Inheriting from Parents: Social Trajectory and Capital

Extract

[...] As a result, most individual choices can be described as a positioning in relation to this inheritance: do we choose to accept it, or to refuse it? [...]

[...] One of these major fundamental learnings is the acquisition of language. However, language practices are socially situated and are unequally valued by the school. When a child has a library at home, is used to handling books or writing a few words using magnetic letters on the fridge even before going to school, this gives them a familiarity with written culture that will facilitate their school learning.3 and which can even be naturalized by the institution as resulting from exceptional abilities, gifts, innate tastes. [...]

[...] What do we inherit from our parents? 85% of the population inherits less than 100,000 euros of inheritance from their parents1, and among the 15% who inherit more, the differences can be formidable. These wealth inequalities reinforce other economic and social inequalities, because wealth provides income on the one hand, but also a certain security for the future, while it helps to define the place of residence and opportunities for geographical and social mobility. If inheritance refers to the fact of receiving capital from one's ascendants, the temptation is great to define "the heirs" as a numerically restricted group, limited to the part of the population that holds the most economic and cultural capital from childhood, like Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron in their book of the same name2. [...]

[...] Now, we have been able to inherit from our parents aspirations that are out of step with the crisis situation that characterizes younger generations on the economic and social level: our parents have known full employment, the generalized increase in living standards, and more generally a different political context from ours. This gap then feeds the 'relative frustration', which can fuel or discourage the emergence of social movements9. In conclusion, we inherit a lot from our parents. The capital they leave us influences our social trajectory. But more than that, we also inherit the models that shape our very desire to pursue such or such a trajectory. Finally, our parents inscribe us in history, both family and collective. [...]

[...] Thus, parents, by the example they give to their children on a daily basis, shape the political representations of their children. We therefore inherit from our parents more than just resources, but also representations and aspirations. But the positions of parents and children have this particularity that each will experience all of them, as soon as they choose to start a family. III. We inherit from our parents a place in the succession of generations Our parents do more than just pass on an inheritance that will influence our social position and trajectory. [...]