C O U R S E   4   -   2 8   F E B R U A R Y   2 0 2 3

Unequal childhoods – concerted cultivation or poverty?

Big picture (1) – the growing ‘skills gap’

• Social inequality in labor market opportunities, income, health and life expectancy are increasingly dependent on the skills people acquire in the course of their lives.
  • It is about cognitive academic (school) skills, but also about broader non-cognitive skills in the social-emotional domain such as self-esteem, self-control, ability to collaborate, motivation, creativity, and cultural and social capital (deze begrippen worden later verder uitgelegd).
• Family income (not race, ethnicity, social class as such) is an increasingly important factor explaining inequalities in educational and social opportunities.
  • The higher income families spend an increasing part of their (already higher) income on high quality childcare and after school care, private schools, non-formal shadow education, and informal social, cultural and creative socialization, and sports » all to the benefits of their children
• Income differences by diploma (1964-2012)
  • Despite increased educational spending and access to education, the income gap by diploma has widened by a factor 2.
  • Even in egalitarian countries like Denmark a multiplication of the income gap has occurred (Heckman, 2020)
  • This has to do with the idea of skills acquisition

Big picture (2) – privatization of education

• Next to the public education system, there is a growing market of non-formal ‘shadow education’ (e.g. exam training) and informal education in social and cultural skills (music, creativity, sports, science).
• Non-formal schadow education in The Netherlands: from 26m € per year in 1996 to 284m € in 2018.
• Shadow education is a widespread phenomenon. There is a strong increase in money that parents spend on extra education for their children.
• High private costs on shadow education are the major cause of the growing ‘skills gap’

Social and educational inequalities

• Educational inequalities and, later in life, unequal social opportunities emerge already early and point to unequal childhoods.
• 60% to 80% of the education gap between children from low and high SES family backgrounds at the end of primary school is already present at age 6, so before formal schooling starts (Skopek et al., 2021).
• Primary education cannot (greatly) reduce the early gaps and gaps tend to become bigger after transition to secondary education

2 studies om beeld te geven van ‘unequal childhood’:

Early gesturing and vocabulary growth (Rowe & Golding-Meadow, 1999)

• Even before real language learning starts, there is already a difference between high and low socioeconomic families in how they orchestrate children’s language learning
• Gesturing (pointing, iconic, enacting) at age 14 months predicts vocabulary at age 54 months (while vocabulary at age 14 months does not)
• Gestures between parents and child shows strong SES differences. In the higher educated, richer families, there were more varied gestures in their interactions. These gestures explained a rapid growth of vocabulary later on
• Children’s (imitative) gesturing mediates the effects of parent gesturing on vocabulary growth

Early language processing and vocabulary (Fernhald, Marchman & Weisleder, 2013)

• (young) Children in higher SES families react already much more accurately to when the parent certain words. They look at the object that is mend by the parent
• Processing of language correlates with vocabulary growth in early years
• Gaps increase (substantially) between 18 and 24 months (of age). It’s predicted by how well children attend to verbal input by the parents

Social inequalities emerge already very early in life and are sustained throughout childhood and adolescence. How can we explain this?

»  2 major concepts: concerted cultivation and material deprivation (poverty)

Concerted cultivation (Lareau)

• Concerted cultivation: the never absent control (oversight) of middle class parents of children’s activities with a long-distant future (broad educational) goal in mind, to have them become capable, talented, assertive, self-regulating and successful citizens.
• Natural growth: parenting in working and poor families is limited to providing safe, healthy and warm-loving environments to children, where children can thrive and develop ‘naturally’.

Autonomy vs. obedience?

• We think of individualism as a cultural model that stimulates autonomy
• Sociocentrism is more about obedience, being respectful, social responsible, etc.
• Interesting observation regarding individualism and sociocentrism:
  • Bounded autonomy: autonomy and assertiveness as an outcome, embedded in a pedagogical masterplan (in middle class)
  • Actual autonomy: without a future-orientated plan (lower class)
• ‘In sum, differences in family life lie not only in the advantages that parents are able to obtain for their children, but also in the skills being transmitted to children for negotiating their own life paths…’ (Lareau, 2018).

Cultural and linguistic capital

= taalkundig kapitaal

• Cultural habitus (Bourdieu): being familiarized from early on with the ways of speaking, appreciating, and talking about (classical) music, fine arts, literature, and the philosophical ideas of the cultural elite.
• It gives the child ‘cultural and social capital’ » helping the child to adapt to, and feel included in the (secondary) school system and higher education, to establish relationships with like-minded/likewise socialized peers
• Restricted vs. elaborate code (Bernstein):
  
  • Style of talking: directives vs. explanations & reasoning, immediate references to the here-and-now (instrumental, functional) vs. non-immediate references to the past/the future/other contexts (informative, educational)
  • Different vocabularies and grammar skills (basic communication vs. academic language)

“Pedagogic action in education is, objectively, symbolic violence first insofar as the power relations between the groups or classes making up a social formation are the basis of the arbitrary power given to the teachers which is the precondition for the establishment of a relation of pedagogic communication, i.e., for the imposition and inculcation of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary mode of imposition and inculcation in education.” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1975)

Culture or poverty? – some nuances

Besproken studie: also in low-income countries/cities, parents want their children to become cultivated (educational aspirations), so they organize (extra-curricular) activities for them

»  Explanatory factors (bij de studie):

• School-related extracurricular activities: different patterns by country, possibly pointing to targeted remedial programs in some countries and private shadow education in other countries
• Religious & heritage language activities: strongly predicted by the importance of religion in daily family life (cultural factors)
• Sports, dance & physical activities and social clubs, scouting, musical & arts activities: strongly negatively predicted by a material deprivation index (‘poverty’) and strongly positively predicted by parental education and the educational aspirations parents hold for their children

What is poverty?

• The income is not sufficient to meet the everyday needs.
  • It’s about needs considered to be ‘normal’ in society.
  • It’s about income relative to a country’s average income level (e.g., below 60% of the average net income).
• Poverty is associated with:
  
  • Low education levels (of parents).
  • Low levels of employment.
  • High levels of psychological stress.
  • Violent, polluted neighborhoods.
  • Lack of access to good quality services

Unexpected expenses, holidays, warming the house in the winter, etc. is hard to afford for many families

What is the problem regarded poverty?

• Child’s right perspective: all children should be healthy and feeling good, and should be facilitated to develop their potentials
• Social inequality:
  
  • Poverty is negatively related to wellbeing, educational achievement and behavioral adjustment
  • Social inequality due to poverty comes with costs for society
• Intergenerational transmission of poverty » het is waarschijnlijker dat wanneer je zelf arm bent, je dit ook doorgeeft aan de volgende generatie

Effects of income and parental education on early brain development (Noble et al., 2015)

• Higher family income and parental education are associated with a larger cortical surface and increased hippocampal volume, underlying language, executive functions and memory
• Associations show a logarithmic shape: income and education are stronger related to brain development at the lower income and education levels.
• If you give poor families some extra money (it doesn’t have to be much), they often spend it on child care centers, they buy toys and children’s books, sometimes a holiday » they spend the money on concerted cultivation activities. Result: less stress, more parent-child time, more time for conversations with reasoning.

Institutional & policy context

• Education systems characteristics as related to equal educational and social opportunities:
  • Age of onset formal education: preschool education and care: accessibility, affordability, use, quality
  • Age of transition to (ability) tracks:
    
    • Educational decision making, role of parents’ voice and background
    • Use of formal standardized (language and culture-fair) tests
  • Degree of tracking and differentiation: opportunities for up-streaming
  • Demands upon parents to support children: part-day (+ homework) vs. whole-day arrangements
• Findings: early tracking
  
  • Studies on equity and efficiency of educational systems conclude that early stratification and sorting of students to different tracks of secondary schools tend to increase inequality in academic achievement among students while not improving overall achievement levels at the population level (dus: soort van verlies-verlies situatie)
  • In tracking systems disparities by socioeconomic background in academic achievement and educational attainment tend to be larger as compared to comprehensive systems.

Use of pre-primary ECEC by age of the child

(= Early Childhood Education and Care)​​​​​​​

• Average patterns, but (large) differences between parents within groups, between groups, between localities and between countries.
• Overall, much lower level of ECEC use and later increase in participation in the Roma group and, to a lesser degree, the low-income nationals.
• Explaining patterns of ECEC use by parent and family characteristics:
  
  • Parents’ education level is a strong positive predictor, parents’ educational aspirations, mothers’ work status, experienced social support, adoptive-acculturation attitudes and inter-ethnic contact are positive predictors too.
  • Importance of religion: This is in daily life a strong negative predictor (pointing to cultural barriers), the number of children in the family and poverty are negative predictors too (pointing to financial barriers).
  • Participation is lower in some countries and in some localities within countries, controlling for all of the characteristics mentioned above, due to system and local policy characteristics.
• To summarize:
  
  • Participation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) for 0 to 3-year-olds is higher in countries with early entitlement and generous public spending to ECEC.
  • Participation in ECEC for 4 to 6-years-olds approaches the maximum, related to the onset of universal publicly funded preschool-kindergarten systems in most countries.
  • Targeted and culturally inclusive policies explain use in the early years and in particular strong increases in participation by immigrant and low-income groups.

Local inter-agency collaboration and coordinating governance to support families

Opvoeden is heel stressvol, veel ouders zijn onzeker over wat ze doen en hoe ze het aan moeten pakken. Zeker als er ook nog armoede speelt, helpt support heel erg

Case studies of governance models in 10 countries at two of more local sites (informants N=64), resulting in country reports that address:​​​​​​​

• Degree of decentralization in terms of legal authority, responsibility and budget; principle of subsidiarity.
• Degree of inter-sectoral integration vs. segregation (e.g., different funding streams, different salaries and working conditions, different ministries, …).
• Degree of system hybridity: role of public institutions vs. non-governmental charities and idealistic organizations with a social-emancipatory mission.
• Degree of coordination power at the local level (power of municipalities or of a dominant sector to stimulate or enforce inter-agency collaboration.

To conclude ​​​​​​​

• ‘Concerted cultivation’ of a broad set of skills in the family and through extra-curricular activities (unequal childhoods) is a major force driving the increasing education gaps and skills-based social inequality (jobs, income, health, life expectancy).
• ‘Culture’ seems less important as explanatory factor than socioeconomic factors – poverty in particular (negative effect).
• Also underprivileged poor families, if supported, want their children to develop and acquire broad cognitive and non-cognitive skills.
• Value-driven local collaboration between governments, NGOs (= non-governmental organisations), churches and community initiatives hold promise.