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Social Class Differences in Parenting? Revisiting Classed Childrearing through a Video-Ethnography of Mealtime

By on August 25, 2026 in Articles

Joanne W. Golann, Karen Phelan Kozlowski, Kara Mitchell Brennan

Sociological Science August 25, 2026
10.15195/v13.a40

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Sociological research has long established social class differences in childrearing strategies. However, recent studies suggest more heterogeneity by social class in parenting practices than previously recognized. In this article, we revisit families’ classed socialization processes by drawing from the New Jersey Families Study, a two-week, in-home video study of 21 families with young children, to examine how working-class and middle-class families interact with their children during mealtimes. Contrary to expectations, we found that social class did not neatly correspond to parenting styles, with half of families blending middle-class and working-class styles. This is one of the first sociological studies to closely observe the socialization of young children across different social classes. It is also one of few studies in sociology to use video-ethnographic data. Finally, this study challenges long-standing assumptions about class-based socialization, suggesting that in contemporary families, social class boundaries are much blurrier than previously believed when it comes to childrearing.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Joanne W. Golann: Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations, Vanderbilt University.
E-mail: j.golann@vanderbilt.edu.

Karen Phelan Kozlowski: School of Social Science and Global Studies, University of Southern Mississippi.
E-mail: karen.kozlowski@usm.edu.

Kara Mitchell Brennan: Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations, Vanderbilt University.
E-mail: kara.p.mitchell@vanderbilt.edu.

Acknowledgments: We thank Kanoe Bonilla, Emma Bufkin, Maria Maria Castillo, Sheila Chau, Ana Delgado, Catherine Duggan, Richard Hall, Susanna Harpold, Shihe Luan, Angelina Ma, Audrey Morris, Ben Rubin, Monica Shen, Erin Smith, and Grace Xu for research assistance on the New Jersey Families Study. We are grateful to Thomas Espenshade, Boriana Pratt, and Pamela Klebanov for data access and support. Corresponding author: j.golann@vanderbilt.edu.

Other Statements and Declarations: This research has been approved by the Princeton University Institutional Research Board. Informed consent to participate in the study was obtained for all families.

The authors have no financial or non-financial interests directly or indirectly related to the work to disclose.

The authors give consent to publish this manuscript.

Partial support for this work comes from the National Science Foundation–Sociology Grant #2214309, American Sociological Association Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, Vanderbilt University Discovery Funds and Seeding Success grants, and the Peabody College Small Grants for Research.

The authors report no financial or non-financial interests directly or indirectly related to the work.



Reproducibility Package: Data are not publicly available due to informed consent agreements. For researchers interested in using the New Jersey Families Study data, please contact Joanne Golann for more information.


  • Citation: W. Golann, Joanne, Karen Phelan Kozlowski, Kara Mitchell Brennan. 2026. “Social Class Differences in Parenting? Revisiting Classed Childrearing through a Video-Ethnography of Mealtime” Sociological Science 13: 1046-1078.
  • Received: March 5, 2026
  • Accepted: July 16, 2026
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Elizabeth Bruch
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a40


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The Intergenerational Reach of Maternal Adverse Childhood Experiences: Associations with Children’s Emotional Support and Cognitive Stimulation

By on November 6, 2025 in Articles

Lawrence Stacey, Kristi Williams

Sociological Science November 6, 2025
10.15195/v12.a30

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Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—such as abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction before age 18—pose substantial risks to individual health and well-being throughout life, but relatively less research has examined how ACEs are associated with parenting behaviors or children’s home environments. We use linked mother–child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, a U.S. longitudinal cohort study, to investigate how maternal ACEs are associated with the emotional support and cognitive stimulation of children. Regression results demonstrate an inverse relationship between maternal ACE exposure and the degree of emotional support and cognitive stimulation in children’s home environments. Children born to mothers with four or more ACEs had, on average, 4.9 percentile-unit lower emotional support scores and 5.6 percentile-unit lower cognitive stimulation scores relative to mothers with no ACE exposure, net of maternal and child sociodemographic characteristics. Further results document the importance of emotional neglect and physical abuse, both of which were independently and negatively related to the emotional support and cognitive stimulation of children. Our article builds on a growing body of literature by documenting links between maternal ACE exposure and children’s home environments and by illuminating the lengthy intergenerational reach of parental ACEs.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lawrence Stacey: Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University.
E-mail: lawrence.stacey@vanderbilt.edu.
Kristi Williams: Department of Sociology, Ohio State University.
E-mail: williams.2339@osu.edu.

Acknowledgments: We wish to thank Melissa Alcaraz, John Casterline, Reanne Frank, Sarah Hayford, Jake Hays, and Alec Rhodes for feedback on an earlier draft of this article. We also wish to thank the editors of Sociological Science.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: A replication package with instructions, data, and Stata code has been
made publicly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/gb29u/

  • Citation: Stacey, Lawrence, and Kristi Williams. 2025. “The Intergenerational Reach of Maternal
    Adverse Childhood Experiences: Associations with Children’s Emotional Support and Cognitive Stimulation” Sociological Science 12: 743-768.
  • Received: June 17, 2024
  • Accepted: April 24, 2025
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Michael Rosenfeld
  • DOI: 10.15195/v12.a30

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