Social Class and the Exercise of Parental Authority

Abstract

The conditions under which middle- and working-class parents punish their pre-adolescent children physically, or refrain from doing so, appear to be quite different. Working-class parents are more likely to respond in terms of the immediate consequences of the child's actions, middle-class parents in terms of their interpretation of the child's intent in acting as he does. This reflects differences in parents' values: Working-class parents value for their children qualities that assure respectability; desirable behavior consists essentially of not violating proscriptions. Middle-class parents value the child's development of internalized standards of conduct; desirable behavior consists essentially of acting according to the dictates of one's own principles. The first necessarily focuses on the act itself, the second on the actor's intent.