This article is a commentary on "Unwrapping the Suburban "Package Deal": Race, Class, and School Access," by Anna Rhodes and Siri Warkentien. Although guided by powerful ideals of equal opportunity, American schools are deeply unequal. As historians of education have taught, children of different racial, ethnic, and class…

Stratification is a central issue in family research, yet relatively few studies highlight its impact on family processes. Drawing on in-depth interviews (N = 137) and observational data (N = 12), we extend Melvin Kohn's research on childrearing values by examining how parental commitments to self-direction and conformity are enacted in daily…

Focusing on parental networks--a central dimension of social capital--this article uses ethnographic data to examine social-class differences in the relations between families and schools. We detail the characteristics of networks across different classes and then explore the ways that networks come into play when parents are confronted by…

Examined role of social class in shaping contours of U.S. white and African American childhoods. Found that middle-class 7- to 10-year-old boys spent time in adult-organized activities stressing public performance and skill development, similar to their school activities, and paralleling the nature of their parents' work. Found working-class…

Social class influences parent involvement in schooling. This book uses the case study method to compare family-school relationships in a working-class elementary school with those in an upper middle-class school, focusing on one first grade class in each school, and within the two schools, on 12 families, over the course of their children's first…

In education, it is necessary to look at students who are marginalized, and excluded, who is centered or privileged, and how, through academic discourse, silences are created, sustained, and legitimized. The three papers in this collection explore the politics of silencing and voice in education. "It's More Covert Today': The Importance of…

Summarizes a qualitative study of family/school relationships in White working class and middle class areas. Concludes that schools have standardized views of the proper role of parents in schooling. Suggests that the concept of cultural capital is useful to understand social class differences in children's school experiences. (Author/RKM)