Parenting and Extracurricular Music Participation: Interrogating Concerted Cultivation

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Perspectives on Culture and Bias in Out-of-School Time

Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to investigate parents’ and primary caregivers’ support for children’s participation in a chorus that took place outside of school, in a community-based program. I purposefully selected a program where I might find differences in parental expectations by race or socioeconomic status, and I sought to compare some of my findings with Lareau’s [(2003) 2011] concerted cultivation. Interviewing 132 parents or primary caregivers, I discovered that a majority were connected to valuable social networks that helped with the labor of finding out about the chorus and assessing its suitability. Although parents who identified as white may have sought social advantage, parents and caregivers who identified with other races or ethnicities considered affordability of participation.

Author

• Susan Wharton Conkling, Boston University