While scholars know that young children are active if inadvertent participants in social reproduction, little has been said about how young children engage in class reproduction. Through observing in a preschool classroom with a class diverse student body, I show that preschoolers are already class actors, performing class through their linguistic styles. Upper-middle-class children speak, interrupt, ask for help, and argue more often than working-class children. Upper-middle-class children's classed linguistic style effectively silences working-class students, gives them less power, and allows them fewer opportunities to develop their language skills. The children's linguistic class performances have immediate consequences and potential future implications for class reproduction.

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Previous studies have documented relationships between parenting beliefs and social class. Few studies, however, have examined how parenting beliefs vary among those who share a class position. Drawing upon interviews with 54 college graduates—27 parents with working‐class origins and their 27 spouses with middle‐class origins—I show that heterogeneity in college‐educated parents' beliefs cohered around class origin. Specifically, ideas of children's education and time use related to class origin, though ideas of how to talk with children did not. I discuss the implications of these findings in terms of cultural reproduction, cultural mobility, and intergenerational inequality.