The social geography of childcare: making up a middle‐class child

Abstract

Childcare is a condensate of disparate social forces and social processes. It is gendered and classed. It is subject to an excess of policy and political discourse. It is increasingly a focus for commercial exploitation. This is a paper reporting on work in progress in an ESRC funded research project (R000239232) on the choice and provision of pre‐school childcare by middle‐class (service class) families in two contrasting London locations. Drawing on recent work in class analysis the paper examines the relationships between childcare choice, middle‐class fractions and locality. It suggests that on the evidence of the findings to date, there is some evidence of systematic differences between fractions in terms of values, perspectives and preferences for childcare, but a more powerful case for intra‐class similarities, particularly when it comes to putting preferences into practice in the ‘making up of a middle‐class child’ through care and education.

Notes

* Corresponding author: Institute of Education, University of London, 59 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0NT. Email: [email protected]

As Goldthorpe (1995, p. 314) makes very clear, ‘the service class is a class of employees’. The main problem of demarcation is that of distinguishing them from other sorts of employees. There are two elements to this; first, benefits of employment over and above salary; (pension rights, and so on); second, some degree of professional autonomy and managerial or administrative authority. Despite ongoing changes in the labour market these criteria do still provide a fairly robust basis for distinguishing service class employees from other middle‐class groups, specifically the ‘intermediate’ middle‐class. That is, those employed in routine, low‐autonomy, white‐collar jobs.

The research is a funded study lasting two and a half years (November 2001 to April 2004), which explores how parents choose childcare for their young children (0–5 years). The project as a whole seeks to explore five themes. These relate directly to consumer and producer behaviour and interaction within the childcare market: i) the ways in which parents as consumers make use of this market; ii) how market‐use is related to gender roles within families; iii) how the purchase of childcare articulates with individual families’ beliefs about child‐rearing; and iv) how these markets ‘work’ in particular localities. The vast majority of those who act as ‘consumers’ in these markets are middle‐class (broadly conceived). Therefore our fifth theme concerns the ways in which different fractions of the middle‐class(es) engage with the problems posed by these markets. The study is a qualitative one, which will involve some 114 semi‐structured interviews with parents and providers as well as others closely involved in childcare. This paper reports on an initial analysis of 30 parents (15 in each area).

For us this project offers a synergy from and development of previous work. Vincent’s research on parents and their involvement in schools provides a starting point for thinking about the broader aspects of parenting which are addressed in this study, and the interaction of parents with others closely concerned with their children’s care and development. Ball’s work on choice and class, and his writing on the middle‐class, is taken forward in two ways; in our focus of class ‘fractioning’, and in the engagement of these parents with a ‘mixed’ private/voluntary/state sector market. The cash nexus is much clearer here.

A higher number therefore had been educated in comprehensives than in Battersea.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carol Vincent *

* Corresponding author: Institute of Education, University of London, 59 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0NT. Email: [email protected]