Why working class parents inspire: Class culture and socialization for mobility over three generations.
Item
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Title
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Why working class parents inspire: Class culture and socialization for mobility over three generations.
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Identifier
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AAI9510748
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identifier
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9510748
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Creator
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Serravallo, Vincent Santo.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Paul Montagna
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Date
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1994
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, General
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Abstract
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This is a study of three generations of families who descend from an early 1900s rural, immigrant working-class community of brickyard workers. Based largely on oral histories and in-depth interviews, it seeks to understand why and how the first-generation parents, contrary to dominant explanations, inspired their children to attain better jobs and futures. It also examines why and how their two succeeding generations aspired as children and continued the hopeful inspiration as parents.;Parents' capacity to encourage their sons and daughters is traced to the interplay between the first generation's relations of production and community life. Less alienated objective features of brickyard labor and tightly integrated interfamily relations of survival and leisure in the community are suggested as heightening parents' expectations for their children's future. These expectations, along with other values, form the core of the early families' class culture. This class culture helped pattern an inspiration of hope across families in the community despite much material and cultural disadvantage. While some elements of this class culture wane, main features endure in the later generations and this helps explain why they carry on the main qualities of their forbearers' mobility socialization.;This class-cultural perspective provides the historical context and attention to the process of mobility that are lacking in conventional approaches, such as the "Wisconsin model." And it broadens the more critical approaches, such as those of Willis and Macleod, by focusing on the more "settled" or "conformist" members of the working class.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
