Class contingencies in networks of care for school-aged children

Abstract

This paper looks deeply at the manifest ways that working parents construct networks to help them care for their school-aged children. It explores how class contingencies shape the resources available to networks and how, in turn, people, given a particular constellation of resources, dynamically construct and call upon networks. Anchors consider a variety of issues in constructing their networks, including shared child rearing values, kinship status, convenience, and expertise.
The larger study from which these findings are drawn, based in a metropolitan area in Northern California, comparatively explores the connections between care giving, kinship, and class contingencies. It approaches each network as a case study, identifying and studying four cases across the economic spectrum: working class, middle class, professional middle class, and upper class. Through these comparisons it identifies the middle-class cases as unique rather than normative. The study's forty interviews include all of the people named by the network anchors as involved in giving direct care to children or support and advice to the parents.