doubled to 40 percent in 1987 (Levy
& Michel, 1991). Housing affordability deteriorated further through the early
2000s (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2009c). Consequently, for college-educated
couples, too, wives’ employment was seen as necessary and acceptable. (In
the mid-2000s the availability of so-called subprime mortgage loans to families
with modest incomes may have created the illusion that homes were more
affordable, but many of the families that took out these loans defaulted on the
payments, triggering the Great Recession of the late 2000s.)
Concurrently, adults in a more individualistic culture were freer to choose
not to marry or to end marriages. Having children outside of marriage became
more acceptable. People’s expectations about what constitutes a good life also
changed. Young middle-class couples could, in theory, aspire only to the standard
of living of the late 1940s and early 1950s—which for many consisted of
an apartment or a small, one-story home, one car, a clothesline in the backyard
for drying the laundry, one telephone, no stereo system, few restaurant
meals, no airplane travel, and, of course, no DVD players or computers—and
still keep one parent home all day. This is not an appealing prospect in a
country where people have gotten used to a higher standard of living that is
promoted by advertising and reinforced by the media.
With regard to what women and men do in families, however, class
differences may have lessened over the past few decades. To be sure, the
women-centered kinship networks of low-income families remain distinctive.
Yet not all low-income families have functioning networks, and the number
of single-mother families has increased among the nonpoor as well. The distinctive
working-class gender segregation and resistance to wives’ employment,
presented in several widely read mid-twentieth-century studies (Bott,
1957; Gans, 1962; Rubin, 1976), seems to have faded. Child-rearing patterns
do still seem different, with college-educated parents instilling in their children
a sense of independence and of entitlement to a rewarding life, while
less-educated parents tend to stress obedience, safety, and natural growth.
These class differences in child rearing could affect the quality of education
that children obtain and the type of occupations they will eventually get.
Until the 1980s, families at all educational levels seemed to move in parallel
as rates of marriage, divorce, and childbearing rose and fell in waves.
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 135
Since then, however, we see evidence that families at the top and bottom
of the social ordering are moving in different directions. The college educated
appear to be consolidating their gains in the restructured economy:
Young adults postpone marriage while obtaining advanced educations, then
they marry spouses who also have college degrees, and only then do they
have children. Their marriages have become more stable in recent years, quite
possibly reflecting their improved economic position. In contrast, individuals
without high school degrees seem increasingly marginalized. They are isolated
in the marriage market, as if shunned by those with better economic
prospects. They often have children years before marrying, if they marry at
all. And their marriages still have a high risk of divorce. These are not encouraging
trends in a nation that thinks of itself as a land of equal opportunity.
Social class is not the only way that American society classifies families.
Racial and ethnic distinctions are also frequently made, and it is to these differences
in family patterns that we now turn.
Extended families are more
important to the working
class than to the middle
class.
1. How have changes in the American economy since
the 1970s affected families? The restructuring of the
U.S. economy since the 1970s has caused a shortage of
well-paid semiskilled and skilled jobs that do not require a
college education—the kind of jobs less-educated young
men used to rely on to support their wives and children—
and has increased the importance of education. Since the
1970s, incomes have increased the most among families
headed by college graduates and the least among families
headed by persons who did not graduate from high school.
2. How have the family lives of people at the top and
bottom of the social order diverged recently? People
with college educations are more likely to marry than are
people with less education, although they marry at later
ages. Their marriages are less likely to end in divorce, and
they are less likely to have a child outside of marriage. In
general, people are more likely than in the past to marry
someone with a similar level of education. The typical life
course of people who obtain college degrees involves
completing one’s education, then marrying someone else
Looking Back
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Confirming Pages
136 Part II Gender, Class, and Race-Ethnicity
Go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/cherlin7e
to test your knowledge of the chapter concepts and key terms.
who is a college graduate, and then having children. For
a person who does not graduate from high school, the life
course may involve having children well before marrying,
having a restricted choice of marriage partners, and having
a high risk of divorce if one does marry at all.
3. How has the globalization of production affected
family life in developed and developing countries? In
developed countries such as the United States, the globalization
of production has benefited the college-educated,
who are adopting a neo-traditional style of family life,
while disadvantaging the less educated, for whom marriage
is becoming less central to family life. In developing
countries, globalization has had positive effects such as
increased income and negative effects such as childcare
problems, as more women have begun working for pay.
4. What factors determine the social class position of
families? Sociologists agree that income and wealth are
important. In addition, they examine whether the worker
belongs to a status group with shared levels of prestige, privilege,
and lifestyle. Since many families have more than one
earner, the social class position of families can be ambiguous.
Therefore, the four social classes that are usually defined—
upper, middle, working, and lower—should be considered as
hypothetical models (ideal types). Recent trends suggest that
it may be useful to use people’s educational levels to define a
set of three status groups.
5. Are there social class differences in kinship? Poor and
near-poor families are distinctive because many of them
consist of single-parent units embedded in kin networks
although these networks may be less prevalent than in
the past. These networks share resources in order to ease
the burdens of poverty. Nonpoor families consist mainly of
two-parent households that are relatively independent
of kin except for vertical ties to grandparents and
grandchildren.
6. Are there differences across classes in how parents
raise children? Poor and working-class parents tend to
emphasize obedience and conformity in raising children,
whereas middle-class parents are more likely to emphasize
independence. As a result, sociologists suggest, poor
and working-class children are not as assertive with
authority figures such as teachers. They also show less
self-direction and independent initiative. Middle-class
children develop a sense that they are entitled to a rewarding
life. These child-rearing differences tend to steer poor
and working-class children toward blue-collar and service
work and to steer middle-class children toward professional
and managerial work.
1. Why has the globalization of production
affected workers without college educations
more than the college educated?
2. How has the growth of single-parent families
affected the incomes of families with
different levels of education?
3. What are the strengths and limitations
of the four-class (upper, middle, working,
lower) model of social status in the
United States?
4. What is a “status group” and how does it
relate to the concept of social class?
5. How has the role of education in the
marriage market changed over the past
several decades?
6. Why might a young woman with little
education choose to have a child without
marrying?
7. What are the costs and benefits of the
sharing networks commonly used by
low-income families?
8. What advantages accrue to children with
college-educated parents who engaged in
“concerted cultivation” of them?
Study Questions
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Chapter 4 Social Class and Family Inequality 137
Key Terms
assortative marriage 116
family inequality 111
formal sector 119
ideal type 122
informal sector 119
life chances 120
lower-class families 124
middle-class families 123
neo-traditional 118
polarization
(of the labor market) 111
social class 120
status group 121
upper-class families 122
women-centered kinship 127
working-class families 123
Thinking about Families
What obligations do you think extended kin like
grandparents, uncles, and aunts have to aid parents and
children?
How are the relationships between men and women
different from social class to social class?
The Public Family The Private Family
Ten years ago there was little good data on
homelessness. Advocates virtually made up
numbers that were repeated in the press and in
popular debates. That has now changed. The
main reason is the reporting system that the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
has set up. The Department publishes
an annual report to Congress that is based on
the information they obtain from this system.
To obtain the most recent report, enter this
phrase into a search engine: “Annual homelessness
assessment report to Congress.” You
will see a list of the annual reports; choose
the most recent one. In the report, you can
find the number of people who were homeless
on the single night during that year,
usually in January, when all of the agencies
search for the homeless and report the results
to HUD. You can also learn the total number
of people who spent at least one night in an
emergency shelter during the year. The 2010
report shows a surprising decline, noted in
this chapter, in chronic homelessness during
the Great Recession. See Exhibit 2-4 in
http://www.hudhre.info/documents/2010Hom
elessAssessmentReport.pdf
Families on the Internet www.mhhe.com/cherlin7e
Note: While all the URLs listed were current as of the printing of this book, these sites often change.
Please check our Web site (www.mhhe.com/cherlin7e) for updates.
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