Topics and Issues Within the Family: Children

One shared concept in these readings is the notion of redefinitions, specifically redefinitions of motherhood, care and intimacy. We have already discussed some of these issues before in class, but I would like to rethink how/why/when care and gender roles are redefined inside the household or family and how this affects directly and indirectly children. Another shared characteristic that I liked is the use of qualitative methods, like ethnographic research and interviews and observation.
On the same line of thought of redefinitions, I would like all to think how the papers of previous sessions would differ if they were written on a different perspective. For example, the readings of this week talk about results from psychology and from children perspective. Hochschild provides an interesting account of this change in perspective when she looks at eavesdropping children. This is one of the things I appreciated most of the paper by Orellana and colleagues. Some migration scholars have argued that the study of the phenomenon (emigration from the country of origin perspective and immigration from the country of destination perspective) is looked differently depending on where the researchers come from. How do you think the paper of Orellana and colleagues would differ if it were written by Latin Americans, Koreans or Yemeni scholars? How do you think the growing trees that children draw in school in Oakland would differ if children in Yemen drew them? What issues and subjects would have been treated in both and what differences would have there been? And this talk to another think I liked about this paper: their comparative approach.
I appreciate also the incorporation of cultural capital into the discussion of family from Stacey and Biblarz since it tells us about another comparison: class and resources. However, I wonder how cultural capital has been transformed in the last years since this paper was written. That is, I would have liked a more current paper on the discussion of social class differences and cultural capital. How do you think a comparative paper of the types of cultural capital before and after 1990 would look like? How has globalization and advances in technology affected social class differences in family-school relationships? How is the internet affecting care and gender roles? Is the internet substituting video games and television and outdoor activities?
Q1. How would you think the effect of eavesdropping differ if the conversations are about same sex couples, immigrants, poverty or poor academic achievement? That is, how does listening to the conversations of others (not only parents) in general affect children (and adults) differently and how does this affect socialization? How do conversations and comments affect self-esteem, our identity, prejudices, stereotypes and discriminating attitudes?
Q2. How has cultural capital changed recently and how do these changes affect family-school relationships? And the relationships between members of the family?
Q3. Stacey and Biblarz write about selection and homophobia and Orellana and colleagues give some hints on selection and migration. But, how do you think selection effects could bias the outcomes of eavesdropping children?