Kay Hymowitz, writing for City Journal, wrote an intriguing (and long) article about why black children have problems academically, and lays blame on parents. That’s intuitive to most of us, I’d guess, but Hymowitz discusses some of the differences between middle-class and lower-class parenting styles.
She begins the essay with background on Bill Cosby’s infamous and public chastisement of lower-class black parents and their lack of parenting skills, backed up with statistics. She discusses the failed promise of the billion-dollar drain known as Head Start and crosses over into taboo territory: poor black kids do poorly in school because they have bad parents who pass on a culture of poverty. Hymowitz writes:
In middle-class families, the child’s development—emotional, social, and (these days, above all) cognitive—takes center stage…In The Family in the Modern Age, sociologist Brigitte Berger traces how the nuclear family arose in large measure to provide the environment for the “family’s great educational mission.â€The Mission, as we’ll call it, was not a plot against women. It was the answer to a problem newly introduced by modern life: how do you shape children into citizens in a democratic polity and self-disciplined, self-reliant, skilled workers in a complex economy?
Sorely lacking in lower income families is this sense of Mission. The children, sadly, are not the focus of the family unit, especially when there’s no father around.
Before black liberal readers have a collective cow, let me offer my qualifications for making such a statement. I observe the phenomenon every day, and members are my own family qualify as “lower class” as it pertains to lack of focus on a child’s development. I see and hear the way these parents talk to and treat their children, and I hear what others say about what they’ve observed. I am well qualified to offer an opinion on this subject.
Some of the anecdotes Hymowitz presents are sad. For instance, we all know that talking to children, even babies, helps their cognitive development. When told to talk to her baby, one mother said, “Why would I talk to him? He can’t answer me.”
Although a Ph.D. isn’t required for such assessments, an academic came up with a theory called “natural growth” to explain some of the differences between middle-class and low-income parents:
Natural-growth believers are fatalists; they do not see their role as shaping the environment so that Little Princes or Princesses will develop their minds and talents, because they assume that these will unfold as they will. As long as a parent provides love, food, and safety, she is doing her job.
It’s cultural, or more accurately, sub-cultural. Lower-income parents, in general, don’t help their children develop talents or equip them with skills necessary to be productive citizens. Part of the reason is that generally, children from lower-income households are raised by the mother and no father, at least not one living with them, and her time is sub-divided between working and/or playing. For whatever reasons, these mothers either don’t understand or care about the Mission. Consequently, their kids receive only the most basic care — food, shelter, and clothing.
Not all poor parents have this mindset. There are exceptions. A university professor conducted a study by sending trained observers into poor black households with high- and low-achieving children. He found that parents of high-achieving kids “get it”:
These parents, usually married couples, imposed routines that reinforced the message that school came first, before distractions like television, friends, or video games. In the homes of low achievers, mothers came home from work and either didn’t mention homework or quickly became distracted from the subject.
In my opinion, television viewing by children of any family income level should be drastically restricted or eliminated altogther. But I guess the electronic babysitter is too valuable to give up.
Related posts:
- Cosby I
- Cosby II
- Achievement Gap and Social Skills
- The Hard Sayings of Bill Cosby
- Black Immigrants Work Harder
