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Recent Scientific Accomplishments Lareau’s completion of 88 in-depth interviews of white and African-American families and detailed home observations of 12 families resulted in the 2003 publication of Unequal Childhoods. Also drawing on the wealth of rich and unique qualitative data from this study, Lareau has published articles that have appeared in the American Sociological Review, Qualitative Sociology, American Educational Research Journal, and Social Class, Poverty, and Education. With a 1999 grant from the Spencer Foundation, Lareau conducted follow-up interviews with the twelve core families from the previous ethnographic study. This data highlights the continuing, and growing, influence of social class as the young people navigate the transition to adulthood. In addition to follow-up interviews, Lareau is looking at the National Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement to see if the ethnographic research results can be confirmed. In conjunction with this research Lareau is at present, working on publications concerning cultural capital and education that will appear in the Encyclopedia of Sociology and another that looks at school readiness and social class differences. Her research into differences in child-rearing in upper-middle-class and working-class homes, reported in Unequal Childhoods, was covered in an editorial in the New York Times (2006). Her work complements the many studies in the Population Sciences that address the transmission of human capital across generations. In addition, Lareau was awarded a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to host a conference to bring together scholars and examine the role of social class in various dimensions of life including health, politics, family, and other areas. Lareau heads a group of scholars, under a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to convene a conference that will explore the role of social class within diverse aspects of life such as family, health, politics, education and other areas. She was recently awarded a major grant from the Spencer Foundation for her project “Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools.? Much of Lareau’s future research is from her Spencer Foundation funded project examining the home-buying process, specifically first-time buyers. The goal of the project is to investigate the strategies that white and black parents use to maximize the advantages they can provide for their children through their choice of a residence --- where they will live and where their children will go to public school. Specifically, she seeks to understand the role children’s schools play in residential decision-making. She is also interested in the asset transfers that parents receive from their relatives that assist them in gaining access to the best school situation for their children through home ownership. The study consists of in-depth interviews of a total of 50 white and African-American families with young children in one large suburban county contiguous to a large Northeastern city. The sample consists of upper-middle-class, lower-middle-class, and working-class families. The children will be recruited from kindergarten classrooms in public schools serving a variety of different neighborhood types. This study will also use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement to confirm and enhance the ethnographic results. | ||||||||
Maryland Population Research Center
0124N Cole Student Activities Building (#162)
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301-405-6403
Fax: 301-405-5743