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Enfances inégales

Enfances inégales

Classe, race et vie de famille

Preface by Sylvie Octobre, Kevin Diter, Régine Sirota

Sociétés, Espaces, Temps



Unequal Childhoods
Class, Race, and Family Life

Unequal Childhoods is a major work in American social sciences that intersects the fields of family sociology, childhood studies, education, and social inequalities. Unique in both its methodology (long-term ethnographic study within families) and its approach (detailed portrait analysis), it uncovers the various mechanisms through which social inequalities form during childhood and the central role played by parenting styles, especially as they intersect with social institutions such as the school. By meticulously portraying the daily lives of children from diverse social backgrounds, in black and white families, highlighting the specific ways in which these are structured and supervised by adults, and depicting the varying nature and degree of parental investments, it not only reveals the existence of plural and unequal childhoods within the same geographical area, but also allows for an understanding of their economic, sociologic, cultural, and linguistic roots.

Written in a clear, accessible style, this book is aimed at all those, familiar or not with the social sciences, who wish to understand the modalities and consequences of social inequalities as seen through the eyes of children.