Beyond the Schoolyard: The Role of Parenting Logics, Financial Resources, and Social Institutions in the Social Class Gap in Structured Activity Participation
Open accessAbstract
We investigate class differences in youth activity participation with interview, survey, and archival data from a diverse sample of parents (n = 51) in two schools. Findings point toward structural rather than cultural explanations. Working- and middle-class parents overlap in parenting logics about participation, though differ in one respect: middle-class parents are concerned with customizing children’s involvement in activities, while working-class parents are concerned with ensuring safety and social mobility for children through participation. Like financial constraints among the working class, social institutions are implicated in class differences. Schools act as an equalizing institution by offering low-cost activities; yet, contribute to class differences by offering different activities to working- and middle-class youth. Opportunities for working-class youth to participate in non-school activities are few due to the scarcity of community organizations in their neighborhood, while middle-class families are heavily involved in out-of-school activities. We explore the implications of our findings for educational stratification.
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High-SES parents tend to organize children's out-of-school time around formal activities, whereas working-class families more often rely on informal or unstructured contexts.
“These parents tend to organize children' out-of-school time around formal activities, whereas working-class families more often rely on informal or unstructured contexts, reflecting differences in norms, constraints and institutional familiarity rather than lower interest (Bennett et al., 2012;Hjalmarsson, 2023).”
From Participation in extracurricular activities predicts academic growth and mediates socioeconomic inequalities in primary school (2026) · cites this paper as Bennett et al., 2012
The Social Class Differences and Financial and Institutional Constraints sections report more out-of-school structured activity participation among middle-class children and link the gap to financial and neighborhood resources, not simply lower interest. But the paper also says working-class children routinely participate in structured activities, especially religious ones; it does not establish that their families more often rely on informal or unstructured contexts, or identify institutional familiarity as a cause. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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Brunet, L., Rémeau, M., Houdé, O., & Borst, G. (2026) · British Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1111/bjep.70127
- Authors
- Bennett, P. R., Lutz, A. C., & Jayaram, L.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Syracuse University (US)
- Virginia Tech (US)
- ORCID
- Bennett, Pamela R.
- Venue
- Sociology of Education
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2012-02-24
- Volume
- 85
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 131-157
- ISSN
- 0038-0407 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-8573
- PMC
- PMC4200509
- OpenAlex
- W2154784860
- Cited by
- 184
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 22.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Sociology of Education (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Maryland Shared Open Access Repository (USMAI Consortium) (submittedVersion)
- Syracuse University Libraries (Syracuse University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (University of Maryland College Park)
- Funders
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24HD042854)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Cultural Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Youth Development and Social Support
- Social Sciences › Education › Parental Involvement in Education
- Keywords
- class differences, working-class youth, middle-class youth, parental involvement, extracurricular activities, educational stratification, community organizations, youth safety, social mobility, financial constraints
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