No description available.

The lack of sociological research on adult/child stratification in children’s books and the impacts books make in the lives of children and adults, especially in regards to socialization, are important reasons to investigate this medium. Through a conflict and feminist perspective, as well as utilizing a cultural diamond framework, this research examines the representations of power disparities between adults and children, and the structures of childrearing within the cultural object of 64 bestselling children’s picture books from 1993 to 2008. I employed content analysis to evaluate appearances of gender, age, race, parental behaviors, and childrearing structures. My findings demonstrate that gender and age disparities prevail, non-white main characters remain invisible, males as main adult characters exhibit higher rates of parental behaviors, and concerted cultivation child rearing structure is present in illustrations. Future research should focus on other aspects of the cultural diamond to gain deeper knowledge of cultural meanings.

No description available.

Anne Lareau (2003) argues that parents' child-rearing practices have a profound effect on academic and later occupational success for children, even holding constant such important factors as gender, race and school effects. She says that social class impacts these child-rearing practices and that middle-class families use a specific type of practice called concerted cultivation. Concerted cultivation involves parents organizing children's daily activities, using reasoning skills in talking with children, and teaching them how to interact with the institutions around them. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988, the current study tests the theoretical validity of concerted cultivation. Results show that concerted cultivation significantly predicts both student GPA and standardized test scores. Amongst the elements of concerted cultivation, parent and student habitus, in the form of expectations, play the largest roles.