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The Effects of Social Class on Parental Values and Practices

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The American Family

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Abstract

My thesis is straightforward and relatively simple: that there are substantial differences in how parents of differing social-class position raise their children; that these differences in parental practices result chiefly from class differences in parents’ values for their children; and that such class differences in parental values result in large measure from differences in the conditions of life experienced by parents at different social-class levels. This essay attempts to spell out this thesis more concretely and explicitly.1 Without getting into technical aspects of methodology, it also attempts to give some idea of the type of empirical evidence on which the generalizations are based.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Melvin L. Kohn

  2. Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Norman A. Scotch

  3. Payne Whitney Clinic, Cornell University and New York Hospital Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Ira D. Glick

Authors
  1. Melvin L. Kohn
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  2. Norman A. Scotch
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  3. Ira D. Glick
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA

    David Reiss M. D.

  2. The Psychiatric Institute, Washington, D.C., USA

    Howard A. Hoffman M. D.

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© 1979 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Kohn, M.L., Scotch, N.A., Glick, I.D. (1979). The Effects of Social Class on Parental Values and Practices. In: Reiss, D., Hoffman, H.A. (eds) The American Family. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9150-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9150-1_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-9152-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-9150-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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