Annette Lareau

Who is Annette Lareau?

Annette Lareau is a sociologist working at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of U.C. Santa Cruz and earned her PhD in Sociology from U.C. Berkeley. She started her career at South Illinois University at Carbondale and also previously worked as a Professor of Sociology at Temple University, Pennsylvania from 1990 to 2005. She has served as a professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and in 2008 joined as professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania where she is the Stanley I. Sheerr Professor. During the 2005-2006 school year she moved to Palo Alto, California to complete a residence at the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences. Lareau has been very active with organizations such as the Eastern Sociological Society, Sociology of Education journal, and the American Sociological Association.

Lareau has completed extensive field work studying the daily lives of both African-Americans and European-Americans. She is also credited with the creation of the term concerted cultivation. This concept refers to middle class child rearing practices. She says that this differs from the parents of children in working-class families, who attribute much of their child raising tactics to the accomplishment of natural growth.