Is High Income Inequality Associated with More Intensive Parenting?

• In Event: 20212 - Labor Market and Social Mobility

Abstract

In recent decades intensive parenting has been on the rise in the United States. Scholars have argued the increase in intensive parenting may be due to rising income inequality, but there have been few empirical tests of this claim. Across 100 US counties, I investigated how income inequality was associated with 1) levels of intensive parenting and 2) socioeconomic disparities in intensive parenting. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort of 2011 (ECLS-K 2011), I found high income inequality was associated with more intensive parenting in terms of a higher percentage of parents expecting their child to complete a BA or higher, higher levels of parenting stress, greater child participation in structured activities, and more family outings to places like zoos and museums. However, income inequality was largely unrelated to the extent of socioeconomic disparities in intensive parenting.

Author

• Joseph Workman, University of Missouri-Kansas City