Successful Middle Class Parents example essay topic

At all levels of education children from deprived families achieve less well than their more well off counterparts. They are less likely to be found in nursery schools, will have fallen behind significantly in reading, writing and arithmetic by the age of nine, are more likely to leave school at the age of sixteen and are three times less likely to go to university. It is argued that the deprived have less innate intelligence as shown by IQ tests. Peter Saunders (1996) claims that the middle class do better in education quite simply because they inherit their parents talent, as suggested previously by the biological aspect of the nature nurture debate. Saunders suggests erroneously that it may not be the case that talents and abilities are equally distributed across the classes. Saunders claims that there are genetic differences in aptitude between social classes as measured by IQ tests.

Saunders furthermore claims that it is normal to expect successful middle class parents to pass on genetic advantages to their offspring again agreeing with the environment factor of the nature nurture debate. However some sociologists point out that it is impossible to separate genetic influences such as poverty, education, racism etc that may be a greater influence. IQ test results may be culturally biased and can never be neutral because they measure what the middle class academics regard as intelligence. Poverty reduces options for parents, as many parents living in poverty may not be able to afford prenatal care leading to a higher risk of health problems when the child is born. Housing is a huge issue concerning the health of children in socio-economically deprived homes. Children living in poverty may suffer from ill health due to poor housing conditions such as damp rooms that may lead to the child having pneumonia.

Also the areas that these families live in may not be adequate suffering from crimes and violence as suggested by Murry previously. Dodge et al 1994 states"; mothers and fathers living in poverty also treat their children quite differently than parents in middle-class families in the united states. They talk and read to them less, provide fewer age-appropriate toys, spend less time with them in intellectually stimulating activities, explain things less often, are less warm, are stricter and are more physical in their discipline". Not surprisingly these children turn out quite differently to those raised in more socio-economically sound families.

Brooks-Gun states " on average children that are poor have lower IQ's and move through the sequence of cognition development more slowly. They come to school less readily to read and thereafter they do consistently less well in school". Children living in poverty have a considerably higher risk of having almost every type of health problems.