A new generation of parents began to turn to the new model of "precision education", partly because of the new scientific knowledge of brain development. Through parenting manuals, family magazines and experts appearing on TV programs, this new educational concept has influenced all levels of American society.
However, just like the change of parents' educational concept before, the new atmosphere was first accepted by parents with higher education and implemented in their parenting practice.
An upper-class father from Bend Town told us, "Almost all those books about parenting have been read by our generation. As for the new generation of parents younger than us, they will even make more preparations for this. Everything about children is a big deal. "
In the United States, parents attach great importance to their children's cognitive and social skills, and often explore their potential from a very young age. As a result, "model parents" has become a project that requires parents to invest a lot of time and money.
Especially for those parents who have received higher education, a "good mother" must spend a lot of money for their children, while a "good father" should not only be an expert at work, but also devote more energy to family life and care about children's daily life.
Nowadays, parents from all walks of life in the United States favor precision education, but as we can see below, it is more difficult for parents with low educational level and more economic difficulties to put these new ideas into practice.
Annette Louro is an authoritative scholar on family chronicles. In her own research, she identified two modes of parental education in American society today, and named them "meticulous cultivation" and "natural growth" education. More importantly, the educational model of parents is determined by their class status.
The so-called well-cultivated education mainly refers to the upbringing of middle-class parents. Such parents have invested in their children's education from the very beginning, and consciously cultivated their children's cognitive ability, social ability and cultural accomplishment. In the end, their children can succeed in the future, especially in school.
Natural stocking education allows children to develop freely and let them rely more on their own talents and luck. In this educational model, parents have no plans and do not interfere with their children's performance in school.
When educating their children, such parents rely more on hard rules and sticks, pay little attention to their children's performance, and lack encouragement to their children, let alone reason and equal consultation.
Today, this kind of parental education is quite common in poor families. Of course, even among the lower classes, the education of natural reserves is gradually abandoned. In most studies, we can find that the norms of parenthood have shown general class differences:
Kochi's parents are committed to cultivating the next generation with autonomy, independence and self-reflection ability, so that their children have self-esteem and the ability to make positive choices;
On the contrary, parents with low education often turn their attention to discipline and obedience, and ask their children to strictly abide by the rules formulated by their parents. Figure 3- 1 illustrates the polarization between classes.
The leftmost column represents the parents with the lowest education level, that is, parents who have never graduated from high school. These parents emphasize obedience rather than independence. Among them, as many as 65% parents set the educational goal as obedience of their children, and only 18% parents pay more attention to their children's independence.
The rightmost column represents parents who have obtained graduate degrees. We can see that the parents of this intellectual have just the opposite preference in education. As many as 70% parents think that the goal of education lies in children's independence, and only 19% parents pay more attention to children's compliance with family rules.
In other words, the relationship between parents and children in the upper class is more equal, and they are more willing to reason with their children and let them correct their behavior out of inner guilt;
On the contrary, parents of the lower classes are more likely to use corporal punishment to achieve the purpose of discipline, and it is always hard to clap their hands.
The class difference of parents' educational methods is also reflected in the language communication between parents and children. Some scholars have made a detailed study of the daily language communication between parents and children, as shown in Figure 3-2. If you count Kochi parents who have obtained advanced professional degrees, they will say 166000 words of encouragement to their children every year, while only 26000 words of negative expression discourage them.
In contrast, working-class parents express these two kinds of words 62,000 times and 36,000 times each year, while parents who live on social security are less encouraged and more criticized, with 26,000 times and 57,000 times respectively.
The above-mentioned class-based polarization has emerged in parenting style, which may be called "give a hug or slap". What we need to ask is: Why is this class polarization so polarized and ubiquitous at the same time?
Scholars in the past tend to attribute this class difference to a "working class culture" that is difficult to define accurately. However, recent brain science research has proved that the poorer parents are, the lower their education level is, the more isolated they are in society, the easier they are to become believers in stick education, the more strict they are with their children, and the easier they are to punish them.
Part of the reason for this situation is that parents themselves are under the habitual pressure imposed by life.
When talking about the tyrannical mother, Ilya said in an interview: "Every time my mother comes home from work, she sees bills piled up on the table and no one washes the dishes. My son's room is like a kennel, and the house is in a mess. It's normal to be angry. My mother is often angry with me, and I don't blame her. "
Disciplining children severely with a big stick, or even resorting to corporal punishment at will, is not a unique option of "working class culture", nor is it just the result of parents' life pressure.
Upper-class families and lower-class families live in very different worlds. Many times, the difference of parents' education methods is only a reasonable response to class division.
Rich fathers can naturally adopt what sociologist Frank Furstenberg and his collaborators call a "push" strategy: to develop their children's talents in a comfortable environment. This kind of family can provide ample opportunities while avoiding most risks.
On the contrary, poor fathers can only adopt a "defensive" strategy to raise their children in slums. The urgent task is to protect the safety of your children: "In such a place where the fittest survive, you must be strong!"
A lot of evidence has repeatedly shown that if we observe how wealthy and knowledgeable parents educate their children, the key words are cultivation, kindness, warmth and positive concern, and finally reasonable discipline-in short, hugs are more than slaps-the parenting style of upper-class parents can better cultivate children's emotional intelligence and communication skills.
Ilya has intuitively realized: "If you always scold your children and complain that they have accomplished nothing, you will only become a humble bastard in the end, so he will only become a humble bastard in the future."
It is an ironclad fact that parents of different classes have different education methods, and the consequences are obviously profound. We have seen that poverty is generally related to the development of children's IQ and EQ.
But how to explain this correlation, to a great extent, stems from the differences between poor parents and rich parents in education methods, including both the stimulation of cognitive ability (such as the frequency of reading to children) and the cultivation of the ability to participate in society (such as encouraging children to participate in those extracurricular activities).
For example, parents can promote their children's development as long as they study for them, regardless of their educational level, language ability and investment.
Parenting experts Jane Waldvogel and Elizabeth Washbrook found that there was a significant difference between rich children and poor children's initiative in school if they were measured by their Chinese, math and language test scores at the age of 4.
As for how to explain this difference, the two experts found that the difference of parents' education methods is the most important explanation factor, including whether there are books at home and the number of times they take their children to the library. The most important thing is the mother's care and daily care for her children.
Has the class difference in parental education widened in recent years? It is difficult for us to find conclusive evidence about this at present. The first question is whether we can find quantifiable indicators that are consistent with all opinions. The next bigger challenge is the need for years of repeatable and highly consistent observations.
However, there is one exception, and that is family dinners. Observing the changes at the American family table can tell a complete American story.
Waldvogel has proved in his research that family dinner is still an important indicator after controlling other variables, which can predict the life trajectory of children in the process of growing up to a great extent.
"Teenagers who have dinner with their parents at least five times a week," Professor Wald vogel pointed out, "perform better in many aspects: smoking, drinking and smoking marijuana are less, fighting and premarital sex are less ... they are less likely to be suspended from school, and their GPA and college chances are higher."
From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, family dinners became less and less in all walks of life in the United States, because both parents had to go out to work, and it was particularly difficult to coordinate the time of the whole family.
However, in the mid-1990s, among parents with higher education, the declining trend of family dialogue opportunities came to an abrupt end, but in families with only high school education, the declining trend did not stop or rebound.
Of course, it is difficult for single-parent families to eat together, but this is not the main factor that causes this widening class gap, because in fact, it is still dominated by two-parent families.
The result of this is the scissors diagram that we constantly encounter in this book-revealing that the childhood experience between rich children and poor children has gradually drifted away.
Family dinner is not everything. Don't attribute the problem of children's growth entirely to the existence of dinner. However, family dinner is indeed an indicator, from which we can see whether parents have made that intangible but significant investment in their children.
So, what happened in the 1990s? Based on pure data, it is difficult for us to tell a self-evident story, but we can put forward a reasonable explanation:
Because the new educational concept recognizes the significance of parent-child interaction to children's development, parents with higher education level are more easily influenced by the new concept, so they spend more time with their children. In contrast, parents with low education always lag behind in accepting new ideas, or are forced by the hardships of life, so it is impossible for them to have a family dinner even if it is expected.
Today's American parents spend more time and money on raising their children than the previous generation. This trend is common regardless of social class.
The investment increased by the new generation of parents mainly focuses on the cultivation of cognitive ability and social communication ability, especially the care for preschool children. However, compared with poor fathers, rich fathers spend more money and time on education-family dinners are just the tip of the iceberg.
Increasing investment in children's education often means saving money in other aspects of family life, such as personal care, household cleaning or other commodity consumption.
Parents from all walks of life are cutting back on other expenses and focusing resources on their children, but don't forget that those families with higher economic income and higher education not only have more money, but also have more time (because husband and wife can share the task of raising children). Of course, they can also increase their investment in children at a faster rate.
In contrast, poor parents who often have only single mothers can do nothing. In the long run, the class gap in investment in the next generation of education will widen and become a gap.