Home-Centred Working Class Parents' Attitudes Towards their Sons' Education and Careers

Abstract

Working class parents' attitudes to their sons' education and future occupations are examined to see if there are variations in line with the embourgeoisement thesis. Parents' aspirations for their sons are higher and their involvement in their sons' education stronger amongst those with a high expenditure on housing, the home and consumer durables, holding constant the `middle classness' of their own backgrounds. Those with higher expenditure of this kind are also more likely to be socially isolated and home-centred in their leisure activities and to evidence greater overlapping of conjugal roles. The more socially isolated and home-centred parents have higher aspirations for their children and greater involvement in their children's education; the involvement of the father in his children's education appears to be particularly important. The more socially isolated, home-centred parents are also more likely to vote Conservative.

The scholastic achievement of the child is the most influential determinant of parental aspirations. The evidence is that the above patterns are not the result of the middle-classness of the parents' home backgrounds, education or work histories. Two interpretations are considered: firstly that these middle class patterns of behaviour are the result of the influence of middle class people, such as the boys' teachers; and secondly that they result from the advantageous effects upon the boys' scholastic achievement of the home environments to be found amongst home-centred families. The two explanations are not regarded as mutually exclusive.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

ABRAMS, MARK . 1960. The Future of the Left . Encounter, 14: 57-59 .

ABRAMS, MARK . 1962. Social Trends and Electoral Behaviour . Brit. J. Sociol. 13: 228-242 .

ABRAMS, MARK and ROSE, RICHARD . 1960. Must Labour Lose? Harmondsworth: Penguin Books .

BELL, COLIN . 1968. Mobility and the Middle Class Extended Family . Sociology 2: 173-184 .

BERNSTEIN, BASIL . 1966. A Socio-Linguistic Approach to Social Learning. The Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences. 1965. London: Penguin Books .

BLOOM, BENJAMIN . 1965. Compensatory Education for Cultural Deprivation. Chicago: Holt Rinehart and Winston .

BOTT, ELIZABETH . 1957. Family and Social Network. London: Tavistock .

BUTLER, D. E. and ROSE, R. 1960. The British General Election of 1959. London: Macmillan .

COHEN, ELIZABETH . 1965. Parental factors in Educational Mobility . Sociology of Education 38: 404-425 .

10.

Committee on Higher Education . 1963. Higher Education. London: H.M.S.O .

11.

DENNIS, NORMAN . 1963. Who Needs Neighbours? New Society 2, No. 43, 25th July, 1963: 8-11 .

12.

DEUTSCH, MARTIN et al. 1965. The Communication of Information in the Elementary School Classroom. Institute for Developmental Studies , mimeo.

13.

DOUGLAS, J. W. B. 1965. The Home and the School. London: MacGibbon and Kee .

14.

Early Leaving Report. 1956. London: H.M.S.O .

15.

FLOUD, JEAN. HALSEY, A. H. , and MARTIN, F. M. 1957. Social Class and Educational Opportunity. London: Heinemann .

16.

FRANKENBERG, RONALD . 1966. Communities in Britain. Harmondsworth: Pelican .

17.

GOLDTHORPE, JOHN, H. and LOCKWOOD, DAVID . 1963. Affluence and the British Class Structure . Sociol. R. 11: 133-163 .

18.

GOLDTHORPE, JOHN, H. , LOCKWOOD, DAVID , PLATT, JENNIFER and BECH-OFER, FRANK. 1968a. The Affluent Worker. Industrial Attitudes and Behavior. London: Cambridge University Press .

19.

GOLDTHORPE, JOHN, H. , LOCKWOOD, DAVID , BECH-OFER, FRANK and PLATT, JENNIFER. 1968c. Draft chapters on social contacts, leisure time activities and attitudes to education of Luton manual workers-To be published.

20.

GOLDTHORPE, JOHN, H. , LOCKWOOD, DAVID , BECH-OFER, FRANK, PLATT, JENNIFER. 1967. The Affluent Worker and the Thesis of Embourgeoisement: some Preliminary Research Findings . Sociology 1: 11-13 .

21.

HARRINGTON, MOLLY . 1965. Resettlement and Self Image . Human Relations 18: 115-137 .

22.

HOLE, VERE . 1959. Social Effects of Planned Re-housing . Town Planning Review 30: 161-173 .

23.

HYMAN, H. 1953. The Value Systems of Different Classes. In Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour M. (eds.) Class Status and Power. New York: Free Press .

24.

HOLLINGSHEAD, A. B. 1949. Elmstown's Youth. New York: John Wiley .

25.

JACKSON, BRIAN and MARSDEN, DENNIs . 1962. Education and the Working Class. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul .

26.

JENNINGS, HILDA. 1962. Societies in the Making. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul .

27.

KAHL, J. A. 1955. Educational and Occupational aspirations of `Common Man' boys . Harvard Educ. Rev. 23.

28.

KAHL, JOSEPH and DAVIS, KINGSLEY . 1958. A Comparison of Indexes of Social Stratification . Amer. Sociol. R. 20: 317-335 .

29.

KLEIN, JOSEPHINE . 1965. Samples from English Cultures. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul .

30.

LAWTON, DENNIS. 1968. Social Class Language and Education. London: Routledge .

31.

LITWAK, E. 1960. Geographical Mobility and Extended Family Cohesion . Amer. Sociol. R. 25: 385-394 .

32.

LOCKWOOD, D. 1966. Sources of Variation in Working Class Images of Society . Sociol. R. 14: 249-267 .

33.

LOCKWOOD, DAVID and GOLDTHORPE, JOHN, H. 1962. The Manual Worker: Affluence, Aspirations and Assimilation . Paper delivered to British Sociological Association conference.

34.

KUPER, LEO . (ed.) 1953. Living in Towns. London: Cresset Press .

35.

MARTIN, F. M. 1954. Parents' Preferences in Secondary Education in Glass, D. V. (ed.) Social Mobility in Britain. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul .

36.

MARTIN, JEAN. I. 1967. Extended Kinship Ties: an Adelaide Study . Aust. and N.Z.J. of Sociol. 3: 44-63 .

37.

MITCHELL, G. and LUPTON, T. 1954. The Liverpool Estate in Neighbourhood and Community. Liverpool:Liverpool University Press .

38.

MOGEY, J. 1956. Family and Neighbourhood. London: Oxford University Press .

39.

NEWSOME, J. and NEWSOME, E. 1965. Patterns of Infant Care. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books .

40.

Newsom Report . 1961. Half our Future. London: H.M.S.O .

41.

NICHOLSON, J. 1961. New Communities in Britain. National Council for Social Service .

42.

PLATT, JENNIFER. 1967. Unpublished Report of the Attitudes Towards Education of a sample of Affluent Manual Workers in Luton.

43.

Plowden Report . 1966. Children in Primary Schools. London: H.M.S.O .

44.

PLOWMAN, D. E. G. et al. 1962. Local Social Status in England and Wales . Sociol. R. 10; 161-202 .

45.

ROSENBERG, M. 1958. Occupations and Values. New York: The Free Press .

46.

RUNCIMAN, W. G. 1966. Relative Deprivation and Social Justice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul .

47.

SCHWARZELLER, H. K. 1961. Values and Occupational Choice . Soc. Forces 39: 126-135 .

48.

SWIFT, D. F. 1967. Family Environment and 11+ success: some basic predictors . British Journal of Educational Psychology. 37 Pt. 1, 10-21 .

49.

TOOMEY, D. 1968a. M.A. Thesis submitted to the University of Kent at Canterbury. Changes in Working Class Life and Parents' Attitudes to their Son's Education and Career.

50.

TOOMEY, D. 1968b. The Embourgeoisement Controversy: Parents' Involvement in Their Son's Choice of Occupation , Paper read to N.F.E.R. conferences, July.

51.

WARNER, W. L. , MEEKER, M. and EELLS, K. 1960. Social Class in America. Harper and Row .

52.

WILLMOTT, PETER and YOUNG, MICHAEL . 1960. Family and Class in a London Suburb. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul .

53.

WILLMOTT, YOUNG, MICHAEL and WILLMOTT, PETER . 1962. Family and Kinship in East London. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books .

54.

ZWEIG, FERDYNAND . 1961. The Worker in an Affluent Society. London: Heinemann .