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Middle Class Fractions, Childcare and the ‘relational’ and ‘normative’
aspects of class practices.
Stephen J Ball, Carol Vincent, Sophie Kemp and Soile Pietikainen
Institute of Education, University of London
School of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies
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Abstract
The emphasis in class research remains on the structural aspects of class,
class processes are neglected. This paper focuses upon some relational and
normative aspects of class through an examination of social divisions
produced and constructed within middle class families’ choices of childcare.
Working with data from two contrasting settings in London (Battersea and
Stoke Newington) three issues are addressed in the paper; the extent to
which childcare arrangements both substantively and structurally position
children differently within long term educational careers; the ways in which the
use of choice in a market system of child care and education, works to
produce patterns of social closure that quietly discriminate via the collectivist
criterion of class and racial membership; and the ways in which child care
choices also point-up and perpetuate subtle distinctions and tensions of
values and lifestyle within the middle class, between class factions. Concepts
drawn from the work of Bourdieu are deployed throughout.
This paper draws from an ESRC-funded study of middle-class, or more
precisely, service class (Goldthorpe 1995) families in London, choosing
childcare
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. Through the lens of childcare arrangements, and the planning of
children‟s educational careers, we engage with some of the recent
developments in class theory and class research (Crompton 1998) (Savage
2000), (Butler and Robson 2002), see also Vincent, Ball and Kemp 2004).
More substantively the focus on pre-school care enables us to begin to
demonstrate the ways in which middle-class educational strategies are
constructed from a very early age, but also to show how these strategies vary
within the middle-class not only by household but by the habitus within which
the household is spatially located. Here then we address both the
differentiation of class fractional values and life-styles within our middle-class
samples, and the ways in which these differentiations are enacted to produce
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Our focus on the service class and their relation to the working class perpetuates the more general
neglect in sociology of the ‘intermediate’ middle class.
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and reproduce boundaries within the middle-class and between this class and
class „others‟. That is to say, following Bourdieu our analysis is relational, the
class and class fractional identities and distinctions we describe involve a
sense of belonging to a group and a sense of differentiation from others (cf.
Savage 2000 p. 115). These metropolitan families are very much social
individuals embedded in social networks which are, in the Battersea sample in
particular, relatively tightly bounded and over-written by particular cultural
makers of class – cars, clothes, leisure and bodily hexis.
Thus, in considering the coherence of the fractions we identify, we attend to
both „the relational aspects of class … the extent to which a class can be
identified through its more or less exclusive patterns of informal social
interaction‟ (Lockwood 1995 p. 6) and the normative aspects of class, those
shared values and beliefs which demarcate class groups. Lockwood suggests
that both aspects are currently neglected in class research and are „an open
field of investigation‟ (p. 6). As we shall see the two are thoroughly inter-
twined within the class practices explored here.
A focus on the organisation and choices of child care also allows us to
address „class processes‟, the ways in „which groups attain, establish and
retain their positions within the social order‟ (Crompton 1998 p. 166) and thus
the processes of social closure which shape the class structure. In particular
we explore three issues. First, the extent to which childcare arrangements
both substantively and structurally „position‟ children differently towards and
within long term educational careers and in relation to potential „success roles‟
in education. Second, the ways in which „the use of ostensibly individualist
criteria‟, that is, the use of choice in a market system of child care and
education, works „to produce a pattern of social closure that quietly
discriminates via the collectivist criterion of class or racial membership‟
(Parkin 1979 p. 65). Here, apart from its other immediate mundane and
practical functions, child care can be both a preparation for future educational
experiences and a social mechanism for separation off and marking out of
class groups. We hope to demonstrate that closure does not simply take
place within a structure of static positions, it is also a dynamic process which
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constitutes that structure. Third, we address some aspects of what Parkin
(1979) calls „double closure‟, that closure which takes place within as well as
between classes. Child care choices also point-up and perpetuate subtle
distinctions and tensions of values and lifestyle within the middle class,
between class factions. Each of these issues contributes to the identification
of some of the „mechanisms that connect the essential elements of class
position to the characteristics and actions that are associated with class‟
(Payne 1996 p. 340).
The service class exists in a nexus of contradictions of identity, values and
social relationships. It is a class betwixt and between, an „intermediate zone‟
within which „the indeterminacy and the fuzziness of the relationship between
practices and positions are the greatest‟ (Bourdieu 1987 p. 12). We want to
hold on to and explore both the distinctions and the fuzziness that
characterises the middle class „to capture this essential ambiguity ... rather
than dispose of it‟ (Wacquant 1991 p. 57). Writing about the class in this way,
trying to be clear and subtle at the same time, is not easy.
We would note in passing that in contrast to the respondents described by
Savage, Bagnall and Longhurst (2001 p. 875) the individuals represented
here were neither ambivalent nor defensive about their class identity and
certainly did not see themselves „outside‟ of class, as Savage et al reported.
Nor indeed did they regard themselves as „ordinary‟, although, in the nuances
of fractioning which we outline below, there were some respondents who
positioned themselves over and against the „unordinary‟ lifestyles which they
saw as defining „others‟ in the middle class. Overall, these parents seem to
have little problem in seeing themselves as middle class and as sharing a set
of class traits with other families „like them‟ - as we shall see. As one mother
straightforwardly puts it, her child‟s nursery is full of “children like our children,
so children of middle class parents who can afford to spend nearly nine
hundred pounds a month sending their kids to childcare”. We offer examples
below.
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Bourdieu (1987 p. 6) argues that „The homogenising effect of homogenous
conditionings is at the basis of those dispositions which favour the
development of relationships, formal or informal (like homogamy), which tend
to increase this very homogeneity‟. There are certainly plenty of indications in
our data of the ways in which childcare and educational settings are sought
and used by particular middle class fractions to maintain and ensure social
homogamy. However, as Bourdieu (1987 p. 13) goes on to argue „In the
reality of the social world, there are no more clear-cut boundaries, no more
absolute breaks, than there are in the physical world‟. Social boundaries, he
suggests, can be thought of as „imaginary planes‟ or a more appropriate
image „would be that of a flame whose edges are in constant movement,
oscillating around a line or surface‟ (p. 13). This metaphor is certainly apposite
as a way of thinking about the distinctions we outline below.
The grounding of our discussion of intra-class fractions is within small
differences and nuances rather than significant rifts, and we must eventually
ask questions about the overall significance of these small divisions. Where
should primary emphasis be given, to the nuanced differences within the
service class or to the systematic commonalities across it? How important in
terms of normative and relational differences are these nuances? In some
respects it might be argued that class fraction analysis is not class analysis at
all in as much that the primacy and independence of the economic bases of
class are subverted by the focus upon divisions and differences of social
significance based on status and values, and non-economic assets. On the
other hand, a distinction of the economic from the social is itself difficult to
maintain: „the “economic” can only be understood as ... a set of embedded
social assumptions, obligations and claims‟ (Bottero 1998 p. 482).
The problem of categorisation especially in relation to class fractions remains
as an on-going concern in our work, we are using and troubling our categories
at the same time. We are also acutely aware that „it is not possible to
construct a single measure which could successfully capture all the elements
going to make up social class - or even structured social inequality‟ (Crompton
1998 p. 114). Thus, space/locality, parental background and educational
