This paper examines the textual coverage of the topic of work in Canadian English–language introductory sociology textbooks. Our findings are based on a content analysis of 21 Canadian texts published between 2008 and 2012. We found that only 12 of 21 textbooks included a chapter on work, suggesting that work occupies a peripheral position in Canadian sociology texts. Most chapters on work discussed economic systems, economic sectors (e.g., secondary and service), and major transitions in the world of work over the past two generations. However, topics such as service sector work were given a disproportionate share of attention, while others (e.g., work-life conflict, workplace physical injury) were given short shrift. Textbook portrayals of content such as manufacturing work were frequently characterized by a lack of nuance. These findings highlight a gap between current research in the sociology of work and the “sociology of work” in many Canadian introductory sociology textbooks.
The growing popularity of school choice is typically linked to the spread of neoliberal ideology. Identifying four components of this ideology, we examine the rationales of providers in an emerging private school market. Data come from interviews and site visits at 45 "third‐sector" private schools in Toronto, Canada. We find that only one of the four components has a strong resonance among these educators. Few private school operators sharply criticize public schools, compete via quantitative performance indicators, or are strongly business oriented. However, they voice a philosophy of matching their personal talents to the needs of "unique" children. Overall, rather than being influenced by neoliberalism, these providers are more directly driven by personalized rationales that prize tailored education in specialized niches. We draw two conclusions from these findings. First, they demonstrate how ideologies of choice are shaped by their market setting, in this case, small proprietorship, in contrast to a corporate environment. Second, they highlight how providers can be motivated by new cultures of consumerism and intensive child rearing when working in highly uncertain conditions. We recommend that theories of choice recognize the range of educational markets and the specific motives of their providers.
Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, Second Edition with an Update a Decade Later. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, 480 pp. $US 24.95 paper (978-0-520-27142-5) The second edition of Annette Lareau's award-winning Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life was released in 2011, adding more than 100 pages of new material. At its heart, the second edition tells two stories--one empirical, and the other a cautionary tale of qualitative methods. In the first edition of Unequal Childhoods, Lareau demonstrated that working-class and poor families enacted the Accomplishment of Natural Growth. Their children participated in few, if any organized leisure activities, and had extensive interactions with kin. Parents used directives in speaking to children, and saw a clear boundary between the activities of adults and children. Regardless of race, working-class and poor parents did not tend to intervene with institutions on their children's behalf. In contrast, middle-class parents supported Concerted Cultivation, developing children's talents through organized leisure activities and lessons, eliciting children's thoughts, and actively intervening in institutional settings. Lareau began her data collection for Unequal Childhoods in 1989, intensively observing twelve families between 1993 and 1995. The passage of time takes nothing away from this new edition, nor does it mitigate the impact or resonance of its findings. The book's lasting contribution is Lareau's conclusion that the childrearing patterns persist over time. Unlike in the 1990s, when she interviewed schoolteachers and other relevant adults, Lareau was unable to triangulate her family interviews with other data, and did not complement her interviews with intensive visits, naturalistic observations, nor interviews with employers, college professors, or others. For the second edition, she conducted 2-hour interviews with each of the 12 young adults (6 white, 5 African-American, 1 biracial), and usually interviewed at least one parent and a sibling. The follow-up interviews with the twelve original children tell the most important story of the second edition: how their lives unfolded from the age of nine or ten. Lareau offers a detailed qualitative panel study of sorts, documenting life trajectories of the twelve children--now aged 19-21--and the larger patterns their stories illuminate. Lareau questioned whether the class-based differences in childrearing she witnessed when the children were younger persisted into adulthood. The answer is a resounding yes. Some of these youth struggled--academically and otherwise--to graduate from high school, as four of the eight working-class and poor students dropped out. Others, with talent and determination to attend college, were not able to make the transition. Working-class and poor parents desperately wanted their children to attend college, but lacked the resources, connections, and know-how to effectively help their children with the labyrinthine American college application process. Despite their and their parents' hopes for college attendance, only one of the eight working class or poor youth persisted as a college student. Six are living with family members and working full-time in a variety of jobs, with one working-class girl married and a full-time homemaker. Three out of the four middle-class children studied graduated from high school, and are attending Ivy League colleges. The remaining student, Melanie Handlon, whose academic struggles were chronicled in the first edition of Unequal Childhoods ultimately abandoned community college for cosmetology school, leaving her parents disappointed, and her mother wishing she had intervened more in Melanie's schooling. The second edition of Unequal Childhoods is a testament to the lasting effect of parents' intervention in institutional settings. Middle-class parents took it upon themselves to actively manage and monitor their children's transition from high school to college. …
How are fat children represented in media parenting advice? I examine how fat children and "childhood obesity" are depicted in popular media, using dominant cultural models of child fatness and the "obesity epidemic," as presented in two flagship parenting magazines over the past three decades. Profiling the specific life experiences of individual children and their parents, parenting magazines offer "expert" advice and everyday tips for managing children's weight. I examine the advice dispensed by two parenting magazines: one from the United States (Parents) and one from Canada (Today's Parent). I perform a content analysis of 104 articles (52 from each publication) that appeared in print between 1983 and 2014. This longitudinal approach allows for analysis of both historical and current characterizations of fat children as a social problem. This analysis finds that parenting magazines present the "obesity epidemic" as fact, as they characterize fat as a serious health problem, offering ways to intervene and more recently, to prevent "child obesity." Articles consistently and fearfully detail numerous negative health consequences that may befall fat children. In recent years all children are cast as passive and at risk for becoming fat. Individual parents, generally mothers, are presented as singularly responsible for children's health, in contrast with earlier years, when children were seen as largely responsible for their own fatness. Fat is depicted as a medical problem to be solved through diligent, early intervention. Keeping children ignorant of the stigma associated with fatness is lauded. Ultimately, these media representations of "child obesity" endorse a gendered and classed, intensive model of parenting that assumes that parents should closely oversee and manage susceptible children.
This study empirically examines how for-profit career colleges in Ontario, Canada market themselves to prospective students. It uses a mixed-methods approach to review the content of 489 online promotional profiles representing 375 unique for-profit colleges. It finds that for-profit colleges adopt several distinct marketing strategies, including (1) emphasizing their expedient provision of modern, practical skills and (2) the convenience afforded by the location of their campuses. We interpret these findings through the lens of the new institutionalist theoretical perspective, highlighting how these organizations draw upon alternative strategies to legitimate their chosen forms.
This article examines whether market forces encourage private education entrepreneurs to strategically outsmart the competition in ways that improve the quality of their programs or service delivery. Based on interviews with eighty private education entrepreneurs, we find that market competition does not inform how they understand their role in the wider education sector or how they made sense of their actions. Instead entrepreneurs tie their program, hiring and customer service decisions to an ideological commitment to students and by defining themselves as educators. Drawing on the sense-making literature, we suggest that this worldview guides their actions more so than the principle of supply and demand. This paper opens the black box of private education organizations, and offers a nuanced addition to mounting research that challenges the connection between market competition and school performance.
