Conflicted cultivation: Parenting, privilege, and moral worth in wealthy New York families

Sherman, Rachel

doi:10.1057/s41290-016-0012-8

Cited by 40 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…These findings are in line with studies that has drawn attention to the importance of moral character as a status signal (Friedman & Reeves, 2020; Halvorsen, 2020; Lamont, 1992; Ljunggren, 2017; Pedersen et al. 2018; Sherman, 2017; Törnqvist, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Wouters (1992) suggests that overt displays of superiority and self‐aggrandizement, especially when based on birth or inheritance, became increasingly problematic in the West from the mid‐twentieth century and could lead to “loss of status and face” (Wouters, 1992, p. 231). This resonates with Sherman's recent study of elite parental strategies, suggesting that parents strive to raise children who perform privilege with “modesty, reciprocity, ‘awareness’, and hard work” (Sherman, 2017, p. 11). It seems like the more egalitarian orientations of the CS students should not be interpreted as either an expression of a subordinate position or a thin legitimation strategy, but such moral dispositions may be strategically drawn upon to forge elite distinction (Halvorsen, 2020; Törnqvist, 2019).…”

Section: Concluding Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

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Contested ease: Negotiating contradictory modes of elite distinction in face‐to‐face interaction

Persson

2021

British Journal of Sociology

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Research on elites and elite schooling mainly theorize the embodied elite distinction of ease as a dispositional phenomenon, drawing on a Bourdieusian framework. I respond to this by developing an interactionist perspective on embodied elite distinction not as a function of social position, but rather as means of communication used more or less actively to manage others' impressions of one's social position. Drawing on ethnography and interviews, I explore how students at two Swedish upper secondary schools with different elite profiles—an economic elite school and a meritocratic elite school—negotiate what counts as successful performances of their elite position in face‐to‐face interactions during conferences for “young leaders”. The findings suggest that in order for performances to be honored as “confident ease,” which is attributed with prestige and moral legitimacy in the peer group, the interacting students had to share the impression that the interaction was a “merit situation”. In interactions defined as “privilege situations,” similar behavior was labelled as arrogant superiority and seen as illegitimate performances of elite position. While “confident ease” was the hallmark of the male students at the economic elite school, the findings suggests that “confident awareness” may be understood as a contradictory mode of elite distinction characterizing the female students from the meritocratic elite school. They display confidence while simultaneously exploiting the unease they felt in the conference to craft a morally legitimate performance of their elite position. While the findings confirm that students' classed, gendered and moral dispositions are central to navigate elite distinction, they also demonstrate that meanings of such embodied distinctions emerge in relation to how situations are defined and are dependent on the interacting students' combined ability and interest to maintain working consensus on the definition of the situation.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Concluding Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Contested ease: Negotiating contradictory modes of elite distinction in face‐to‐face interaction

Persson

2021

British Journal of Sociology

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“…Lareau (2011) argues that these forms of socialization reproduce class advantage through differentially rewarded dispositions-the poorer children lack tools for navigating middle-class institutions like school, and the more privileged children begin to feel entitled to resources or speaking with authority figures, such as doctors or teachers. Recent extensions, such as Sherman's (2017) work with elite parents, find a concern that too much material privilege may spoil a child morally. Thus, properly cultivating a child may also require retraction of goods or "symbolic deprivation" (Pugh 2009:9-10) to ensure proper moral characteristics.…”

Section: Social Class and The Familymentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Tolerant Containment and Concerted Constraint: Managing Madness for the City and the Privileged Family

Gong

2019

Am Sociol Rev

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How do public safety net and elite private mental health providers cope with a key dilemma since psychiatric deinstitutionalization—managing madness when people have the right to refuse care? I observed two approaches to voluntary community-based services, one that tolerates “non-compliance” and deviant choices, and another that attempts to therapeutically discipline clientele. The puzzle, given theories of the paternalistic governance of poverty, is that select poor patients are given autonomy while the privileged are micro-managed. Drawing on comparative fieldwork in Los Angeles, I show how contrasting ecological pressures and resource bases shape divergent practices. In the context of urban poverty governance, mental health care and low-barrier housing offer a way to remove problem people from public space. This “tolerant containment” is linked to limited therapeutic capacity and the construction of clients as beyond transformation. In the context of family systems governance, elite private mental health care is a project to reform wayward relatives and equip them with respectable futures. A “concerted constraint” of deviance, akin to Lareau’s theory of privileged childrearing, is reserved for those who can afford rehabilitation and conceivably recover. Using these cases, I contribute to theories of social control and inequality in advanced liberal societies.

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“…It bears repeating here the qualities of the “best” neighborhoods in the context of our study: effective neighborhoods have high collective efficacy, low delinquency, and low moral cynicism. At first glance, it may be tempting to conceptualize effective neighborhoods as also being economically privileged neighborhoods, and that the reason for our unexpected finding may be explained in terms of economics—poorly parented children in affluent environments may gain an entitlement mentality (“affluenza”) that may protect them from discipline and lead to self-indulgence and low self-control (Alderman, 2001; Sherman, 2017). However, our study specifically controls for economic advantage at both the neighborhood and caregiver level.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Neighborhood Context in the Relationship between Parenting Effectiveness and Self-control

Stults

Swagar

2020

Crime & Delinquency

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A large body of work has examined the factors contributing to low self-control among adolescents, with a predominant focus on individual and family characteristics. More recently, a small body of research has examined whether neighborhood characteristics influence self-control, with many finding null effects. We extend this research by considering whether neighborhood characteristics have a moderating influence rather than a direct effect. We examine several neighborhood characteristics, including collective efficacy, delinquency rate, and moral cynicism, as well as distinctive components of parenting effectiveness, including warmth, lack of hostility, and supervision. We find that neighborhoods do influence levels of self-control among juveniles, but primarily by helping or hindering the efforts of effective parents to instill self-control in their children.

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Conflicted cultivation: Parenting, privilege, and moral worth in wealthy New York families

Cited by 40 publications

References 37 publications

Contested ease: Negotiating contradictory modes of elite distinction in face‐to‐face interaction

Contested ease: Negotiating contradictory modes of elite distinction in face‐to‐face interaction

Between Tolerant Containment and Concerted Constraint: Managing Madness for the City and the Privileged Family

The Role of Neighborhood Context in the Relationship between Parenting Effectiveness and Self-control

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