Kindergarten Panic

Name: Kindergarten Panic
Price: 54.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9780691269795

Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality

Bailey A. Brown

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Paperback

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English

Princeton University Press
26 November 2025

Sociology: family & relationships; Pre-school & kindergarten

How school choice reproduces inequality by creating gendered and socioeconomic decision-making labor for parents

School choice policies have proliferated in recent years, with parents forced to navigate complex admission processes. In New York City, families have more options than ever before, but the search for the right school has proven to be time-consuming, painstaking, and anxiety-provoking work. In Kindergarten Panic, Bailey Brown examines the experiences of parents as they search for elementary schools, finding that socioeconomic inequalities and persistent disparities in resources, information access, and decision-making power contribute to broad variation in how families develop and manage their school-choice labor strategies. The labor that parents invest in searching for schools is unevenly distributed, and shaped by gender, socioeconomic background, and neighborhood contexts.

Drawing on interviews with more than a hundred parents of elementary school students in New York City, Brown shows how inequality manifests itself as parents and students deal with the uncertainties of the school choice process. By conceptualizing school decision making as labor, she makes visible the often-unseen work that goes into making educational decisions for children. Brown argues that recognizing school choice as labor both deepens our theoretical understanding of the challenges families confront and identifies vast disparities in parents' labor across socioeconomic and gender divisions. If parents continue to be charged with searching for schools, we must take seriously how school choice policies reproduce the kind of inequality they are intended to reduce-and we must invest in providing equitable access to high-quality public schooling for all families.

By: Bailey A. Brown
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780691269795
ISBN 10: 0691269793
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 26 November 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Bailey A. Brown is assistant professor of sociology at Spelman College.

Reviews for Kindergarten Panic: Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality

""[Kindergarten Panic] argues the school search is a burden that is being thrust upon parents—mostly mothers—whether they like it or not. While more options help parents find the best school, not everyone knows how to navigate the process. . . . Brown’s findings helped me make sense of my own search, which began more than a year before my son started kindergarten.""---Sara Randazzo, Wall Street Journal