Middle-class parents can be outrageously (if subconsciously) snobby—but their fear of another family’s “poor” parenting habits is just another version of that same old class anxiety and instability. When a parent attempts to make connections with the “right” sort of families, what they’re really trying to do is build an insurance policy that their kid will maintain those bourgeois connections, habits, and familiarity for the rest of their lives. Within this logic, spending time with the “wrong” kind of family is like exposure to a contagion, threatening to forever infect a child with the
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