More and More Education
Regardless of the demographic characteristics of the interviewed parents— their social class location, racial/ethnic identification, region of the country, marital status, age of children—they look toward higher education for their own children as a significant basis for securing an advantaged future. This is not an extraordinary group of parents. The National Center for Education Statistics provides testimony of just how widespread these ambitions are: “About 9 in io students (91 percent) in grades 6 through 12 had parents who expected them to continue their education beyond high school. Of these, 65 percent had parents who expected them to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 26 percent had parents who expected them to complete some postsecondary education.”’9
Indeed, most parents believe that a college education now constitutes a bare minimum requirement to get a “good” job. They also believe that this requirement represents a significant shift from the expectations their parents held for them. As one woman said, “I think that. . . parents had different expectations back then [when I was a child]. Not all kids were expected to go to college; now… a four-year degree [may not be] enough.” And while some parents reluctantly—or disingenuously—acknowledge that how much education their children ultimately acquire will be their childrens choice, most parents hope that that decision will include at least a bachelor’s degree.
But there were notable differences among the interviewed parents.20 Those who themselves had not completed an undergraduate degree (the working- class parents) simply want a college education for their children, and they expressed these aspirations with reference to their own more limited educational accomplishments: “[I want my daughter to go to] college because I did not, and I see the difference.” Only a fifth of those who had themselves received a bachelor’s degree (the middle-class parents) want “merely” a college education for their children; the rest hinted that they would prefer more than that. These parents also often referred to their own limitations as they embrace more substantial educational aspirations for their children: “Definitely through college. . . Neither [my husband] nor I have our master’s or PhD, but if either of them would continue beyond four years of college, that would be great, but… as long as they will ever remember, it’s been a given: of course they will go to college.” Among the parents who have postgraduate degrees themselves, every single respondent expects something more than a college education, and these parents were both more adamant and more specific about a higher standard than were the parents with less education: “As much as they want, but I would like them at least to go to graduate school.”
All parents, then, want their children to do at least as well as they have done; most also want something better for their children. Hie professional middle-class parents were the most insistent about their children’s continuing beyond college. Not surprisingly, they also talked with more knowledge about the college-admissions process and intimated that they won’t be satisfied unless their children find their way into not just any but what they define as being good colleges, which will ensure their children’s competitive position.21 Indeed, they casually named specific colleges—Berkeley, Middlebury, Harvard, and Yale—as examples of places their children might consider. These casual references, which one assumes are as frequent in daily life as they are when an interviewer is present, represent ongoing pressure on children. And those children might on occasion feel that the pressure has gotten out of control.