Middle‐Class Parents and Urban Public Schools: Current Research and Future Directions

Middle‐class flight from urban public schools to suburban districts or private schools is a key source of educational inequality. Recently, however, a number of studies have focused on middle‐class and upper‐middle‐class families who have made a different choice, opting to remain in the city and send their children to neighborhood public schools. While the movement of advantaged families into urban public schools has received positive attention in the media, this growing body of research tells a more complicated story. Middle‐class families – with their economic, cultural, and social capital – can bring important resources to schools, resulting in widespread benefits. However, their engagement in urban public schools can also lead to marginalization and exclusion. We review the emergent literature on this topic, highlighting four themes: (i) parent preferences, identities, and values; (ii) the role of marketing campaigns and informal networks in attracting the middle class; (iii) the nature and consequences of middle‐class parent engagement in urban schooling; and (iv) the relationship between neighborhood change and school change. We conclude by outlining a research agenda aimed at deepening our understanding of the mechanisms by which middle‐class parent engagement in urban schooling may serve to mitigate, reproduce, or exacerbate educational inequalities.     

Sociology’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Suicide</Emphasis>: A Forensic Autopsy?

For decades Durkheim’s theory of suicide has been tested and found wanting. Yet, rather than being consigned to the dust-bin of history, it lives on and is pointed to as an exemplar of the powers of sociological theory and research. If this rationalizing and/or dismissal of so many falsifications of the theory were an isolated phenomenon, it might be evidence of some lemming-like propensity for suicide or a disciplinary death-wish, among a few sociologists. But it appears to be a much more widespread and common occurrence. In this paper we explore some possible explanations of this ‘falsification denial’—‘The Social Misconstruction of Reality’ (Hamilton 1996), ‘When Prophecy Fails’ (Festinger et al. 1956), ‘Underdetermination’ (Duhem 1954; Quine Journal of Philosophy 67:178–183, 1970, Erkenntnis 9:313–328, 1975; Lakatos 1970), and ‘Boundary Maintenance’ (Erikson 1966), and we outline some of the more important and pernicious consequences of this falsification denial for the discipline and future of sociology.     

Exploring the dynamics of racial food security gaps in the United States

Review of Economics of the Household - Household-level food insecurity is one of the largest public health concerns facing millions of people in the United States today. Although recent work has...     

The Role of Verbal Repetition in the Development of Infant Speech Preferences From 4 to 14 Months of Age

Four experiments investigated infants' preferences for age‐appropriate and age‐inappropriate infant‐directed speech (IDS) over adult‐directed speech (ADS). Two initial experiments showed that 6‐, 10‐, and 14‐month‐olds preferred IDS directed toward younger infants, and 4‐, 8‐, 10‐, and 14‐month‐olds, but not 6‐month‐olds, preferred IDS directed toward older infants. In Experiment 3. 6‐month‐olds preferred IDS directed toward older infants when the frequency of repeated utterances matched IDS to younger infants. In Experiment 4, 6‐month‐olds preferred repeated IDS utterances over the same IDS utterances organized without repetition. Attention to repeated utterances precedes word segmentation and sensitivity to statistical cues in continuous speech, and might play a role in the discovery of these and other aspects of linguistic structure.     

‘Doing Something Meaningful’: Gender and Public Service during Municipal Government Restructuring

Research on the gendered dimensions of workplace restructuring often focuses on management strategies and their structural consequences. Less attention is paid to employees’ gendered practices. In this article, we analyse material from in‐depth interviews with front‐line public‐sector employees following a major reorganization of their jobs and workplaces. Our study makes three contributions to theory and research on gender and organizational change. Firstly, it highlights the micro‐level dynamics at the heart of restructuring by showing how workers engaged with an ideal that was central to their understanding of public‐sector work — the public‐service ethic — which they believed was threatened. Secondly, it highlights the importance of gendered meanings and identities in shaping how workers engaged with the public service ethic. Thirdly, the study shows that front‐line employees did not passively accept management plans for change but struggled to resist or transform them in gendered strategies for dealing with organizational change.     

Emotion Regulation in Context: Situational Effects on Infant and Caregiver Behavior

Emotion regulation is an important developmental task of the early years of life. However, situational effects are rarely examined. In this study, we evaluated situational effects on 7‐month‐olds' and their mothers' emotional expression and interactive regulation behavior, individual differences across situations, and intercorrelations within situations. Mother‐infant dyads (N = 225) were observed interacting during episodes from play, teaching, and still‐face situations that varied along 2 developmentally salient dimensions: emotional challenge (low vs. high), and attentional focus (face‐to‐face vs. object). Attentional focus affected mothers' behavior, whereas both challenge and attentional focus affected infants. Associations between mother and infant behaviors varied in each situation. High‐challenge situations provided more consistent individual differences in infants and more negative behavior from mothers. Findings have implications for appropriate assessment of emotion regulation in infancy.     

Re-Assessing Poverty Dynamics and State Protections in Britain and the US: The Role of Measurement Error

This paper addresses a key methodological challenge in the modeling of individual poverty dynamics—the influence of measurement error. Taking the US and Britain as case studies and building on recent research that uses latent Markov models to reduce bias, we examine how measurement error can affect a range of important poverty estimates. Our data are taken from the British Household Panel Survey and the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics, for working-aged adults over the period 1993–2003. For both national samples we ask how common vulnerability to poverty was over the period in question, what the entry and exit probabilities were for the group likely to transition into or out of poverty, and how effective redistributive programs were at protecting those most at risk. Crucially, in answering these questions we estimate and remove the effects of error in the measurement of poverty status. Throughout, we compare our results with estimates that do not take this error into account, and assess the implications for understanding poverty dynamics both within and between the two countries. Our modeling strategy extends previous research in several respects, enabling us to make stronger statements about measurement error and individual poverty dynamics. We find that correcting for error affects conclusions in important ways: Poverty is less temporary and risks are less widely dispersed than otherwise assumed, while cross-national differences are more pronounced.     

Opportunity, Community, and Reckless Lives: Social Distress Among Adolescents in West Virginia

Social distress among West Virginia adolescents has many manifestations. Among the most conspicuous of these are dropping out of high school, teen pregnancy, and violent death. For more than 30 years, state policy makers have explained these behaviors by invoking the notion of a pervasive culture of poverty and morbidity which is transmitted from generation to generation. Participants in this primitive and fatalistic culture, it is commonly claimed, lack the prudence and foresight needed to make best use of the opportunities offered by our modern world. Education-intensive strategies aimed at enabling West Virginia adolescents and their families to overcome this disabling world view seem the best responses. By contrast, however, based on 8 years of empirical research in West Virginia, we contend that an “Oh, what the Hell!” sort of recklessness is interpretable as a rational response to deteriorating social and economic circumstances. West Virginia communities have become increasingly anomic and devoid of economic opportunity. In this economically uncertain, culturally insubstantial world, adolescents rightly judge their prospects to be poor. In this social context, seemingly irrational acts make more sense. Why be prudent in the absence of opportunity and community? Why be prudent in the absence of a future?     

Dialogue on Private Events

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - In the fall of 2003, the authors corresponded on the topic of private events on the listserv of the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group. Extracts from that...     

Histories of poverty and self-rated health trajectories

This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between poverty histories and self-rated health trajectories. We are interested in patterns of change in individuals' health over time and the ways in which such patterns are structured by continuity and change in poverty experiences. Data, collected for adults aged 25 and older in 1984 (N = 7,258), are from the 1968-1996 annual waves of Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Individual growth curves allow us to investigate health trajectories as continuous processes, as well as individual and group heterogeneity in these trajectories. We find that, on average, health deteriorates slowly over time, but there is significant variation in health in 1984 and the rate at which health declines. Histories of poverty partly accounted for the sources of individual differences in self-rated health in 1984, but they were not related to health change over time. Although increasing incomes were better for self-rated health than falling incomes, current economic circumstances did not erase the health effects of earlier poverty experiences.