Child Rearing Theory

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Unequal Childhoods- Child Rearing In Unequal Childhood - Class, Race, and Family Life, Annette Lareau tributes the French social scientist Pierre Bourdieu when using his theory of the forms of capital as a fundamental argument on her study. In this theory, Bourdieu recognizes three different types of capital; social, symbolical and cultural. Bourdieu describes social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.” This means that social capital is based on resources built from personal relationships, club memberships and other social influence and connections. The second form of capital, …show more content…

Contrasting to Garrett, Tyrec’s parents cannot afford to invest as much in Tyrec as most middle class parents would. Tyrec is an example of the other child rearing approach defined by Lareau; natural growth. In the natural growth process, children have more unstructured time and therefore they create their own activities to entertain themselves. This parenting style does not prepare children to face very structured environments, such as school. Tyrec is a perfect example of natural growth child rearing style. Since his parents do not have much time to spend with him, and do not have time to hire help, this leads Tyrec to live his daily life by his own plan, and has the liberty to do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Due to this lack of social schedule, children as Tyrec do not learn the same principal rules of society that a middle class kid as Garret does. As seen in Lareau study, natural growth families tend to be more individualistic, meaning that an activity a member of the family might do will not affect the other members. Coming from a natural growth child rearing style family, Tyrec is going to lack mostly cultural capital. This is because as said before, he is not going to be used to a structured environment as school so he is probably going to struggle on it, and therefore his education may not reach high

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