X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL20]
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 5047
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.psycgrad
Date:         Tue, 26 Jan 1993 14:57:55 -0500
              <PSYCGRAD@UOTTAWA.BITNET>
From:         Rick Adams <adamsr@AIS.ORG>
Subject:      Re: SES Measure for Kids
              93 11:03:18 am

=>
=> To assess family SES based on young kids' viewpoints, it seems that you
=> would need to look at a cluster of kid-level items and behaviors:  How
=> many bathrooms do you have?  How many brothers and sisters?  Do your
=> parent(s) "dress up" to go to work?  Which magazines do you have at
=> home?  How often do you get to order (Scholastic, Weekly Reader, etc.)
=> books from school?  Do your parent(s) help you with homework regularly?
=> Which subjects do they help most with?  Do your parent(s) buy all your
=> clothes for you?

        I'm a bit uncomfortable with the assumptions being made by some of
the above questions. In many cases they seem to argue for a link between SES
and material possessions or family size that may not be there. Let me
provide two "sample" sets of answers, based on aquaintances to illustrate my
point:

QUESTION                        SAMPLE 1                SAMPLE 2

No. of Bathrooms                1                       3
Siblings                        2                       0
Dress up                        NO                      YES
Magazines                       Playboy, Penthouse      Time, Ms
                                Handyman                The Economist
Order books                     Never                   Often
Homework                        NO                      YES
Subjects                        N/A                     Language Arts
Clothes                         YES                     YES

        Ok, anyone want to take a guess as to the SES of the families? No. 1
is considerably lower SES than No. 2, Right?

        Number 1 is the daughter of a colleague who is an extremely
successful therapist in San Francisco. Since she is divorced and both her
older children are grown and live on their own, she and her daughter share a
rather luxerious 2 bedroom 1 bath apartment in a high-rise building with
astronomical rents. The Playboy, Penthouse, and Handyman magazines all
belong to her oldest son who is working in the middle east (he's an
engineer), and who receives his mail at her address while overseas. Her own
subscriptions come to her office address. She has no need to help her
daughter with homework, since she is a straight "A" student in an
accelerated program. Neither does she buy books through the school - since
she can afford to buy her daughter any book she wants at retail and not have
to wait for it to come in, as is the case with school orders. She purchases
her daughter's clothing on her charge account at local department stores,
but encourages her to pick out her own clothes at the time of purchase. She
dresses casually for work, rather than wearing "business" outfits. I would
approximate her annual income (including her royalties from books and her
income from lectures) to be in excess of $300,000 - and that's probably
conservative. BTW, she HAS no television or automobile (by choice), and (of
course) does not own her home - which further "reduces" her image if such
questions were asked.

        Number 2 is the son of a student of mine at Jackson Community
College. Like number one, she is divorced and lives in the house she and her
husband occupied before the divorce. It is in the worst section of Jackson,
and is probably worth $15,000 to $20,000 maximum. She "dresses up" to go to
work - in a waitresses uniform! The magazines are ones she cited on a recent
paper she turned in to my Social Issues class, so presumably she had them in
her home when she wrote the paper (they are available for checkout at the
public library a few blocks from her home). During a discussion, the topic
of public schools came up and she mentioned the following information (among
other topics): Her son is failing in Language Arts and she has to help him
with his basic grammar and spelling; her school provides special book rates
to low income families, so she buys books for him through it (the topic was
poverty and the concept of recreational materials was raised); she buys many
of her son's clothes at a local thrift shop - which she recommended to the
rest of the class as a very inexpensive place to buy used clothing. In her
case, I would estimate her annual income to be substantially below the
poverty line. BTW, she DOES have a television and a car.

        Hmmmmmm.

        If _these_ are typical individuals (they obviously aren't), the
questions above would give a rather "distorted" image of the SES of the
families involved.

        Elementary school kids aren't as naive as might be believed. If you
ask what neighborhood they live in, what kind of work their parents do, or
how far their parents went in school, most could answer those questions
quite accurately by the third grade at the very latest. Questions such as
those above tend to create the illusion that material indicators are the
sole marks of the SES of a family, when in fact they are not.

        Something to think about.

        Rick

--
                       -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=-
            The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised
      over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to
      prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is
      not a sufficient warrant.                         John Stuart Mill
                       -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=-
         Rick Adams -=*=- adamsr@ais.org -=*=- adamsr@norwich.bitnet
           anonymous users may send to ap-poly.491@n7kbt.rain.com