"The ball is in his court. It's up to him": Parental communication about meritocracy

Meritocracy-the belief that society rewards individual ability, motivation, and hard work-is foundational to many Western nations but the processes by which meritocratic beliefs are communicated to youth is not well understood. The present study used a master narrative (i.e., dominant cultural stories) framework to explore parents' communication of meritocratic messages. Data came from a larger qualitative study of family social class socialization; the interview protocol was designed to elicit information about parents' perspectives on how their families' current social class standing affects their family life, including how they communicate about social class with their children. The sample comprises parents from the United Kingdom (n = 21) and United States (n = 13) with at least one child between the ages of 5 and 17 (N = 34; M_age = 44.1 years; 50% women; 26% Asian; 26% Black; 9% Latinx; 38% white; 44% working class; 6% lower middle class; 38% middle class; 12% upper middle class). Results indicate that all parents incorporated aspects of meritocracy, adhering to individualist views of economic success. Many also resisted dominant narratives such as materialism. Far less frequent was endorsement of a counter narrative to meritocracy (i.e., structural dimensions of social class). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).