In a similar situation to Sally’s, a child banging a toy truck against the floor, a working class parent might say, “That’s enough!” A more gentle approach, on a less harried day, would simply be to guide the child away from the offending truck and distract him with something else. Often, an older child will be pressed to “keep your little brother out of trouble.” The first thing that strikes the middle class observer is the lack of all those middle class psychological skills: development of self, negotiation in general, means and ends, a sense of individual agency, and role negotiation across
...more
