Concerted cultivation as a racial parenting strategy: race, ethnicity and middle-class Indian parents in Britain

Abstract

Studies have highlighted the growing phenomenon of 'concerted cultivation' wherein middle-class parents are enrolling their children into multiple paid-for organised leisure activities as a way of cultivating their skills and reproducing class advantage. In unpacking the class disparities in children's organised leisure participation, researchers have largely overlooked the way race and ethnicity inflect middle-class parents' concerted cultivation strategies. Drawing upon a qualitative study with Greater London-based professional middle-class British Indian parents, this paper argues that the time-spaces of concerted cultivation also serve as sites for British Indian children's ethnic and racial socialisation (ERS). Two axes are identified along which racial parenting strategies intersect with concerted cultivation practices in these families: 'cultural (re)production through organised leisure' and '(anti)racism and leisure'. By analysing these processes, we draw out the implications of this interplay between class and race for understanding middle-class parenting and educational strategies in minority ethnic contexts.

Geographies of supplementary education: Private tuition, classed and racialised parenting cultures, and the neoliberal educational playing field

“…(2012), however, complicate this picture, demonstrating that structural inequalities mean the same parental investments in children's education produce different results depending on race and class. Qualitative research is also fleshing out the intersections of race and class in concerted cultivation exercised by middle‐class Black and Indian families in the UK (Mukherjee & Barn, 2021; Rollock et al., 2015). Conceptually, Manning (2019, p. 15) uses race‐based critical theory to reread Lareau's research, demonstrating that it overlooks the centrality of ‘racial socialization and parenting techniques … to class‐based concerted cultivation practises of Black middle‐class families’.…”

Return Migration, Parenting and the Subcontinent: Parents and Youths' Perspectives of Life in India

“…For instance, in Dhingra's (2018) elaboration of concerted cultivation as it applies to middle-and upper-middle-class Indian American families in the United States, the author argues that parents' status as immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities influences their emphasis on education and their proclivity for promoting their children's involvement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Meanwhile, Usha Mukherjee and Ravinder Barn's (2021) study of professional middle-class Indian parents in Britain reveals that parents' desire for their children to learn more about their heritage and combat racist discrimination influences the types of activities in which they enrol them.…”

Navigating childrearing, fatherhood, and mobilities: A transnational relational analysis

“…They favor a ‘minority culture of mobility’ (Neckerman et al, 1999), viewing segmented assimilation as a more secure pathway to upward mobility in the context of racial discrimination and group disadvantage. Minority parents also aim to achieve ethnic and racial socialization by cultivating racial sensibility, instilling cultural pride, and preparing their children for the skills of racial navigation (Manning, 2019; Mukherjee & Barn, 2021; Vincent et al, 2013).…”