Ea Hoppe Blaabæk forsvarer sin Ph.d.-afhandling ved Sociologisk Institut

Ea Hoppe Blaabæk
Ea Hoppe Blaabæk

Kandidat

Ea Hoppe Blaabæk

Titel

 Passing on the culture. Parents, cultural inputs and stratification in children's reading.

Bedømmelsesudvalg

  • Lektor Kristian Karlson, Sociologisk Institut, Københavns Universitet (formand)
  • Professor Tally Katz-Gerro, Haifa Universitet, Israel
  • Professor Carlo Barone, SciencesPo, Observatoire Sociologique du Changement, Frankrig

Vært

Leder af Ph.d.-programmet i Sociologi, professor Bente Halkier.

Tid og sted

Dato og tid: 11. november 2021, kl. 13:00
Sted: Københavns Universitet, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 København K.
Lokale: CSS 35.3.13,

Ph.d.-afhandlingen er tilgængelig via Academic Books som e-bog. Afhandlingen kan lånes på Sociologisk Institut, lokale 16.1.23.

Efter forsvaret afholder Sociologisk Institut reception i lokale 35.3.20.

Resumé (på engelsk)

The dissertation studies how the cultural inputs parents expose children to throughout childhood (e.g. taking out books from libraries, going to museums, having a musical instrument in the home, etc.) affect stratification in children’s reading. Theoretically, the dissertation builds on a rich literature that finds cultural practices to be unequally distributed in the population and that this carries consequences, for example in terms of the advantages children bring with them to school.

Empirically, the dissertation draws on rich survey data from the U.S., and newly assembled Danish registry data that enable matching information on amount and type of library takeout to registry data from Statistics Denmark (e.g. on parents’ income and education). Key findings presented in the dissertation are:

  • Reading is more prominent in high SES (socioeconomic status) families and reading improves children’s reading (but not math) performance.
  • Stratification in reading is more likely related to a high SES preference for reading as a leisure activity, than a high SES preference for investing in children’s learning environments.
  • When parents provide more cultural inputs, it has a positive effect on how much children read. As high SES families provide more cultural inputs and the effect hereof accumulates over time, stratification in reading grows across childhood.
  • High SES families increased their takeout of E-books from libraries more when schools and libraries went under Covid-19 lockdown than low SES families.