Tag Archives: children

Pictures of American child laborers in 1911 taken by a sociologist

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Business Insider has a gallery of 1911 photos of child laborers taken by a sociologist:

Lewis Hine was an American sociologist and photographer whose work was instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States.

In 1908, Hine became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, and over the next decade, he documented child labor in American industry to aid the NCLC’s lobbying efforts to end the practice.

These photographs are a reminder that child labor was common not too long ago in American history. Indeed, the definition of childhood has changed quite a bit in the last century.

Here is some biographical information on Hine via Wikipedia who seems to be one of the early proponents of what we would call today public sociology and visual sociology:

Lewis Wickes Hine was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1874. After his father died in an accident, he began working and saved his money for a college education. Hine studied sociology at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and New York University. He became a teacher in New York City at the Ethical Culture School, where he encouraged his students to use photography as an educational medium.[2] The classes traveled to Ellis Island in New York Harbor, photographing the thousands of immigrants who arrived each day. Between 1904 and 1909, Hine took over 200 plates (photographs), and eventually came to the realization that documentary photography could be employed as a tool to effectuate social change and reform…

In 1906, Hine became the staff photographer of the Russell Sage Foundation. Here Hine photographed life in the steel-making districts and people of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for the influential sociological study called the Pittsburgh Survey. In 1908, he became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), leaving his teaching position. Over the next decade, Hine documented child labor in American industry to aid the NCLC’s lobbying efforts to end the practice.[5]

During and after World War I, he photographed American Red Cross relief work in Europe. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Hine made a series of “work portraits,” which emphasized the human contribution to modern industry. In 1930, Hine was commissioned to document the construction of The Empire State Building. Hine photographed the workers in precarious positions while they secured the iron and steel framework of the structure, taking many of the same risks the workers endured. In order to obtain the best vantage points, Hine was swung out in a specially designed basket 1,000 feet above Fifth Avenue…

The Library of Congress holds more than five thousand Hine photographs, including examples of his child labor and Red Cross photographs, his work portraits, and his WPA and TVA images. Other large institutional collections include nearly ten thousand of Hine’s photographs and negatives held at the George Eastman House and almost five thousand NCLC photographs at the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Sounds like interesting work.

Socializing kids in how to do recess at school

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An article about the “cognitive and social benefits” recess brings up an interesting idea: kids in schools that haven’t had recess for years will have to be taught how to do recess again.

Despite the cognitive and social benefits of recess, principals still hate it: In the scholarship on recess, they inevitably describe their recess periods as total chaos. In Chicago, recess has been out of the schools so long that principals are nervous about having it back.

That’s the twist in this rebirth-of-recess narrative: In part because of these fears, recess in many schools is now a very different beast. It’s more structured and sports-focused, less dreamy and aimless. Whether it leads to the same cognitive and social benefits is an open question. The nonprofit organization Playworks puts full-time “recess coaches” in low-income schools—currently they’re in 387 schools in 23 cities—who teach children how to play: They organize games; they model how to resolve disputes (rock-paper-scissors); they try to get kids more active and engaged. (A recent study found that schools with Playworks reported less bullying and better behavior.)

“Recess has changed because the times we live in have changed,” says Playworks CEO Jill Vialet. Children no longer know how to play, she says; they don’t run around after school with all the kids on their block. “What we’re doing is creating just enough structure. That same structure that was created by the older kids in the neighborhood in times past—we’re creating that now on the schoolyard.”…

Recess may look problematic to the grown-ups, but for Pellegrini, the value of recess is that the children, not the adults, are in charge. It may not look pretty, but that’s the point. “A very important part of what kids do on the playground is social competence—that is, they learn how to get along with others,” he says. “You have to cooperate, you have to use language, you have to compromise. And that’s not trivial. That is huge, in terms of both academic success and success in life.”

Sounds like there may be some conflict between what the adults want and what might benefit the students the most. How much do liability and public relations issues (even though the article suggests violence at recess is rare, news can spread fast) affect this?

This reminds me of some of George Herbert Mead’s thoughts in Mind, Self, and Society about how children learn. Mead suggests that children at younger ages often learn by playing, acting out adult roles and developing and debating their own rules. This sounds similar to how unstructured recess is described above: together, kids take what they know and apply it to the recess setting, learning as they go along. Vialet suggests kids have lost some of these skills and need to be taught some basic ways to play and act.

I wonder how this might mesh with Annette Lareau’s findings in Unequal Childhoods. In her description of parenting styles that differ by race, it seems like kids who are brought up in the natural growth style might be better off in these unstructured recess times that middle- and upper-class kids. But perhaps technology has subverted some of this; natural growth today may look more like being free to explore one’s own media and entertainment options.

Obama, the suburbs, higher education, and HENRYs

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Peter Wood ties Stanley Kurtz’s new book about Obama and the suburbs to another interesting issue: the higher education bubble.

I have argued that among the factors most likely to precipitate the crash is the disaffection of families earning over $100,000 a year. Many of these families have seen the value of their home equity fall but have, with hard effort, kept their noses above water during the recession. The income bracket of $100,000 to $250,000—called “HENRYs” in marketing parlance, for High Earners who are Not Rich Yet—are a key sector for colleges and universities. These are the folks who borrow to the hilt to afford overpriced college tuitions. The bracket above the HENRYs, those earning over $250,000, are another key to higher-education finance. There are only about two million such families, but they are the top-end consumers of expensive colleges. Their willingness to pay top dollar is what signals to the HENRYs that the tuitions must be worth it.

These high income families—$100,000 and above—are concentrated in the suburbs. I have already written (Helium, Part 2) on the likelihood that these families will be forced to rethink their longstanding assumptions about the value of expensive colleges in light of the huge tax increases set to kick in after the 2012 presidential election. In the “ecology of higher education,” we are about to see what happens when we torch the canopy.

Kurtz’s book suggests that the assault on the HENRYs and the $250 K plus crowd goes beyond income and capital-gains taxes. We are in an era of emergent policy aimed at deconstructing what makes the suburbs attractive to the affluent. The “regionalists” advocate something called “regional tax base sharing,” which essentially means using state legislative power to take tax receipts from the suburbs to pay for services in the cities. The suburbanites will be faced with the unpleasant choice between lower levels of service for their own communities or raising their own taxes still higher to make up for the money they will “share” with their urban neighbors…

These are matters that faculty members, even those who enjoy life on campuses idyllically tucked away in verdant suburbs, will probably weigh lightly. But the regionalists are, in effect, working hard to diminish the attractions of the communities that form the social base for the prestige-oriented upscale colleges and universities that have for the last sixty or seventy years defined the aspirational goals of the American middle class. The war on the suburbs combined with the large increase in the tax burden may be the pincers that pop the bubble.

America is a suburban country so it makes sense that HENRYs and some of the colleges that appeal to them are located in the suburbs.

There are larger issues here. College is tied to a key foundation of suburban life: children should be cared for and given the opportunities that will help them get ahead in life. Particularly in the post-World War II era, going to college is a necessary suburban rite of passage that insures a middle-class or higher lifestyle. If college becomes too expensive for this group, it will be fascinating to see how they adjust.

How do McMansions affect kids?

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I recently ran into an article about kids helping to clean a 16-acre preserve in New Canaan, Connecticut that one local leader described as a much better alternative to having multiple McMansions erected. This got me thinking: how exactly do McMansions influence children? I suspect there are multiple factors at play: the neighborhood(s) in which the child grows up; the socioeconomic status of the family; the comments about McMansions made by family, friends, and others; how they see McMansions portrayed in the media.

Some questions that could be pursued. Are children who grow up in McMansion neighborhoods more alienated or isolated from society? Critics of McMansions argue they are frequently located in auto-dependent, wealth neighborhoods. Are children who grow up in McMansions more prone to excessive consumption? Critics argue McMansions are symbols of overspending and an American tendency to buy large. Are children familiar with McMansions more or less likely to appreciate high culture? Critics argue McMansions are typically lacking in design and quality.

If I had to guess, I would suggest McMansions have little or no effect on outcomes independent of factors like social class and educational attainment. But that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be fun to pursue some of these questions…

Redesigning the playground to free children and adults

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Here is an interesting example of architecture and design at work: putting together a playground in New York City that will free children and adults rather than burden them.

In Pamela Druckerman’s “Bringing Up Bébé,” the playground forms a fertile backdrop for her pop-sociological observations about child-rearing, French vs. American style. The upper-middle-class Manhattan moms (she can tell by the price of their handbags) follow their kids around the gated toddler playground narrating their activities. The French moms sit on the edge of the sandbox and chat with other adults. The Brooklyn dads follow their children down the slide. The French moms sit on a bench and chat with other adults. Her theory, a bestselling one, is that French parenting consists of more non, more équilibre, and thus more time for adults to be adults.

It never occurs to her that maybe it is the playgrounds that encourage parents to act this way. Most New York playgrounds are designed for the protection of children: padded surfaces, equipment labelled by age appropriateness, and a ban on unaccompanied adults. Frankly, it is hard to see why an adult without a child would want to enter. There’s often little seating, minimal shade, and no place to set down a coffee except in a stroller cup holder. As for those parents who don’t want to helicopter, the perimeter benches can be far from where children play, sight lines blocked by the bulky climbing structures. Standard New York playgrounds are made for a single activity—child’s play—not family socializing or even adult enjoyment.

The planners of New York City’s Governors Island, an ice-cream-cone-shaped piece of land a half mile from the end of Manhattan, see play somewhat differently, and are designing their first thirty acres of park and public space accordingly. “People spend several hours here” on the weekends, says Leslie Koch, president of the Trust for Governors Island. Free ferries from Manhattan and Brooklyn bring visitors in for extended afternoons. “You wander through the island, you have an idea or you may not, the kids run around. There aren’t precedents for that kind of place. It’s different than a beach or an urban park, or even a state park, where you go to barbecue.” She adds, “Early on we said we didn’t want to have playgrounds, but we didn’t say what that meant.”…

“If you create a park-like environment and people feel really free, adults hang out and participate like children do,” Geuze says. Contrast the concept for Liggett Terrace with the experience at Pier 6 at Brooklyn Bridge Park, an access point for the ferry to Governors Island. To date, Pier 6 consists of four landscaped, gated playgrounds, one with swings, one with water, one with sand, and one for climbing. There’s a separate beach-volleyball court, and a separate park building with food. If you aren’t pushing your kid on the swing, narrating every to and fro, the only place to sit is the springy rubber ground.

It would be interesting to hear more about how this new kind of park would change people’s behaviors. The article seems to suggest that certain park designs necessarily lead to certain behaviors; is this always the case? Does it require a critical mass of people

This reminds me of some arguments about parks from earlier days. Take Central Park in New York City as an example. Olmstead and Vaux designed the park to be more natural and take advantage of the natural topography and features. This was contrasted with more formal European parks which often had carefully cultivated gardens and water features. Central Park became beloved even as it is still fairly unusual in big cities as it can be difficult to find that much land and leave it relatively unencumbered.

 

A few sociological answers to why American kids are “spoiled rotten”

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A recent piece in the New Yorker asks “Why Are American Kids So Spoiled?” Here appear to be the crux of the problem:

With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world. It’s not just that they’ve been given unprecedented amounts of stuff—clothes, toys, cameras, skis, computers, televisions, cell phones, PlayStations, iPods. (The market for Burberry Baby and other forms of kiddie “couture” has reportedly been growing by ten per cent a year.) They’ve also been granted unprecedented authority. “Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval,” Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, both professors of psychology, have written. In many middle-class families, children have one, two, sometimes three adults at their beck and call. This is a social experiment on a grand scale, and a growing number of adults fear that it isn’t working out so well: according to one poll, commissioned by Timeand CNN, two-thirds of American parents think that their children are spoiled.

The article is primarily built around anthropological comparisons with “the Matsigenka, a tribe of about twelve thousand people who live in the Peruvian Amazon.” But I think there are also some sociological answers to this issue.

1. American culture has long emphasized children. While this article seems to suggest some of this is tied to recent technological and consumer changes (we can buy so much stuff so cheaply), this stretches back further than the consumeristic 1980s to today. This reminded me of the Middletown study, an in-depth examination of Muncie, Indiana that started in the 1920s. In the first study published in 1929, here are a few of the findings regarding children (and these are from my notes so there are some summaries and some quotes):

-growing problem of “early sophistication” where young teenagers (12 to 14) act like grown-ups (135) – part of this is the relaxation of traditional prohibitions between interactions of boys and girls (137) – greater aggressiveness and less modest dress of girls (140) – parents are unsure and puzzled about what to hold children to (if they could even do that ) (143) – parents increasingly devoting more of their lives to and sacrificing for the children (146-147) – mothers eager to get their hands on any resource that will help them train their children (149) yet there is “a feeling that their difficulties outrun their best efforts to cope with them” (151)

-the school provides the most formal and systematic training (181) – the school now has more responsibility where this task may have fallen to the family in the past (190)

-“If education is oftentimes taken for granted by the business class, it is no exaggeration to say that it evokes the fervor of a religion, a means of salvation, among a large section of the working class.” (187) – “Parents insist upon more and more education as part of their children’s birthright; editors and lecturers point to education as a solution for every kind of social ill…” (219) – “Education is a faith, a religion, to Middletown.” (219) – education is not desired for its content or the life of the mind but rather as a symbol: “[seen] by the working class as an open sesame that will mysteriously admit their children to a world closed to them, and by the business class as a heavily sanctioned aid in getting on further economically or socially in the world.” (220)

In other words, the Middletown study hinted at an American world that was starting to revolve around children: teenagers were gaining independence (particularly with the introduction of the automobile) and education was a growing community emphasis as it represented future progress for younger generations.

Researchers in the early mass American suburbs also noted the emphasis on family and children. The classic study of Crestwood Heights (1956) as well as some work by Dennison Nash and Peter Berger (early 1960s) showed that suburban life was organized around children. People moved to the suburbs for their children, particularly the increase in open space, the better schools, and safety. Other more recent researchers (such as Eileen Luhr) have also noted this emphasis in contemporary suburbia.

Overall, these studies suggest that the emphasis on children is not necessarily new in the United States. The form that it takes might have changed but this is not simply the result of recent trends and this is also intertwined with the important processes of consumerism, suburbanization, and education which also have a longer and more complicated history.

2. This reminds me of Annette Lareau’s two types of parenting (see Unequal Childhoods): concerted cultivation (middle-class and up) and the accomplishment of natural growth (working-class and below). Lareau argues that there are benefits of both styles of parenting (as well as disadvantages) and I wonder if some of this “spoiledness” could be beneficial down the road. What the journalist is describing seems to fit some of Lareau’s description of concerted cultivation: parents cede authority to children as the children are taught to ask questions and assert their interests and children are pushed by parents into all sorts of activities to develop their skills. Here are my notes on what Lareau says are the advantages of this:

children become adept at using language, activities are said to teach them skills that will prepare them for later opportunities/jobs/school, parents help them access new things in school and activities, they become assertive and challenge institutions to help them, institutions often made up of same kind of people so these kids fit in

And my summary of the disadvantages:

feel a sense of entitlement, little talk about money so children have little idea what things cost (in terms of money and time), parents spend a lot of time sacrificing for children, conflict can arise with professionals (school teachers and administrators in particular throughout the text), conflict between siblings and limited contact with extended families

Doesn’t this sound like this article is arguing? While there are clearly disadvantages to this way of raising children (and the differences are perhaps made more stark in comparing this to past childrearing strategies, or even the relative lack of childhood several hundred years ago), there are also advantages. Overall, Lareau suggests children raised under concerted cultivation are better prepared than their counterparts to join the adult world. Even from a young age, these children are taught to challenge institutions and given skills that serve them down the road.

Based on Lareau’s findings, is the story all bad? Perhaps not. When I read critiques like this, I always wonder if there is a little generational bias present: “these young people of today just aren’t like we were in our day.” I suppose time will help us figure this out, particularly as we see how today’s youths handle adulthood and what they are able to accomplish.

Moms in TV advertisements buy products for the good of their families

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Two sociologists argue that a majority of mothers in TV commercials buy products for the good of their children:

Nearly two-thirds of mothers featured in ads on prime time Canadian television are “intensive” moms who buy products solely for the good of the family, while non-mothers were more likely to be portrayed as independent free agents, enjoying themselves far more, a new analysis has found.

The lion’s share of mothers were shown to be “organized, informative and in control,” and always purchasing the product for the benefit of their children, according to University of Toronto sociology researchers Kim de Laat and Shyon Baumann, who combed through 68 television ads…

But Ms. de Laat and Mr. Baumann say the advertising they studied is promoting “sacrificial consumption” — a term they coined to describe the act of buying products primarily for the care of others, rather than for self-care.

“It’s only been within the past 20 to 25 years that we’ve seen increasing emphasis solely on the children to the point where women are supposed to derive satisfaction from all of this caregiving,” said Ms. de Laat, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto.

“Sacrificial consumption” is an interesting phrase but it isn’t a new idea. I’m reminded of the research of Viviana Zelizer (in Morals & Markets) regarding how the once controversial product life insurance came to be viewed as a necessary and sacrificial product that would provide for one’s family. What might be new here is the idea that these commercials are tying motherhood, a social role, to a particular action, providing for children. It attaches a different idea to products: if you’re family needs the product or would at least benefit, whatever money that needs to be spent is well-spent. Being a good mother means buying the “needed” products, not necessarily providing love, support, time, or attention. Do these commercials work by guilting people into action (i.e, “I’m not a good mother unless I do this”)? I wonder how this ties in with the whole idea of “concerted cultivation” where middle- and upper-class parents look to give their kids advantages (including necessary products?).

Is sacrificial consumption used effectively to sell products to other groups? Can you imagine such marketing aimed at men/fathers?

A story of teaching sociology to a young child

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At a few points, I’ve thought about how sociology could be taught to young children. One way would be to include it the social studies curriculum but another would be to have kids accompany their parents to college classes in sociology:

Fourteen years ago, Karen Bilodeau was an unusual student at Bates College. She was 33 years old and often took her preschooler, Emma, with her to classes or to meetings with professors…

All that made an impression on Emma, a senior at Edward Little High School. With a goal of becoming a doctor helping underprivileged children, this fall she’ll go to college on the campus she walked as a child…

Between the ages of 3 and 6, Emma remembers going to professor Emily Kane’s sociology classes. “I remember her doing a lot of projects. Kane examined gender equality in ‘The Little House on the Prairie.’ I remember that being fascinating,” Emma said…

When it was time for Emma’s college search, she longed to go out of state. During an overnight visit to Oberlin in Ohio, she said she changed her mind, preferring to be near her younger siblings and longing for Bates.

At age 17, like she did at age 4, Emma sat in on Professor Kane’s sociology class. “It was very much like, ‘This is what I want to be doing the next four years,'” she said.

Emma plans to study sociology and African-American studies. Her adopted siblings are African-American. She also plans to take science classes to help her continue to medical school.

“I really want to help underprivileged kids as a pediatrician or surgeon” in Haiti or Africa, she said.

A nice story. I’ve wondered how much introducing younger kids to sociology might help boost the discipline’s profile before students enter college as sociology is one of few disciplines that new college students don’t know much about. Or, perhaps this would help imprint sociology on the nation’s consciousness in a way that it isn’t now. This reminds me of Jane Elliot’s famous “blue eyes, brown eyes” experiment in a third-grade classroom. As Elliot has showed, this experience was formative in the lives of her small-town Iowa students. Perhaps the route to public sociology should begin with children rather than adults?

 

Uptick in recent years in American children born to unwed parents

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As more Americans are living alone or delaying or rejecting marriage, “more children [are] born to unmarried parents.”

The percentage of first births to women living with a male partner jumped from 12% in 2002 to 22% in 2006-10 — an 83% increase. The percentage of cohabiting new fathers rose from 18% to 25%. The analysis, by the National Center for Health Statistics, is based on data collected from 2006 to 2010.

“We were a little surprised in such a short time period to see these increases,” says demographer Gladys Martinez, lead author of the report, based on face-to-face interviews with 12,279 women and 10,403 men ages 15-44.

The percentage of first births to cohabiting women tripled from 9% in 1985 to 27% for births from 2003 to 2010.

Karen Benjamin Guzzo, a sociologist at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, who studies cohabitation and fertility, says she thinks the big jump since 2002 is likely because of the recession, which was at its height from late 2007 to 2009, right in the middle of the federal data collection.

“I think it’s economic shock,” she says. “Marriage is an achievement that you enter into when you’re ready. But in the meantime, life happens. You form relationships. You have sex. You get pregnant. In a perfect world, they would prefer to be married, but where the economy is now, they’re not going to be able to get married, and they don’t want to wait to have kids.”…

Sociologist Kelly Musick of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., who studies cohabiting couples with children, says she’s noticed women with more education starting to have children outside of marriage. She says cohabiting used to be more common among women who didn’t graduate from high school but it’s becoming more common for those with a high school degree or some college…

If sociologist Benjamin Guzzo is correct, does that mean that a good economy down the road (whenever that might be) would reverse this trend? I also wonder how this fits with sociologist Kelly Musick’s suggestion that cohabitation is spreading across class lines. How does this line up with recent arguments that marriage may be becoming a middle- or upper-class luxury?

Guzzo’s argument that marriage happens when two people are “ready” is also interesting. This fits with an argument that expectations for marriage partners are very high. So people don’t want to marry because they aren’t ready, economically or perhaps psychologically, but they do feel ready to have children in these situations and having a child is less tethered to being married.

Some of this seems to be happening quite rapidly and we just starting to to track it think about what it means.

Parents who share about their kid’s success may be engaging in a helpful networking strategy

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Sociologist Annette Lareau argues that parents who make their kid’s accomplishments known may be engaging in important networking activity:

Parents today are more anxious about the economy and their children’s futures than their predecessors, says University of Pennsylvania sociology professor Annette Lareau, and that can complicate the bragging versus sharing issue.

But she also points out that talking about your child’s extracurriculars is an effective networking strategy.

“It takes a lot of informal knowledge to have your kids in organized activities,” she says. You need to know about sign-up dates, carpool opportunities and how competitive, challenging or welcoming an activity will be.

“Mothers are very dependent on other mothers to share information,” Lareau says.

In this view, mothers and parents are sharing information about their own kids in order to build relationships with other parents as well as learn more information about social and community opportunities. Perhaps the bragging doesn’t haven’t to be overt but it is signalling to other parents about the abilities of their children and could lead to specialized information that could help their children even more. If you think your kid has special talents, then you would want to talk to other parents who have traveled similar paths and already some of the legwork.

More broadly, I wonder how much social networks are implicated in the Matthew Effect (“the rich get richer, the poor get poorer”), whether we are talking about children or people of different backgrounds and opportunities. It certainly plays a role but how much (i.e., could we put a percentage on it)?