The Reproduction of Inequalities Through Emotional Capital: The Case of Socializing Low-Income Black Girls Carissa M. Froyum Published online: 9 October 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract The concept of emotional capital suggests that adults transfer emotion management skills to children in ways that are consequential for the social reproduction of inequalities. Using ethnographic data from a popular after-school program, this study analyzes the emotional capital transmitted to low-income black girls by staff. They passed on four aspects of emotional capital: stifling attitude, being emotionally accountable for peers, sympathizing with adult authority figures, and emotional distancing from cultural “dysfunction.” Staff intended to teach girls to manage their emotions as a way to counteract racism, but the socialization largely promoted emotional deference, thereby reinforcing racialized, classed, and gendered ideologies. Keywords Emotion management . Social reproduction . Inequality . African Americans . Children . Socialization Emotion management is the power-infused way individuals cultivate particular feelings among others or themselves. It entails “stir[ring] up a feeling we wish we had, and at other times [trying] to block or weaken a feeling we wish we did not have” (Hochschild 1983, p. 43). In Arlie Hochschild’ s The Managed Heart, company scripts increasingly determined how workers were supposed to think and feel, alienating them from their true emotions. Since then, research has focused on the identity-related and emotional consequences of adults’ emotional labor, but Hochschild said that individuals learn to manage emotions far earlier—in childhood. What’ s more, she argued that adults socialize children to manage emotions in classed and gendered ways that lead to inequality along class and gender lines. Spencer Cahill’ s(1999) and Diane Reay’ s(2000) notion of “emotional capital” further offers a framework to connect emotions to social reproduction through socialization of youth. Studies on socialization and emotions suggest competing social processes may be at work. If only individuals from dominant groups learn a detached emotional capital Qual Sociol (2010) 33:37–54 DOI 10.1007/s11133-009-9141-5 C. M. Froyum (*) Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminology, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50614-0513, USA e-mail: carissa.froyum@uni.edu