Katie is a short, bouncy fourth-grader. Her very straight, thin hair is blonde shading into light brown; it’s cut to just above her shoulders. She is solidly built, but, despite her worries, she is not fat; indeed, she is not even pudgy. Remarks about her body are common at home. Her mother, for example, comments ruefully to Jenna that Katie “has a butt that could kill.” While Katie and her relatives sit around watching television, there is much talk about hair color, hair length, hairstyles, nails, manicures, outfits, and weight. These are matters that preoccupy Katie (as well as many other young girls). She likes to think of herself as being about fifteen. A picture taken on Christmas Day shows her trying to look alluring and coquettish in a fresh white, long-sleeved blouse; a black, shiny full skirt; white nylons; and canvas flats. Her hair is pulled up in a French twist (an elaborate hairstyle more typically seen on adult women) and she is wearing lipstick.
In some ways, Katie acts as maturely as she tries to look. For instance, when she comes home from school, she fixes herself a snack, such as a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup. Her actions look competent and routine as she opens the can, pours the soup into an aluminum pot, and heats it on the stove. She neither asks for nor receives any adult assistance. Around her peers, however, especially her cousin, Amy, who is about the same age, Katie seems more like the nine-year-old child she really is. Much like other children we observed, outside of the home—away from her mother—she is more energetic, louder, and bossier than she is at home. Every weekend, she and Amy play together for hours on end at their grandmother’s house. Katie has a flair for the dramatic and seems to be a “natural” actress. She and Amy have great fun putting on skits of their own devising. Compared to Tyrec Taylor and other boys in the study, gender clearly influences aspects of her play. She is more restricted in movements. Katie plays with neighborhood children in the large parking lot of the Brindles’ apartment building. There she rides her bike, plays tag, and visits with other children, but she does not wander several blocks from home in a group of boys as Tyrec and other boys we observed do. Much of her play is more sedentary than the active movements of boys, with a stress on femininity. In the house, she enjoys her Barbies (she has fifteen). With a neighborhood girl, she will have long periods of practicing the development of herself as a beauty object (something that was never observed with the boys in the study). Katie and her friend will practice dressing up the Barbies and playing with each other’s hair. Katie also watches television and plays Nintendo. As a result of her own initiative, not her mother’s, Katie participates in two organized activities: she sings in a choir that meets after school for an hour, once a week. On some Friday evenings, she takes a van with neighborhood children to a Christian youth program where they sing Christian songs, learn Bible stories, and play games.
Katie has had more than her share of problems, though, and she sometimes volunteers stories of feeling lonely and abandoned. Her mother confided (during the in-depth interview) that Katie had been sexually molested when she was in first grade.3 Last year, when she was a third-grader, Katie missed quite a bit of school. She was hospitalized in a program in part due to her displays of self-destructive behavior.
Ms. Brindle’s family—her mother, Tammy; and adult brothers, John and Ryan; and Amy—live nearby.4 Ryan and Amy’s mother are divorced; Amy lives with her mother during the week and stays with her father and grandmother on weekends. Katie can take the bus by herself to her “Grandmom’s” house; it is a ten-minute ride up one street. She visits almost every weekend. Amy is usually there as well because weekends are when she sees her father (Ms. Brindle’s brother Ryan). Although Ms. Brindle unabashedly describes her relatives as “dysfunctional,” it is her extended family that provides the structure around which she and her children organize their lives. Grandmom baby-sits for Katie on weekends, and both she and Ryan sometimes provide Ms. Brindle and the children with transportation (the Brindles have no car). Katie’s best friend is her cousin, Amy, and Ms. Brindle’s best friend is her former sister-in-law Mary (once married to John, Ms. Brindle’s schizophrenic older brother). Ms. Brindle and Mary talk daily and see each other often during the week. Mary’s daughters, who are in their late teens, also come by the Brindles’ apartment regularly.
The level of racial integration in Katie’s world varies. The stores close to the apartment are staffed and used by whites, almost exclusively. Although there are a few African American families in the apartment building, the neighborhood is overwhelmingly white. The Brindle family benefits from the racial segregation that exists in city housing.5 Rather than live in a public housing project, where all of the families are poor, owing to segregation, they have access to neighborhoods where nearly all the families are of the same racial group (in this case, white) but occupy different economic positions. Still, key aspects of Katie’s life are racially integrated. For example, her classrooms are about one-half Black and one-half white. At recess, she occasionally plays with Black girls. A few of the children she plays with around her apartment complex are Black, and she occasionally lends her bike to them for brief periods of time. She has seen other Black adults in social settings, including an African American man her mother dated.
The lack of economic resources makes almost every aspect of daily life for the Brindles more complicated and stressful than it is for middle-class (or even working-class) families. Putting together a meal can be a challenge. Food stamps are issued every fourteen or nineteen days. The family often runs out of food before it is time to go pick up the next batch of stamps. Getting the stamps is an ordeal, requiring a long bus ride and an even longer wait at the disbursement office. The buses are slow and often late. In the summer, Ms. Brindle walks; it takes her about an hour. She tries to avoid having to bring Melmel on these trips, but he does accompany her on most of her other outings. She carries him to the bus stop and holds him on her lap during the long bus rides.
ROUTINE LABOR AT HOME: CARING FOR CHILDREN
In all of the families we visited, regardless of social class, parents were caregivers. It was parents, not children, who were responsible for making sure there was food in the house, that children were bathed, that they had clean clothes to wear, got dressed in clothes that matched, and went to bed in time to get enough sleep. Parents watched over their children when they were sick, signed them up for school and other activities, and took them to the dentist and the doctor. These routines, present in all families, were taxing for adults, even in middle-class families. Children, while often charming, can be difficult, too. Parents in all social classes struggled with children who dawdled, lost things, rejected food as unacceptable, did not do as they were asked, and, at times, resisted, subverted, and tested the limits of their parents’ control.
In the Brindle family, all caregiving falls to Katie’s mom. Ms. Brindle is an unusually well-organized person. She believes that papers, toys, clothing, and so on, should be put away neatly in their assigned places. Complete outfits hang on the hangers in Katie’s closet. For example, on one hanger, sweatpants, a matching T-shirt, and sweater are grouped together. On other hangers there are similar arrangements of clothing. With each load of laundry, Ms. Brindle regroups and changes the outfits. She also prefers that Katie not leave things to the last moment, especially homework. She thinks it should be done soon after her daughter gets home from school. Katie sometimes resists, “forgetting” to do her schoolwork. Any work that has not been completed before bedtime must be done in the morning, before school, in the living room or dining room as there is no desk in her bedroom. As the field notes below show, this means less sleep and more work for both mother and daughter:
(Katie and CiCi are up before 7 A.M. Mom makes some hot chocolate for Katie.) Katie is on the love seat, sitting lengthwise . . . She is in her pink nightgown and her hair is disheveled. Her blue notebook is in her lap and she is looking at a list of words. Her pencil is in her mouth.
The homework is evidently to make contractions out of a list of spelling words and
then to put them in alphabetical order. There are sixteen words . . . Around 7:10, Katie announces, “I’ve done ten and I have only six more on the list.” Her Mom says, “That’s a lot.”
When Katie gets stuck on a problem, she turns to her mother for help. Unlike in middle-class homes, where parents typically help in stages, offering a series of prompts designed to get their children to figure out the correct answer, Katie’s mother issues a straightforward directive. She tells Katie the specific numbers required to match the words she is having trouble with:
Katie . . . hands her mother the list and asks, “What do I do now?” Katie sits with one leg up and underneath her nightgown; the other leg is dangling over the edge of the couch . . . [CiCi] looks at the list and looks puzzled . . . Katie sits quietly and yawns a few times while she is waiting. Her mom is trying to figure it out. Then she hands the paper back to Katie and says, “Make that one ten and then ten eleven and eleven twelve and twelve thirteen.” Katie erases the numbers.
For about twenty minutes, Katie works on her word list while her mother periodically reminds her to eat her breakfast and to get ready for school. Katie doesn’t ignore her mother. She does as she is told, but at a snail’s pace:
Her mom says that she should get a donut. Katie gets a donut and begins to slowly eat it . . . Her mother says, “You need to get dressed.” She then asks, “What do you want to wear? You only have a few outfits here. Most are at Grandma’s.” She continues, “Do you want to wear your pink sweatsuit?” Katie says, “No, it makes me look fat.” Her mother replies, “You aren’t fat.” Katie doesn’t answer.
Katie finishes the list but declares that now she has to copy it over. Ms. Brindle doesn’t check over Katie’s answers or make any further references to the word list. Since Katie makes no moves toward getting dressed, her mother again calmly reminds her that she needs to get ready for school. Then she tunes in “Good Morning America.” Katie is soon watching the TV program rather than copying over her homework. Ms. Brindle doesn’t object, as there are no rules in the family regarding TV for children.
Katie continues to yawn steadily. She puts the draft list of words on the rug on the floor and props the notebook up on her knees and slowly begins to write. She is moving lethargically. Her mom says, “I am going to buy a pencil sharpener. I am tired of sharpening a pencil with a knife.” . . . Katie looks at the television and then down at her homework. It is slow progress, she seems to be dawdling . . . At 7:44, Katie says, “I’m done.” She stretches, arching her body, and yawns. Her mom says, “You need to get dressed.” Katie doesn’t move. Her mom waits a minute . . . [and then] goes to the closet and pulls out two hangers of clothes . . . With a hanger in each hand, [she] says to Katie, “Do you want to wear this (holding up one hanger) or this (holding up the other hanger)?” Katie says, pointing, “This one.”
Katie continues to watch “Good Morning America” intently. After another, more formal command from her mother, she pulls on her clothes, still watching TV. Her mother sits on the couch, smoking a cigarette. It’s 8:00. Katie is dressed, but her hair still needs attention. This is Ms. Brindle’s job. She brushes Katie’s hair, and after a quick, whispered consultation with her daughter, pulls her hair up into a half ponytail, explaining, “She doesn’t like her hair up, but I like it up.”
It is almost time to go. Katie pulls herself away from the TV, looks around in the dining room area, and then goes to her bedroom for a few seconds. When she returns,
she stands directly in front of her mother (blocking her mother’s view of the television) and asks, “Mom, where’s my book bag?” Her mother looks frustrated. She furrows her eyebrows, sighs deeply, and raises her voice as she says, “That is the key word, your book bag.”
Ms. Brindle joins the search. Standing at the open door to Katie’s room, she points in, looking annoyed. Katie smiles, slips by her mother and retrieves her book bag from her room. At last, it is time to bundle up for the fifteen-degree weather outside, and then say farewell:
CiCi zips up [Katie’s] coat but doesn’t put on the hood. Katie doesn’t have any mittens on her hands . . . CiCi stands and goes over to the door and opens it. Katie goes out first. Her mom leans over and kisses her on the lips, and says affectionately, “Good-bye, monster.”
This sequence of steps took ninety minutes. It is a labor-intensive routine that Katie and her mother enact every single school day (with minor variations) and most weekends (with some modifications). This particular morning, Melmel stayed asleep, but often Ms. Brindle cares for him at the same time—changing his diaper, getting him dressed, giving him a bottle of milk or “Hi-C” juice and then carrying him around while she supervises Katie. Like other single parents with young children, Ms. Brindle’s responsibilities are many and they are nonnegotiable; her children cannot manage without her daily assistance.
POOR FAMILIES: LOVE’S LABORS MULTIPLIED
All parents are faced with multiple, daily child-rearing tasks. But, in poor families, the difficulties involved in executing those tasks are much greater than in middle-class families and working-class ones. The additional burden created by poverty is not connected to the competence of individuals (although individuals do vary in their social skills). Rather, it is the result of the uneven distribution of structural resources. Unlike in Western European countries, where all families with dependent children get a monthly stipend, in the United States, financial stability is considered a matter of individual responsibility. Public assistance does not cover the minimum costs of raising children. Moreover, the social resources available to the poor are not simply insufficient; they are also bureaucratic, slow working and stigmatized.
Ms. Brindle is not currently employed, but she has held jobs in the past and seems proud of it (e.g., noting that she had worked at McDonald’s, she adds, “I was good at it”). She hopes to return to work once Melmel starts school. In the meantime, the Brindles try to survive on public assistance. Twice a month, Ms. Brindle has to go in person to collect her food stamps and cash stipend. Usually, due to lack of child care, she takes Melmel with her. However, on this day his older sister Jenna watched him. Going to get food stamps is a chore she “hate[s].” The bus ride is long, the disbursement office is bleak, and, on days when food stamps are released, it is crowded with slow-moving lines of tired women (men are vastly outnumbered) towing young children. The lines form outside the building, before the office opens. The day we go, it takes fifteen minutes of inching forward before we even get inside. Once we have edged into the building, we join around seventy-five people who are waiting in another long line in a small, dusty and dirty room. There are no public restrooms; there are no drinking fountains. We wait another thirty minutes. The cashiers move slowly; they look bored and disinterested. At 9:05, we are done but exhausted by the wait.
While standing in line Ms. Brindle says, sounding anxious and a bit desperate, “I am out of everything. Milk, eggs, bread.” We go to the grocery store immediately after we get the food stamps. Katie’s mother buys four boxes of cereal, a loaf of white bread, a gallon of milk, bologna, American cheese, a dozen eggs, and a cake mix and frosting. It is Katie’s birthday that day. The cake mix calls for vegetable oil. This is an unusual and added expense. Ms. Brindle looks stressed while she is staring at the glistening plastic bottles of yellow oil. She sighs deeply and says, “I wish food was free.”6
We then head back home; the entire expedition having taken approximately two hours.
Under conditions where every dollar for food matters, unexpected losses present serious problems. One afternoon when Ms. Brindle returns to the apartment after getting her food stamps (she had gone by herself), she is upset. She thinks she has been shortchanged:
CiCi sat down at the dining room table. She sighed and took off her coat and put it on the chair next to her. She looked at Jenna and said, “I think they gypped me forty dollars. There were all these people in line shouting to hurry up and I tried to count it, but I couldn’t concentrate.” C
iCi sounded sad.
She started counting each page in the first [food stamp] booklet and then the second booklet. . . . Katie made a noise—a humming noise (it wasn’t loud)—while CiCi was counting. CiCi said in an angry tone, “Be quiet. That’s what happened in line. I couldn’t concentrate. Everyone was yelling.” . . . CiCi looked at Jenna and said, “They’re not supposed to do that. They gave me all these books with low numbers (dollar amounts). They’re not supposed to do that. They’re supposed to give me high numbers.” Katie did not say anything after her mom yelled at her but remained quietly sitting on the couch.
Unequal Childhoods Page 13
