DON: We struggle with Spencer ’cause he doesn’t like sports. We decided he’s average. Louise and I decided. But when they ask, ‘What can we do?’ I say go out and play catch. I usually don’t think of going and collecting spiders or doing something that Spencer would like. He’s interested in science. I usually don’t think about that.
FIELD-WORKER: That’s hard.
DON: Sports just come naturally to us.
FIELD-WORKER: Does Spencer try to compete with Garrett?
DON: He knows he couldn’t compete with him. Garrett is so much better.
Spencer seems aware of and somewhat anxious about his parents’ concern over his relative lack of engagement with sports, as the following field note suggests:
Don says to Spencer (as if he just thought of it) in a questioning (but enthusiastic) manner, “Spencer, do you want to be on the swim team?” Spencer, looking slightly anxious and biting his lip, replies, “No.” Slight pause and then his dad says, “Okay,” in an accepting tone (although there is slight hint of disappointment). Spencer walks [into the kitchen] to find his backpack and his dad is there next to him. Spencer says, “I would—but I don’t know how to do the strokes.” His dad says, “That’s what they teach you; they teach you the strokes.”
The entire interaction takes less than a minute, but it is a tense minute, or at least it seems so for Spencer.
SIBLING COMPETITION AND CONFLICT
Spencer’s relative inferiority as an athlete colors his relationship with Garrett. Sometimes he goes out of his way to identify areas in which his older brother is not accomplished. For example, one afternoon as Garrett and a field-worker are shooting baskets in the driveway, Spencer offers this observation:
“Garrett isn’t really that good at basketball. He isn’t.” Garrett quickly refutes Spencer saying, “Oh yeah? I’m better than you.” Spencer seems to ignore him. He is undaunted by Garrett’s comment. Spencer continues, “I mean, this isn’t what he does well in. He’s not the best player.” Garrett seems a bit more irritated by Spencer’s comments and says with calm defensiveness, “Oh yeah? That’s why I had [x] rebounds in the game. More than anyone in gym class.” Spencer matter-of-factly states, “I am saying this isn’t the game you are the best in.”
Spencer also periodically flaunts his status as part of the school’s gifted program. Garrett, despite two attempts, missed the program’s cutoff of an IQ of 125 (he scored 119). When Spencer qualified, Garrett reacted with great, tearful distress. For his part, Garrett sometimes seizes opportunities to highlight his superior skills. During a piano lesson, for instance, he deliberately launches into the piece Spencer is to perform at an upcoming piano recital, knowing that he plays the piece better than his brother, and knowing that Spencer can hear him as he plays:
GARRETT: I can play . . .
PIANO TEACHER: Don’t. (Garrett keeps playing.) Don’t play that. It bothers him that he can’t play it as fast. (Garrett continues playing and is grinning.) You are ruining the piece for him. (Garrett still plays.) I don’t want you to play it anymore. (Garrett stops.)
Despite this kind of competition, though, the tenor of Spencer and Garrett’s relationship is often friendly. Garrett can be helpful:
Garrett has pulled out a workbook and is looking down at the math problems on it. . . . Spencer says, “Garrett, I don’t understand how to do this.” Garrett quietly says, “Here, let me see.” It is an addition problem. Garrett says, “What’s seventy-five plus ninety-nine?” Spencer rolls his eyes and says, “I don’t know. I can’t add it in my head!” He sounds mildly annoyed by Garrett’s question, as if he is incredulous that Garrett even asked it. Garrett puts the paper down near the corner of the table so that Spencer can see it, and he slowly says, “Okay, what’s nine and five?” Spencer says, “Nine and five . . . um, fourteen. I got that.” Garrett writes down the numbers and says, “And you carry the one here,” and points to the carried number. He continues, “Now what is one and seven and nine?” Spencer pauses for a moment and says, “Seventeen.” Garrett writes down the number. Don strides through the kitchen as Garrett hands the paper back to Spencer. Don asks suspiciously, “What’s going on here?” Garrett replies quietly, “I showed him how to do something.”
Spencer cannot seem to forge a workable relationship with Sam, however. The two squabble frequently and sometimes viciously.
Spencer suddenly shrieks from the living room, “Stop it! Stop it! Get away from me!” Sam begins to wail. I hear a door slam heavily upstairs and then Louise tramps loudly down the stairs. She walks into the living room and demands, “What is going on here?” Spencer explains, “He keeps following me around!” Louise says, with rising irritation, “I don’t care if he follows you.” She says accusingly, “You followed Garrett around when you were his age! There’s no excuse for you to act the way you are acting. There’s no excuse.”
Spats like this are common and are usually resolved by a third party. One parent or the other intervenes and redirects one or both of the boys.
The Tallinger children, like many of their middle-class peers, frankly state their preferences regarding siblings. References to “hating” a family member are common and elicit no special reaction, either from other children or adults. For example, one evening when Spencer and Sam are out in the front yard playing softball with their teenage baby-sitter Frankie (and a field-worker),
Spencer asks Sam who he hated the most. Sam said Garrett. Spencer told Sam to pretend he was hitting [with the bat] Garrett’s head. Frankie said, “Sam, you told me that you hated Spencer the most.” Spencer repeats, “Pretend it’s Garrett’s head.”
The open displays of hostility between siblings that we observed in the middle-class families we visited had no real equivalent in the working-class and poor homes. Siblings in those families clearly annoyed one another, but we never heard the frank, even casual, references to hatred that were common in middle-class homes. Likewise, the middle-class pattern of noisy sibling conflicts resolved by adult intervention was not common in working-class and poor families. In the latter, sibling conflict was both less vociferous and less likely to occur in a setting in which an adult was present.
THE RELATIVE UNIMPORTANCE OF RELATIVES
The Tallinger family’s social life is organized mainly around the children’s activities and the parents’ jobs, rather than around contact with extended family. Such attenuated kinship ties contrast dramatically with the patterns we observed in working-class and poor families, where extremely strong social ties with immediate and extended family members are common. In the working-class and poor families, parents speak daily with their brothers and sisters and their parents. Cousins play together several times a week. The Tallingers see Ms. Tallinger’s mother, who lives a few minutes away, at least once a week, but visits with Mr. Tallinger’s mother, who lives about an hour and a quarter’s drive away, occur only on major holidays (Mr. Tallinger sees his mother more frequently—about once a month, when his work brings him into her area).
Neither Garrett nor Spencer is pressured to forgo an organized activity in order to spend time with relatives, even those they see only a few times a year. When conflicts arise, the children are allowed, as Ms. Tallinger explains, “to choose” where to spend their time. Thus, when the Tallingers host an outdoor college graduation party for Mr. Tallinger’s only nephew, a party that includes all of Mr. Tallinger’s family (i.e., his mother, sisters, nieces, and nephews), Garrett does not plan to attend.
Louise explains, “He is going to go to baseball for a half hour, and then he is going with the Heaths to his soccer game, and then they are going to drive him to his Intercounty soccer game.” . . . Don, with a deep sigh of frustration, says, “We aren’t going to any of the games.” Field-worker: “How did you choose between baseball and soccer?” Don says, “Soccer is more of a priority. Isn’t that right, Garrett?” Garrett, standing in the middle of the kitchen, nods in agreement.
For Garrett, playing soccer is “more o
f a priority” than spending time with relatives, but the Tallingers do care about kinship ties. Ms. Tallinger and her mother talk on the phone at least three times a week, Nana (Ms. Tallinger’s mother) frequently attends the children’s school events, and she has a key to the Tallingers’ house. Mr. Tallinger, as noted, visits his mother regularly, and his extended family gets together for all major holidays. Garrett has a male cousin his age who lives only twenty minutes away. According to Ms. Tallinger, Garrett and this cousin have a “wonderful” time when they are together—but they meet only on major holidays. For the Tallingers, time spent with extended family is not unimportant; it’s just less important than sports.
MONEY: EVER PRESENT AND NEVER MENTIONED
In addition to spending large amounts of family time on sports, the Tallingers spend large amounts of money. Garrett’s activities are expensive. Soccer costs $15 per month, but there are additional, larger expenses periodically. The Forest soccer team’s new warm-up suits, socks, and shirts cost the Tallingers $100. Piano runs $23 per weekly lesson per child. Tennis clinic is $50; winter basketball, $30. It costs the family money to drive to out-of-state tournaments and stay overnight. Fees for Garrett’s summer camps have varied; some have cost $200 per week. When, at our request, Ms. Tallinger tallied the cost of registration, uniforms, equipment for activities, camp costs, and hotel costs for one year, she reported expenditures for Garrett alone as exceeding $4,000 per year, a figure that other middle-class families also report.2
These costs are not discussed within earshot of Garrett, Spencer, or Sam. In fact, money matters of any sort are rarely mentioned in the Tallinger home. For example, when signing the form for baseball pictures, Mr. Tallinger queries Garrett regarding his height, weight, position, and team number. He plans to order nine trading cards, but when Garrett says, “Last year we got twelve,” Mr. Tallinger (without comment) adjusts the form and fills in a figure of $11, which is never mentioned.
Near the end of the study, the Tallingers develop serious financial difficulties. Cash flow problems at the firm they both worked for result in irregular paychecks for both parents. This, in turn, leads to delayed mortgage payments, as Ms. Tallinger reveals in an interview:
I mean, we had seven thousand dollars in penalties on our mortgage. For being late . . . And the reason we’re late is because our company can’t pay us.3
Their financial problems are of great concern to both parents; Mr. Tallinger acknowledges that he is literally losing sleep. Still, no mention is made to the children. Ms. Tallinger, recalling the anxiety she felt as a child when her absent father’s support checks did not arrive or arrived late, tries to spare her sons similar concerns. She does, though, let the children know that certain kinds of vacations, such as going to Disney World, are expensive and that all family vacations require saving in advance. But possible limits on money are never referred to when the family debates going out for fast food, when it is time to sign up for a sports team, when a dentist appointment is scheduled, or when arrangements are made to attend an out-of-state soccer tournament. By not mentioning money, the Tallingers and other middle-class parents convey a subtle sense of entitlement to their children. Garrett and his peers are never denied participation in an activity because of its cost. As I discuss in later chapters, in both white and Black working-class and poor homes the opposite is true. Financial matters are discussed openly and nearly constantly, and children are well aware of what their parents can or cannot afford to spend money on.
To be sure, middle-class children like the Tallinger boys are not oblivious to economic differences. Ms. Tallinger knows that her sons admire the larger, more affluent homes of some of the boys on Garrett’s soccer team:
We don’t pretend anything. When they go to other little boys’ homes, [they are] very different than ours. (laughter) And they like that house a lot. They like the Jennings’ house. They can see it’s a bigger house. They have big-screen TVs. I mean, they notice that people live differently than they do. But they also go to other people’s homes and see that there’s a difference in the other direction.
Garrett has an additional reason for being attuned to relative deprivation. Most of his friends from soccer go to private school, and Garrett had, as well, for one year. Since the Tallingers could not afford to send three children to private school, however, they moved Garrett to the local public school. At the end of the study, when we asked Garrett during an interview what one change he would make in his family, if he could, he replied, “Have more money so I could go to my old school.”
Thus, despite living in a $250,000 home with a swimming pool, having parents who earn more than $175,000 per year, and being regularly enrolled in activities that cost the family thousands of dollars, Garrett is bothered by what he perceives as insufficient wealth. From his perspective, his parents’ financial reach is limited because it does not encompass something he very much wants—a return to private school. He takes for granted the fact that his parents can afford the cost of clothing, groceries, fast food, cars, medical appointments, and assorted activities for their children. In fact, when offered a free toothbrush by the dentist, he declines. For Garrett, expenditures like these are simply part of his life; they are (unexamined) entitlements. He can’t—and doesn’t—even imagine that for working-class and poor children, these same taken-for-granted items and opportunities are viewed as (unavailable) privileges.
LEARNING SKILLS FOR LIFE
Middle-class children may take for granted their “right” to be involved in various activities. Their parents, though, are conscious of the advantages such participation brings to their children. Both Mr. and Ms. Tallinger strongly believe that sports teach children crucial life lessons, such as knowing “when to practice and when to perform,” as Ms. Tallinger puts it during an interview. Mr. Tallinger, noting that it’s “good to be competitive,” adds
You could apply all the clichés you can think of. But when you’re the hero, you get all the satisfaction out of that; and when you’re the goat, you find out who your friends are in a hurry. . . . I’ve found very few other activities where you can experience that as directly.
Young athletes get a head start on maturity:
I think it makes you mentally tough. So that when things are not going your way you have the ability to kind of buckle down or dig down deeper, whatever it is, and try harder and not look for excuses.
They also learn to be team players:
So you learn to play as part of a team . . . His soccer coach is fantastic, preaching to them. If our team scores a goal, it’s the whole team that scores the goal, and if we get scored upon, it’s the whole team that let the goal in, not one guy. And they all seem to be sucking that up and abiding by that attitude.
Finally, nine- and ten-year-old children who play on organized sports teams develop the ability to perform in public, in front of adults, including strangers.4 As children regularly see themselves and other members of the team do well and do poorly, performance-based assessment gradually becomes routine. Also, exposure to public scrutiny is itself graduated. During practices, spectators tend to be mainly mothers who alternate between chatting with one another and watching the field; comments from the sidelines are low key. During games, however, parents’ demeanors change. There is much more overt emphasis on the importance of children performing well. Cheering is mixed with explicit advice—and criticism—as this excerpt from a tape recording at an Intercounty soccer game shows (the speakers include Mr. Tallinger and the fathers of two other players):
—Garrett, hold the ball!
—That’s it, Tom!
—Garrett! Look behind you!
—Garrett, come on! Get back.
—Hold up, Garrett!
—Yeah, that’s it, that’s it, take a run Garrett, take a run!
—Watch your feet, watch your feet!
—Paul, if you need a rest, ask for it!
—Way to go, Jim!
Organized sports, like the soccer teams Gar
rett is part of, with their mandatory tryouts and public games, can help prepare participants for performance-based assessment at school, as well. For example, auditions are required in order to qualify for the “select choir” at the middle-class neighborhood school the Tallinger children attend. Similarly, the “rules of the game” children learn on the playing field can be applied to schoolwork. Mr. Tallinger recalls, in an interview, making this point to Garrett:
Last week or the week before, he came down with semi-weepy eyes [saying] that homework was too difficult. So we said, “You know, it’s like a soccer game. What do you do if you’re playing in a soccer game? Do you start crying and say you can’t do it? No, you know this is going to be a hard one, so you just try harder.” So he went back upstairs and did his homework.
Although it is less obvious to both parents and children, skills acquired in organized activities will continue to be useful when, as teenagers or young adults, these youngsters take their first jobs. In their organizational style, many of the activities in which middle-class children routinely participate replicate key aspects of the workplace. Children like Garrett, who meet and learn to work effectively with a new set of adults for every activity they enroll in, are acquiring a basic job skill—the ability to work smoothly with acquaintances.5 Most working-class and poor children, in contrast, have no opportunities for similar preemployment training. Most of the adults they encounter outside of school are immediate family members or extended family members. Some working-class and poor children interact periodically with adult neighbors, but encounters with adult acquaintances in organized settings are very rare.
Unequal Childhoods Page 9
