Nature or Nurture

The fact is seldom disputed that getting ahead in life is based largely on acquiring the basic skills and mentality for success before the end of adolescence. Sociologists differ in their portrayal of how the basic aptitude for career and cultural success is transmitted. In retrospection of my white, middle class upbringing, I noticed that my proclivity toward success was brought about by interactions with peers and institutions as much as by my parents. My parents' responsibility for my successes is evident in their representation of a middle class way of living, addressing the world, and talking. I feel that in my formative years the concerted cultivation of my parents prepared me for scholastic and post-scholastic success. If my parents did not have the basic middle class skill set or if I was not around middle class people, my parents would not be able to instill in me (no matter how much their parenting style subscribed to "concerted cultivation") the skills necessary to succeed in the institutions of a middle class world.

In Ain't No Makin' It, Jay MacLeod emphasizes schools as microcosms of boundless institutional power that reinforce the status quo of middle and upper class values. MacLeod argues that by teaching students in a middle class manner, "schools train the wealthy to take up places at the top of the economy while conditioning the poor to accept their lowly status in the class structure" (MacLeod 12). While this helps explain the growing disparity that begins at the start of school and continues throughout school and through most societal institutions of power, it fails to account for the key issue in class perpetuation - why the "wealthy" were better off before school started.

MacLeod might explain that the middle and upper class youth absorbed from their surroundings the privileged culture, "language patterns," "attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of those inhabiting one's social world" (MacLeod, 15-16). I definitely experienced this. Living in a middle class world with middle class peers, middle class parents, and even middle class strangers, every social interaction I had imparted in me an understanding of my place in society. Along with vocabulary and academic skills, I learned to avoid manual labor, to try hard in school, and to act relatively respectful without being disrespected myself. These things were not necessarily a consequence of direct parenting tactics. I was able to view middle class people as role models and feel that they regarded me as a member of the same class. If I asked for clarification while ordering food, the workers in my neighborhood regarded it as the proper way of acting and commended my manipulation of the situation instead of putting me in my place. I was able to gain the initial skills necessary for scholastic success from class context as much as from direct involvement of my parents.

MacLeod's theory of social reproduction is really an explanation of why the poor and marginalized stay poor and marginalized, and is less readily applied to the affluent. The middle class have few dashed aspirations for escape but the examples of the Brothers and Hallway Hangers are still applicable to the more fortunate. While the upward dreaming Brothers' aspirations are tempered by reality and their "expectations take...constraints squarely into account," a middle class teenager may inversely recognize that their expectations exceed their aspirations (MacLeod 61). A middle class teenager does not need to regard school as paramount, respect middle class values, or think deeply about their future in order to go to college and get a solid, well-paid job. This dichotomy of effort and reality demonstrates MacLeod's point that aspirations do not dictate societal position.

Personally, I worked hard in school, spending maybe five hours in elementary school to write and rewrite a one page essay. I believed as deeply and as falsely in the idea of meritocratic advancement as did the Brothers. Some of my peers worked harder than me, many worked less, but we all received a check mark on the tops of our paper. In middle and high school, the same inequality of effort continued. The students who did nothing but study might receive only As, but the students who worked a couple of hours a week, just finishing the assignments, got mostly As and Bs as well. Almost everyone at my high school went on to higher education, and I do not predict a vast difference in the futures of any of my peers. MacLeod's theory explains accurately and clearly the minimal effects of aspirations on class and the general nature of class being inherited from surroundings, but his theory becomes somewhat incomplete in describing the transmission of class on the individual, micro level.

A solution to this problem is offered in Annette Lareau's Unequal Childhoods. Lareau attributes the privilege of the middle class to traits and skills imparted by parents to children. Lareau claims that parents utilize "discussions between parents and children" and "organized activities" to "cultivate...talents in a concerted fashion" (Lareau 1). Lareau describes the cultivated talents as going beyond strengths in reading, math and sports to include a "sense of entitlement" and "cultural capital" that allows children to feel comfortable manipulating and negotiating with the institutions that affect their lives for their personal gain. (Lareau 6, 7) Middle class parents teach these skills through direct instruction and the investment of time as well as through role modeling. A parent's intervention in education through questions about homework, reading aloud, and active conversations with teachers can impart not only educational skills but also an understanding in a child that they must seek out the advantages of an institution. Another way that middle class parents can pass on their class status is by their tendency "to participate in institutions serving the elite" (Lareau 15). Lareau characterizes the parenting style of the lower class as generally lacking the traits of the middle class: they let the children figure things out for themselves in a process called "natural growth" (Lareau, 3). She claims that the lower class' parenting style creates a "sense of constraint (for lower class children) in their interactions in institutional settings" (Lareau, 6).

Yet Lareau's argument fails to accord with historical precedents. In the twentieth century there was a massive migration to the middle class. My grandparents worked at near minimum wage and never attended college, but my parents both have master's degrees. From what I have heard about my parents' childhood, they were largely free of parental guidance and left to grow naturally.

Lareau's theory, thus, is modern and has relevance not as a theory for the history of class, but as a description of the present. The present world of childrearing and of class in general has become more stratified, less open to vertical movements, and more reliant upon class precedent. I've noticed that my own early life closely resembles Lareau's descriptions of idyllic middle class cultivation. My parents have read to me since I was in the crib, I was enrolled in three activities throughout my adolescence, and my parents always asked probing questions that required problem solving and thinking about how to best utilize institutions like my school. I also learned from my parents by example. I remember listening to my mother call my school and complain about how there was too much religion in the school programs. While I developed a slight disgust for the indignant manner in which she complained and wished she would meddling in affairs that did not concern her so that I wouldn't be singled out, I also observed the efficacy of a voice of dissent and the ease of changing an institution with persistent, polite, articulate complaints. Perhaps because of examples like this, I was never afraid to talk in class, voice my opinion, or do other things that Lareau associates with a middle class mentality.

MacLeod's viewpoint of class seems more comprehensive and is a better comment on the difficulties of escaping poverty and the ease of staying in the middle class. While it is possible to make Macleod's theory applicable to my life, I found that in doing so I was distorting MacLeod's theory to an outlook closer to that of Lareau's. In trying to make my early childhood a product of forces other than my parents, I felt like I was giving too much importance to my neighborhood and my community. I think that forces like one's neighborhood and community have more of an influence in lower class communities and thus MacLeod's theory may fit well in such a situation.

My experiences seem to agree better with Lareau's descriptions of the middle class. My only concern is that Lareau fails to establish a cause and effect between the professed practices of parents and the resultant class of the children. Even if concerted cultivation correlates with a transmitted middle class, Lareau does not prove that it causes it. Nonetheless, her theory can be generalized easily among my experiences. It makes sense that the cultivating forces of my parents and the parents of my peers are to be attributed for the diffusion of class from one generation to the next. Lareau's theory is a valuable explanation of the origin of my class.

Works Cited

Lareau, Annette. Unequal Childhoods : Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

MacLeod, Jay. Ain't no Makin' it : Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.