Local Anxieties, Global Aspirations: The Impact of Social Class on Parental Demand for Out-of-School Activities

• In Event: Education, Community and the Private Sphere

Proposal

Introduction and context:

Parents worldwide are increasingly seeking additional activities to supplement their children’s schooling. Such activities often include private tutoring, or, as it is widely known, shadow education (i.e., tutoring in academic subjects), and extracurricular activities (i.e., extra lessons in arts, sports, music). To achieve these goals, parents deploy different social and cultural resources and actively schedule extra lessons to cultivate their children’s talents and abilities. The rise of both intensive parenting and the middle class globally has triggered renewed interest in class-based parental practices (Ishizuka, 2019. Gupta, 2022). Research has shown that children's enrolment in both academic and non-academic out-of-school activities is related to their parents' social class. Middle-class parents, rather than working-class parents, are the primary consumers of these activities. Identifying the class-based cultural orientation of parenting between middle- and working-class parents has become an attractive research domain.

Methods and data sources: 

This study uses a qualitative comparative approach, based on interviews with 80 parents in Hong Kong, to provide new answers to the age-old question of whether parents from different social backgrounds make different parental choices. Study design included semi-structured in-depth interviews and a background survey serving as the major identifier of social class. Methodologically, the study was inspired by the comparative case study (CCS) approach of Bartlett and Vavrus (2016).

The study was conducted in Hong Kong between May and July 2021. The participants were interviewed in their preferred languages: Cantonese (40), English (29), Mandarin (2), and Japanese (9). To validate the findings and provide clarification, a few parents were interviewed twice. The interviews were conducted remotely via Zoom (69), phone (10), and WeChat (1), and lasted from 30 minutes to 2 hours. All audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and, for interviews conducted in a language other than English, translated into English. The data were coded and analysed in NVivo 12 by two coders who constantly compared and adjusted the codebook (Gerson, & Damaske, 2020).

Conceptual framework: 

Using an interdisciplinary approach, this study connects different parts of the literature—studies of shadow education, parenting, and social class—with each other and borrows literature from sociology of education. It is widely argued that parents orient themselves differently towards the future depending on their social class, raising concerns about inequalities and children’s ‘diverging destinies’ (McLanahan & Jacobson, 2015). Parental aspirations are linked to perceived capabilities and opportunity structures, and there is empirical evidence that parental investments in education reflect class preferences (Chin & Philips, 2004). A plethora of studies on social class, parenting, and social stratification more broadly has argued that involvement in educational activities is an important contributor to the reproduction of social class (Ellingsaeter et al., 2021; Irwin & Elley, 2011).

Lareau’s 2003 book ‘Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life,’ has become a classic of these studies, influencing many subsequent works. Lareau’s work prompted numerous studies in the sociology of education, which have investigated class-based parenting approaches mostly through the lens of concerted cultivation. In parallel to this body of literature, the research into shadow education and parents has mainly focused on the relationship between parents’ socio-economic status (SES) and the use of private tutoring, using mostly quantitative measures. Most such studies have found that parent SES is positively linked to the use of tutoring. Another common finding in the literature is that it is mostly middle-class parents who use private tutoring as an educational strategy (e.g., Dang, 2007; Zhang, 2020; Gupta, 2022). Only a limited number of studies have found that tutoring is used by working class parents and very affluent families (Liu, 2019; Yung, 2019).

Findings:

Contrary to the narrative stating that the literature on shadow education predominated focuses on middle-class parents who demand academic tutoring (see e.g. Zhang, 2020), we found a different trend: academic tutoring is a cross-class practice that is shared by parents of different social backgrounds. This indicates converging rather than diverging trends in parental practices and beliefs. With regards to Lareau’s (2013) famous concept of concerted cultivation, previously considered a marker of the middle class, we found that in the Hong Kong context this parenting style is increasingly common among parents of all social classes. Concerted cultivation and intensive parenting require families to spend time and money, and often it is middle-class parents who can afford it. Differences in spending on out-of-school educational activities may be created by access to economic capital rather than for class-based reasons. While parents of different classes share similar parenting styles, it is resource constraints that determine parental practices. Access to resources or capital shape parental demand, which may then have an effect on parenting styles.

Our findings include some classed patterns of participation in extracurricular activities versus academic tutoring. The reasons for participation in academic tutoring were also similar across classes, the majority of which focused on improving academic results, exam preparation, social pressure, and dissatisfaction with the quality of schooling. Similarly, extracurricular activities were perceived by parents as useful for their children, demonstrating that they have a present-day value such as responding to children’s interests, and may not necessarily be seen as investments in the future.

Scholarly significance/Relevance:

By comparing patterns of class-based academic tutoring and extracurricular activities, this paper contributes to theories that conceptualize social class as a factor that shapes parental choices and strategies. It sets out a new way of understanding the capacities and limitations of cultural logics in parenting. Given today’s fast-developing socio-economic and political landscapes, it makes sense to ask questions about how class-based parenting affects social inequalities in Hong Kong and elswhere to explore the consequences for society at large.

By focusing on highlighting social inequalities existing in societies, this paper calls for more inclusive educational futures, thus contributing to the theme of the CIES 2024 "Power of Protest."

Author

• Magda Nutsa Kobakhidze, The University of Hong Kong