The attitude of parents and children towards education and choice of profession as a strategy for maintaining or upgrading their class positions

This study examines how parents and children in different class positions organize the process of education and make choices of profession as a strategy for maintaining and/or upgrading their class positions across generations. This examination is based upon qualitative data compiled by means of in-depth interviews conducted with 24 parents and 18 children studying for entrance exams, in Ankara. The families consist of 7 working class families, 6 families of owners of small and medium scale commercial and industrial establishments and 5 families of professional class. The analysis of the data indicates that the strategies adopted by the parents and their children concerning whether or not to pursue education at university level and the choice of filed or subject are largely affected and shaped by their social class positions and cultural, social and economic resources available to them. Families do care about the status/honour-giving function of education in all three social class positions and allocate almost equal proportion of their family income for the education of their children. But they display very distinctive patterns of conduct regarding how they then provide their children with guidance and motivation to pursue further education at university level and which subjects they should study. While the working class families lack cultural and social resources for and hence provide almost no guidance for their children, the professional class families mobilize all their cultural and social resources for the reproduction of their privileged class positions across generations. The children from working families break the deadlock for vertical mobility only by their personal-intellectual qualities and motivation. Furthermore, the findings of the study indicate that in the pursuance of further education and the choice of profession "the micro stratification system" that is the one relevant in close social milieu of the families and the children act, along with the macro social stratification system, as an important factor. The individuals and the families in different class positions evaluate and interpret differently the meaning, functional utility and honour of the professions in their micro status scale and transfer their evaluations into criteria for pragmatic decisions. Another essential finding of the study is that the old and traditional gender-specific choices of the parents for allocation of the resources and choice of profession for their daughters have largely disappeared. This can be considered an indication that gender inequality will decrease in the future in terms of the destination of individuals.