“America may be the land of opportunity, but it is also a land of inequality,” argues sociologist Annette Lareau in her book, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life.

Lareau and her team of researchers did interviews with 88 families, followed by intensive observations of twelve families (six White, five Black and one interracial), to analyse the ways in which parents’ social class impacts children’s life experiences.

She observed that middle-class families typically adopt a “concerted cultivation” approach towards child-rearing, whereas the “accomplishment of natural growth” is practised by working-class and poor families. These transmit different advantages to children, which impact their future when they enter the world of work.

“Concerted Cultivation” vs. “Natural Growth”

For middle-class families engaged in “concerted cultivation,” where parents see themselves as developing their children through organised activities, parents frequently elicit their children’s opinions and engage in discussions with them.

One stark example is Garrett Tallinger, who lived a hectic life as a White fourth-grader (9 to 10 years old) in a middle-class family. His schedule consisted of school and almost-daily after-school activities including baseball, piano lessons, soccer, swim classes and more. His parents – who were both working until the end of the study when the mother quit – had their calendars tightly packed, being involved in ferrying their three children to and from these daily activities.

Young Black fourth-grader Alexander Williams, the only child of the middle-class Williams family, had a similar childhood. Mr and Mrs Williams also engaged Alexander in frequent banter and conversation, inviting his opinions and asking about his day. In one instance, they jokingly accused him of “plagiarism” for taking a riddle from a book. Alexander’s retort, “That’s only if it is copyrighted”, showed a remarkable level of knowledge not only of the concept of “plagiarism” but also of “copyright”.

On the other hand, parents in working-class and poor families facilitated the “accomplishment of natural growth”, where children were typically free to go out and play with friends and relatives who usually lived close by. There was a clear boundary between adults and children, and parents tended to tell their children what to do rather than try to persuade or reason with them.

Thus, unlike his middle-class counterparts, Harold McAllister (Black, 10 year-old) structured his time much to his own liking. Living in a poor household, he played football with his friends and relatives, and organised basketball games. When engaged in games, he was animated and assertive, even though he was quiet at home. The use of language was also short and direct. For example, to coordinate the use of the bathroom between the multiple children at home, Ms McAllister would simply point to a child, say “bathroom” and hand the child a washcloth.

Parents’ use of physical punishment and fear of government intervention could be seen in the case of 10-year-old Billy Yanelli, a boy raised in a white, working-class household. On one occasion, Billy had three distinct red marks on his forearm, having shielded himself when his mother Ms Yanelli hit him with a belt. His mother then became frantic that “he had to go to school that way”, fearing that the school would report her to the authorities for child abuse.

The following table – found in the book – summarises Lareau’s typologies of “concerted cultivation” and “accomplishment of natural growth” child-rearing approaches:

Long-Term Benefits?

In Lareau’s view, central institutions in society – such as schools – “firmly and decisively” promote strategies of concerted cultivation in child rearing. As a result, children whose parents adopted strategies of concerted cultivation appeared to gain a sense of entitlement, while children who were raised according to the “natural growth” model developed “an emerging sense of distance, distrust, and constraint in their institutional experiences”.

Ten years later, in 2003, Lareau confirmed her view after getting back in touch with the families for a follow-up study. She found that, overall, the working-class and poor youth in Unequal Childhoods aspired to graduate from high school and go to college, but were less successful in doing so compared to the middle-class youth. Most achieved educational levels similar to those of their parents, many of whom were high school dropouts.

For example, Garrett Tallinger and Alexander Williams made it to college. Garrett was on a four-year basketball scholarship, and excelled academically. Alexander reported receiving B’s in nearly all his courses, felt he could have done better, and was planning to be a doctor.

On the other hand, Billy Yanelli’s behavioural problems undermined his success, having walked off a job, and endangered his job at the time because of his drug use. Harold McAllister dropped out of high school, and was working full-time.

Lareau reflected on how much had changed for these children. When they were ten, the middle-class children seemed “worldly, blasé, and hard to impress”, while the poor and working-class children seemed “younger, bouncier, and more childlike”. It had reversed, and the middle-class youth seemed younger.

She opined that the institutions of today tend to favour child-rearing approaches where parents are actively involved. Especially in schools, “today’s institutional rules of the game require parents to be actively involved in order to maximize opportunities for their children.” Conversely, it is harder for poor and working-class families to comply with those standards.

Singapore: “Concerted Cultivation” on Steroids?

Local folklore – or our grandmother stories – frequently includes idle days in the kampung or public housing playing with neighbours, swimming in ‘longkangs’, catching spiders and the like. Theirs tended towards a “natural growth” childhood, per Lareau’s categories. These remain a thing of the past as Singapore progressed from Third World to First, becoming one of the wealthiest nations in the world per capita. Today, the typical Singaporean childhood looks a lot more like “concerted cultivation”, on steroids.

Piano, violin, ballet, enrichment, tuition (for multiple subjects) – all on top of daily homework – mark the lives of young students in the education system, leading to complaints of the system being a “pressure-cooker” and “rat race”. All of this reflects a “kiasu” (fear of losing out) mindset where parents do their best to ensure that their children succeed in life with a good education and good job in the future. And this seems to be growing. Singaporeans spent $1.8 billion in private tuition in 2023, up from $1.4 billion in 2018 and $1.1 billion in 2013. As of 2021, there were more than 800 registered tuition and enrichment centres.

Singapore’s pressure-cooker culture towards child-raising might be a reason for its low birth rates as well. According to the Government, factors such as “financial costs of child-raising” and “pressures to be an excellent parent” were among the reasons why Singapore’s total fertility rate hit a record low of 0.97 in 2023.

Lower-income households find it more difficult to keep up with such an intense environment. The Government’s 2023 Forward Singapore report noted the “natural tendency” of “families with greater means to pass on advantages to their children, enabling them to do even better”, which may cause society to become more stratified and less mobile. As part of the efforts to address this issue, the education system is evolving to provide students with more “porous and diverse” pathways, and to “recognise students’ diverse strengths and abilities, rather than purely academic performance”.

However, there remains one area which laws and policies can certainly support but cannot create: family. Dynamics of families and family structure – including things like formation of families, strengthening of family bonds, and guarding against easy divorces or dissolutions of marriages – are a significant contributor to class differences. To strengthen the family unit, societal attitudes and value systems are also important.