Social Reproduction and Child-rearing Practices: Social Class, Children's Agency, and the Summer Activity Gap

Abstract

This study contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate about the relative importance of parents' resources and values in influencing parents' child-rearing practices. Using ethnographic data on children's summer experiences, the authors examine how families from different ethnic and social-class backgrounds assemble child care and other activities for their children during summer vacation. The authors argue that social-class differences in the quality and quantity of children's activities do not stem largely from fundamental differences in parents' desires to help children develop or cultivate their skills and talents. Instead, these differences stem from parents' differential access to a wide range of resources, including money, the human capital to know how best to assess and improve children's skills, the cultural capital to know how best to cultivate children's talents, and the social capital to learn about and gain access to programs and activities. The authors also show that children's own values and temperaments, or “child capital,” strongly influence children's activities, sometimes compensating for parents' lack of resources and sometimes impeding parents' efforts to construct stimulating summers for their children.