Communicating Class: How and What Socioeconomically Diverse U.K. and U.S. Parents Communicate about Social Class with their Children and Adolescents

• In Event: Parents’ Contributions to Children’s and Adolescent’s Beliefs about Social Class and Economic Inequality

Abstract

Children’s and adolescents’ beliefs about their social class have important implications for their emotional wellbeing (Godfrey et al., 2019), academic adjustment (Destin et al., 2017), and relationships with others (Mistry et al., 2022), yet developmental scientists currently know little about how youth develop a sense of their social class group identity. When adults describe their social class, many draw on family experiences from childhood (Manstead, 2018), but research has not yet addressed what those experiences might be from parents’ perspectives.

To explore how and what parents communicate with their children and adolescents about the material and cultural dimensions of their social class, we conducted in-depth hour-long qualitative interviews with socioeconomically and ethnically diverse parents of youth ages 5 to 17 years living in the UK (n = 21) and the US (n = 13); see Table 1. Conducted via Zoom in the spring of 2022, the full interview probed family routines, effects of the coronavirus pandemic, children’s awareness of social class, parents’ socialization practices, hopes for the future, and conceptions of financial security.

Data analysis was an inductive and iterative process. A pattern coding and analysis approach was used to categorize data into meaningful groups which were analyzed to identify emergent themes relevant to the research questions reported here. These analyses revealed (1) two main communication processes– proactive and reactive (2) two main communication forms– explicit and implicit and (3) three main communication goals– instilling personal responsibility, promoting budget-consciousness, and establishing habits for financial independence (see Table 2 for examples).

First, parents enacted proactive processes a priori (e.g., regulating adolescents’ purchases) and reactive processes when the opportunity arose (e.g., responding to children’s questions about others’ financial circumstances). Second, explicit forms of communication openly addressed social class (e.g., conversations about mobility in the future) while implicit forms of communication conveyed messages indirectly (e.g., choosing to live in an economically homogenous neighborhood). Third, through these communication processes and forms, parents often intended to convey a sense of personal responsibility (e.g., the importance of working hard, not relying on government support), budget-consciousness (e.g., the need to live within one’s means, make sensible choices), and establish habits for financial independence (e.g., the relevance of saving, investing).

Building on these initial findings, crosscutting analyses (in progress) will explore differences across UK and US families, across social class groups (e.g., working class vs. middle class), and across child ages (e.g., children vs. adolescents). For example, the more historically codified class system in the UK (Savage et al., 2013) may be related to more frequent explicit communication about social class among UK families relative to US families.

Thus, parents convey proactive, reactive, explicit, and implicit messages to their children about the meaning and implications of being poor, middle class, or affluent in the UK or the US. Overall, this study provides new evidence of both how and what parents communicate with their children about the material and cultural dimensions of their social class, advancing developmental scientists’ understanding of the early family experiences that shape social class identity.

Authors

• Laura Elenbaas, Purdue University, West Lafayette
  Presenting Author

• Luke McGuire, University Of Exeter

• Amanda Ackerman, University of Rochester

• Aqsa Farooq, University Of Exeter

• Lauren Kinnard, University of California - Los Angeles

• Ellen Kneeskern, University of Rochester

• Fidelia Law, University Of Exeter

• Damilola Makanju

• Rashmita S. Mistry, University of California - Los Angeles