Lareau discerned a divide between parents who practiced what she called “concerted cultivation” and those, generally of lower-class status, who refused or didn’t have time to orient their lives entirely around children’s activities and future resume-building. It’s not as if these lower-class parents were “bad” parents—it’s just that the skills they cultivated in their children, including independence and imagination, are not the ones valued by the bourgeois workplace.
