My Action Observed and the Social Structure

During this past week I have had to observe parents picking up their children and taking them home from an Early Head Start Program. For those of you who may not know what Early Head Start (EHS) is, it is a program that is closely similar to a daycare. Since my son goes to EHS I decided to observe what parents do when the time comes to pick up their child. Since this is a reoccurring behavior in my social structure.

You must be thinking that this is probably going to be boring because nothing really happens when you are picking up your child. If you are thinking that then you are mistaken. I thought the same thing too but it turned out I was wrong as well.

So I observed that the first thing a couple of parents were doing was getting their strollers. Then they would call their child to them, wash the child’s hands and put on the child’s shoes. After that they would take their child’s coat/jacket from their cubby and then they put it on their child and put their child, all dressed in the stroller. This whole process sounds smother then it actually is and went because it is multiple parents trying to do this at once not just one at a time. They often get in the way of other parents with their big bulky strollers and cause traffic. I also noticed that the parents that do this are mostly the Chinese and or Asian parents because the Spanish parents put their child’s coat and shoes on and takes their stroller and leaves the classroom. They don’t stand in the way and block the path for the rest of the parents and children.

This action adds to the overall social structure because if parents did not go pick their children then other people like the teachers would not get to go home right away, to see their own families. The action also adds to the social structure because it keeps things flowing smoothly in the classroom. Besides this action adding to the social structure, it also adds to the overall social hierarchy. It adds to the social hierarchy because it constitutes a good sense of responsibility for the people in power who implemented the right to go and pick up ones child from EHS. If you are always late to go pick up your child, the people in power are going to think that you are not responsible and they might further investigate the reason why. If the situation becomes more extreme with more than one parent not picking up their child on time then the social hierarchy might change the rule and make it so the child get put on a school bus and gets dropped off at your house. The consequences of not having this action apart of the social structure are not that rigid. Some of those consequences include stress because you don’t know what your child is doing or has done throughout the day or less of an anxiety of having to be caught up in the traffic of bulky strollers and rude parents. Another consequence that you might see if this action were not a part of the social structure would be intensity of involvement. Parents would be more willing and wanting to go pick up their children so they can be more involved. The consequence of intensity to be involved may cause conflict because the hierarchies will argue that the action causes too many problems or issues between other parents and maybe even other children.

The social hierarchies involved are the teachers, the principal, and the part of the government that makes the rules for children and child welfare. These hierarchies tie into culture because they set the ideologies and norms for what we do with our children and how we get them ready to go home. However, not every parent that goes to pick up child believes the same thing that the hierarchies believe in so it becomes an issue of culture war.

Thanks for reading and stay safe.