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American Individualisms: Child Rearing and Social Class in Three Neighborhoods
What are hard and soft individualisms? In this detailed ethnography of three communities in Manhattan and Queens, Kusserow interviews parents and teachers (from wealthy to those on welfare) on the types of hard and soft individualisms they encourage in their children and students. American Individualisms explores the important issue of class differences in the socialization of individualism in America. It presents American individualism not as one single homogeneous, stereotypic life-pattern as often claimed to be, but as variable, class-differentiated models of individualism instilled in young children by their parents and preschool teachers in Manhattan and Queens. By providing rich descriptions of the situational, class-based individualisms that take root in communities with vastly different visions of the future, Kusserow brings social inequality back into previously bland and generic discussions of American individualism.
- GenresAnthropologyNonfiction
220 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 24, 2025
One of my favorite ethnographies! It explains so much about American culture and seems more relevant than ever in 2025. It's a great example of how a similar cultural ideal can have class-based variations--no culture is a monolith. Kusserow also does a great job of challenging the binary between mere "individualism" vs "collectivism." She's highly reflexive. It's a great exploration of the ways in which lofty cultural values get practiced in real life, and especially in child-rearing.
2 Hard Individualisms - 1 working class "protective" version to protect from a dangerous world; 1 lower middle class "projective" version hard to break through class barriers
1 soft individualism - middle-to-upper class psychologized self that emphasizes individual expression and potential through creativity, "using your words," empowering the child, etc.; also involves navigating professed sociocentric values of empathy for the group
Great theory overview and references. Includes:
Practice theory - Bourdieu's habitus, taste, cultural capital, embodiment; alludes to Foucault's concept of discourse
Bourgois movement between classes
Tobin, Wu, and Davidson's Preschool in Three Cultures - "psychologized individualism" vs. "groupism" - schools as "forces of cultural conservation" - she also interviews therapists who play a similar role
Kohn - higher classes value self-direction more, lower classes conformity
Hochschild - "feeling rules vary by social class," emotion work
Bernstein - class-based linguistic styles (restricted working class, elaborate middle-class)
Miller - working class "position-oriented control" and middle class "person-oriented control"
Lutz's work on emotions - critiques her discussion of a monolithic "west"
Bellah - "expressive" vs "utilitarian" individualism
Strauss & Quinn's cultural models - in this case, the cultural model of individualism
Obeyesekere - "variations in the way humans relate to public symbols"
Kondo - crafting selves - "conflicts, ambiguities, multiplicities"
LeVine's "parental investment strategies" - socialization as preparation for cultural environment
MacLeod - education & social reproduction theory
Gordon & Locke - biomedicine through "the 2 major Western traditions of naturalism and individualism" - intellectual history of the west - romanticism, etc.
Lutz & Abu-Lughod - "feelings as core of one's self"
Favorite Quote
"How could the assumptions behind soft individualism contribute to a denial of social class? It seems important to examine, on a philosophical level, the way the notion of a natural, real, true self, found among some of the more extreme Parkside parents oriented toward pop psychology, denies the class construction of the child's self. The opening up of the child's self, which is so important in soft projective individualism, is for some parents simultaneously an exploration of the child's supposedly true, unique, and natural self. This process of exploration is often surrounded by discourses of naturalism rather than discourses of inequality and social class. The naturalist and individual strains that run throughout the most extreme forms of the psychologized Parkside folk model of the self sometimes locate the 'real' self as a natural entity separate and prior to class structure... whose false or public 'outer layers' can be wiped off. In fact, class, along with culture, is seen as that epiphenomenal layer that must be wiped off in order to get at the true self....
The myth of naturalness allows naturalistic upper-middle-class parents to see their children's success as stemming from 'natural' sources, such as personality, talent, drive, hard work, rather than class-based sources. It denies the full extent that social grooming, habitus, and cultural capital play in determining a child's success in the playing field." (p. 182)
2 Hard Individualisms - 1 working class "protective" version to protect from a dangerous world; 1 lower middle class "projective" version hard to break through class barriers
1 soft individualism - middle-to-upper class psychologized self that emphasizes individual expression and potential through creativity, "using your words," empowering the child, etc.; also involves navigating professed sociocentric values of empathy for the group
Great theory overview and references. Includes:
Practice theory - Bourdieu's habitus, taste, cultural capital, embodiment; alludes to Foucault's concept of discourse
Bourgois movement between classes
Tobin, Wu, and Davidson's Preschool in Three Cultures - "psychologized individualism" vs. "groupism" - schools as "forces of cultural conservation" - she also interviews therapists who play a similar role
Kohn - higher classes value self-direction more, lower classes conformity
Hochschild - "feeling rules vary by social class," emotion work
Bernstein - class-based linguistic styles (restricted working class, elaborate middle-class)
Miller - working class "position-oriented control" and middle class "person-oriented control"
Lutz's work on emotions - critiques her discussion of a monolithic "west"
Bellah - "expressive" vs "utilitarian" individualism
Strauss & Quinn's cultural models - in this case, the cultural model of individualism
Obeyesekere - "variations in the way humans relate to public symbols"
Kondo - crafting selves - "conflicts, ambiguities, multiplicities"
LeVine's "parental investment strategies" - socialization as preparation for cultural environment
MacLeod - education & social reproduction theory
Gordon & Locke - biomedicine through "the 2 major Western traditions of naturalism and individualism" - intellectual history of the west - romanticism, etc.
Lutz & Abu-Lughod - "feelings as core of one's self"
Favorite Quote
"How could the assumptions behind soft individualism contribute to a denial of social class? It seems important to examine, on a philosophical level, the way the notion of a natural, real, true self, found among some of the more extreme Parkside parents oriented toward pop psychology, denies the class construction of the child's self. The opening up of the child's self, which is so important in soft projective individualism, is for some parents simultaneously an exploration of the child's supposedly true, unique, and natural self. This process of exploration is often surrounded by discourses of naturalism rather than discourses of inequality and social class. The naturalist and individual strains that run throughout the most extreme forms of the psychologized Parkside folk model of the self sometimes locate the 'real' self as a natural entity separate and prior to class structure... whose false or public 'outer layers' can be wiped off. In fact, class, along with culture, is seen as that epiphenomenal layer that must be wiped off in order to get at the true self....
The myth of naturalness allows naturalistic upper-middle-class parents to see their children's success as stemming from 'natural' sources, such as personality, talent, drive, hard work, rather than class-based sources. It denies the full extent that social grooming, habitus, and cultural capital play in determining a child's success in the playing field." (p. 182)
May 29, 2018
-Book is smart, honest, and interesting. A little repetitive, could have been edited down, but overall just a lovely example of quality scholarship.
-Referring to classes as upper, middle, and the working class as opposed to upper, middle, and lower is annoying. Upper class people work. Middle class people work.
-Adrie seems to conclude that the point of making upper class children "soft" is so that they can feel empathy for the lower classes. That can't be it. No upper class parent is like, "I fought so hard to get here and stay here - that's why my dream for my kid is that he can feel bad about his wealth and privilege! I think I will pay huge amounts of money to send him to a school where he can be taught to feel guilty!"
-The fakeness and inauthenticity of the upper class is what stood out to me the most on my second reading of this book. What if that is the lesson? The main lesson taught in upper class preschools is: be fake, a facade of kindness, calmness, and empathy at all times is what is required of you.
-It is possible that the soft, "feelings focus" of upper-class preschools is just the most current ideas about child-rearing executed to the most excellent degree. I think (possibly) all preschools are headed in that direction, the upper class is just there first.
-The differences that Adrie points out in the parenting of the upper, middle, and lower class areas that she studied made perfect sense to me. Each type of parent was raising their children to survive in the real world that that child would be encountering. Lower class children surrounded by drugs and violence were taught an ideology of "dealing" with life, survival, a deadening of the feelings and sensitivities, a "toughening up," and that other people are not trustworthy. Self-sufficiency above all!
Middle class parents are like the ones who made it out of the lower class. They are tough, but their children don't need to be tough in the way they were. They need to be more like jocks. "Go, fight, win! You can do it! You can keep rising!" The middle class finds most people to be trustworthy and helpful. Go team! Team spirit is all. Note the transformation. The middle class childhood does not teach one to be self-sufficient, but rather to be on a team.
And then the upper class parents, they rose up from the middle class, they were good little soldiers, but they find they are still unhappy. They cannot teach their children the go-fight-win ideology they were raised with since it led to money for them but not joy. They probably became doctors and lawyers only to find that, at the age of 60, that they really wanted to be poets or painters.... So all they want for their children is authenticity, they want them to find their true selves.
OR it's all a pose and the main lesson of the upper class childhood is to be fake, to pretend to be happy and kind and rational in every moment above all else.
-There is an element of social appropriateness in the emotional repression of the upper class children. Upper class people in general are not "allowed" to be unhappy or to complain about anything ever. If a lower or middle class child is a "go-getters" they are applauded and encouraged, but if an upper class child is a "go getter" he is a tyrant and an oppressor who won because of his privilege. How is the upper class child supposed to accomplish things without seeming obnoxious to those below him? By playing the role of the infinitely kind, patient, and benevolent gentlemen. (Not saying it should be this way, just that maybe it is this way.)
-There is also an element of parents raising themselves. The way we raise our children says a lot about what we are currently feeling and needing or what we needed as children and didn't get. Upper class sensitive parents were raised to be jocks. Their feelings were never considered. They get to do it differently with their children. Though again, I question whether they actually want what they are paying for. I think most upperclass parents, if they understood what they were buying, would prefer the middle class preschool for their kids.
-The "we're all friends" thing at the upper class school was surprising and creepy. The children are not being taught honesty and authenticity at all. Calling everyone in a class a friend doesn't make it true. This is part of what leads me to the conclusion that the upper class preschool isn't actually interested in teaching authenticity, but rather how to be fake.
-The upper class preschool was obsessively egalitarian. But saying "we are all equal" doesn't make it true. Some children are better at drawing or math or whatever. Some people are more attractive than others. Some have better personalities. Respecting every person's humanity does not mean we have to pretend that we are all "equal." Teaching children to not recognize (or deny) excellence when they see it is so sad.
-Referring to classes as upper, middle, and the working class as opposed to upper, middle, and lower is annoying. Upper class people work. Middle class people work.
-Adrie seems to conclude that the point of making upper class children "soft" is so that they can feel empathy for the lower classes. That can't be it. No upper class parent is like, "I fought so hard to get here and stay here - that's why my dream for my kid is that he can feel bad about his wealth and privilege! I think I will pay huge amounts of money to send him to a school where he can be taught to feel guilty!"
-The fakeness and inauthenticity of the upper class is what stood out to me the most on my second reading of this book. What if that is the lesson? The main lesson taught in upper class preschools is: be fake, a facade of kindness, calmness, and empathy at all times is what is required of you.
-It is possible that the soft, "feelings focus" of upper-class preschools is just the most current ideas about child-rearing executed to the most excellent degree. I think (possibly) all preschools are headed in that direction, the upper class is just there first.
-The differences that Adrie points out in the parenting of the upper, middle, and lower class areas that she studied made perfect sense to me. Each type of parent was raising their children to survive in the real world that that child would be encountering. Lower class children surrounded by drugs and violence were taught an ideology of "dealing" with life, survival, a deadening of the feelings and sensitivities, a "toughening up," and that other people are not trustworthy. Self-sufficiency above all!
Middle class parents are like the ones who made it out of the lower class. They are tough, but their children don't need to be tough in the way they were. They need to be more like jocks. "Go, fight, win! You can do it! You can keep rising!" The middle class finds most people to be trustworthy and helpful. Go team! Team spirit is all. Note the transformation. The middle class childhood does not teach one to be self-sufficient, but rather to be on a team.
And then the upper class parents, they rose up from the middle class, they were good little soldiers, but they find they are still unhappy. They cannot teach their children the go-fight-win ideology they were raised with since it led to money for them but not joy. They probably became doctors and lawyers only to find that, at the age of 60, that they really wanted to be poets or painters.... So all they want for their children is authenticity, they want them to find their true selves.
OR it's all a pose and the main lesson of the upper class childhood is to be fake, to pretend to be happy and kind and rational in every moment above all else.
-There is an element of social appropriateness in the emotional repression of the upper class children. Upper class people in general are not "allowed" to be unhappy or to complain about anything ever. If a lower or middle class child is a "go-getters" they are applauded and encouraged, but if an upper class child is a "go getter" he is a tyrant and an oppressor who won because of his privilege. How is the upper class child supposed to accomplish things without seeming obnoxious to those below him? By playing the role of the infinitely kind, patient, and benevolent gentlemen. (Not saying it should be this way, just that maybe it is this way.)
-There is also an element of parents raising themselves. The way we raise our children says a lot about what we are currently feeling and needing or what we needed as children and didn't get. Upper class sensitive parents were raised to be jocks. Their feelings were never considered. They get to do it differently with their children. Though again, I question whether they actually want what they are paying for. I think most upperclass parents, if they understood what they were buying, would prefer the middle class preschool for their kids.
-The "we're all friends" thing at the upper class school was surprising and creepy. The children are not being taught honesty and authenticity at all. Calling everyone in a class a friend doesn't make it true. This is part of what leads me to the conclusion that the upper class preschool isn't actually interested in teaching authenticity, but rather how to be fake.
-The upper class preschool was obsessively egalitarian. But saying "we are all equal" doesn't make it true. Some children are better at drawing or math or whatever. Some people are more attractive than others. Some have better personalities. Respecting every person's humanity does not mean we have to pretend that we are all "equal." Teaching children to not recognize (or deny) excellence when they see it is so sad.
November 22, 2008
A book that looks at how children are raised and the effects various types of child raising have on childrens' behaviors as they age. The research in this book is divided among three cities with different majorities of economic class.
Despite the interesting nature of the topic, the book is written in a rather dry fashion. Were it not so dry, it could have proved a better read.
Despite the interesting nature of the topic, the book is written in a rather dry fashion. Were it not so dry, it could have proved a better read.
October 7, 2011
I really loved this book... One word "amazing"
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews