Socializing Inequality: Class, Culture and Cognition in Early Childhood

This book examines the processes through which children effectively ’inherit’ their position in the social world.

It asks:

• How does class inequality affect one of the most formative periods in human development, that is, early childhood?
• When do differences in class background manifest themselves in children’s actions and attitudes?
• How do class divisions intersect with racial and gender inequality to shape the way that children navigate the social world?
• When do children become aware of the fact that ’inequality’ is a key feature of their lifeworld?

Bringing together original research from France, Norway, Sweden, Belgium and the USA, this book unravels the ways in which class inequality shapes our earliest experiences of the social world. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in class and social stratification, the sociology of childhood and family, cultural sociology, sociolinguistics, child and developmental psychology and educational science.

Dieter Vandebroeck is Professor of Sociology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BRISPO, VUB, Belgium) where he heads the research lab on Childhood, Culture and Cognition. He is the author of Distinctions in the Flesh: Social Class and the Embodiment of Inequality (2016).

Maaike Jappens is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BRISPO, VUB, Belgium). Her current work focuses on social inequality, children’s perceptions of the social world and their relationships with family and peers.

Annette Lareau is Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She is a Past President of the American Sociological Association. She is the author of the award-winning books Home Advantage (1989), Unequal Childhoods (2003) and Listening to People (2021). With Blair Sackett, she authored We Thought It Would be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America (2023). Her current writing project focuses on the blessings and challenges of wealth for family life.