Summary Of Social Class And Family By Henry Gladwell

1. Gladwell’s overall claim in this chapter is that the class and family life you come from affects your chance of success. Coming from a lower class, Gladwell says, causes you to be less assertive around authority and less pressured into ambition. Parents of lower class families often do not encourage their kids to fine tune their talents through extra-curricular activities, but in middle to upper class families, kids are able to partake in multiple activities with the support of their parents. Also, in middle to upper class families, children are taught a “sense of entitlement that… is an attitude perfectly suited to succeeding in the modern world” (Gladwell 108). Children in the lower class are not taught this and therefore deprived of the advantage of knowing how to assert themselves.

2. Gladwell uses anecdotes and statistics to support his argument. He compares the life stories of two similar men, Chris Langan and Robert Oppenheimer, who ended up in very different positions towards the end of their lives. Langan, the less successful of the two, comes from a lower-class family and Oppenheimer, the more successful, comes from a high-class family. Both men’s upbringings affected their professional lives profoundly. In this chapter, Gladwell also supports his argument by describing a study done by Annette Lareau. This
The overall tone of the chapter is conversational. Gladwell focuses on creating a chapter that flows and makes linear sense to the reader. He describes things simply and makes sure to create a full loop around from the beginning to end of the chapter. In Langan’s current life, Gladwell says “there were piles of books in [Langan’s] study. He ordered books from the library all the time” (Gladwell 113). Gladwell chooses to describe Langan’s books as he does, because each sentence sounds like a separate thought that is getting communicated as they come. It helps eliminate the feeling of reading a planned-out piece of writing, and feels more