Unequal Childhoods

by Annette Lareau

  Possibly because the issue is safety, Ms. Williams does not encourage Alex to elaborate here, as she would be likely to do if the topic were less charged. Instead, she restates her directive and thus underscores her expectation that Alex will do as she asks.

  On another occasion, when the Williamses’ views conflict, each volunteers a reason for the (opposing) directive:

  Terry looked toward Alex and asked, while smiling, “How are you going to beat up Fritz if you don’t eat your vegetables?” Alex shook his head as he picked up a string bean with his fork, “I am not going to fight him!” Terry, smirking: “Are you going to let him bully you like he does the other kids?” Alex, alternating stares between his father and his plate: “I’ll fight him if I have no other choice, but I’ll tell one of the teachers so he can get suspended.”

  Christina, looking at Alex and smiling: “That’s right, baby. You do not have to fight. There are better ways to resolve conflict. Go and tell the teacher if anyone is harassing you.”

  Terry looked at Alex and said firmly, “There are going to be times when you are not going to be able to run, and you are going to have to fight. You are going to have to take a stand and defend yourself.”

  Overall, the Williamses and other middle-class parents use language frequently, pleasurably, and instrumentally. Their children do likewise. For example, one January evening, Alexander is stumped by a homework assignment to write five riddles. He sits at the dinner table in the kitchen with his mother and a field-worker. Mr. Williams is at the sink, washing the dinner dishes. He has his back to the group at the dinner table. Without turning around, he says to Alex, “Why don’t you go upstairs to the third floor and get one of those books and see if there is a riddle in there?”

  Alex [says] smiling, “Yeah. That’s a good idea! I’ll go upstairs and copy one from out of the book.” Terry turns around with a dish in hand, “That was a joke—not a valid suggestion. That is not an option.” He smiled as he turned back around to the sink. Christina says, looking at Alex: “There is a word for that you know, plagiarism.” Terry says (not turning around), “Someone can sue you for plagiarizing. Did you know that?” Alex: “That’s only if it is copyrighted.” They all begin talking at once.8

  Here we see Alex cheerfully (though gently) goading his father by pretending to misunderstand the verbal instruction to consult a book for help. Mr. Williams dutifully rises to the bait. Ms. Williams reshapes this moment of lightheartedness by introducing a new word into Alexander’s vocabulary. Mr. Williams goes one step further by connecting the new word to a legal consequence. Alex upstages them both. He demonstrates that he is already familiar with the general idea of plagiarism and that he understands the concept of copyright, as well.

  Williams family members also often casually interweave scientific terms or medical terms into their daily conversations. When a field-worker accompanying Alex to the soccer field comments on the boy’s deep cough, Alex nonchalantly remarks, “I’m allergic to grass,” and then adds, “Yeah. And leaf mold,” thereby using a specialized term. The parents also see it to be important to develop their son’s nascent political awareness. The African American Baptist church they attend each Sunday includes sermons on social and political issues such as the national debt, welfare policies, and poverty programs. They also discuss political issues at home with him over the dinner table, including events in the national news, such as destructive fires set in African American churches in the South.

  Finally, we observed Alex and his parents, as well as other middle-class families, using reasoning and negotiation to achieve specific ends. For example, rather than order or direct children, middle-class parents would offer children “choices” for decisions. But then, these parents would unobtrusively guide their children toward the choice that they thought was preferable. In choosing fast food or in choosing a book for a summer reading list, for example, Ms. Williams would ask Alexander what he wanted, but then would suggest one or two options as the most appropriate. Often, when Alexander felt he was making his own decisions, he was in fact following his mother’s suggestions.

  Overall, a commitment to a strategy of concerted cultivation is sometimes physically and emotionally exhausting for parents, yet this does not seem to lessen the appeal of this approach to child rearing among the middle class. Making a deliberate and conscious effort to raise their son in a way they believe will allow him to maximize his potential as a human being is a top priority for Mr. and Ms. Williams. In this, they are like all the other middle-class parents in our study, including Garrett Tallinger’s parents. As Black middle-class parents, however, they see themselves as having an additional, equally important obligation to prepare Alexander for the range of experiences he is likely to encounter growing up as a Black male in American society. We turn now to that aspect of their parenting.

  THE ROLE OF RACE

  Both Mr. and Ms. Williams are very concerned about the impact of race on Alexander. They monitor his experiences closely. Their actions are very similar to those of other African American middle-class parents in the study.9 Mr. Williams explains how he and his wife orient their son:

  What we try and do with Alexander is teach him that race unfortunately is the most important aspect of our national life. I mean, people look at other people and they see a color first. But that isn’t going to define who he is . . . He will succeed, despite racism. And I think he lives his life that way. I mean, he is amazingly, refreshingly an individual. Uh, and he continues to be able to draw people to him . . . He just—he makes friends easily, and I’m happy for him.

  Mr. and Ms. Williams are adamant, however, that race not be “an excuse” for failing to succeed in life:

  We discuss how race impacts on my life as an attorney, and we discuss how race will impact on his life. The one teaching that he takes away from this is that he is never to use discrimination as an excuse for not doing his best.

  Ms. Williams comments that racial issues help shape her decisions about Alex’s activities. She monitors the racial composition of each activity before she enrolls her son:

  We have been very careful not to put him in situations where he is the only Black child. We’ve been very careful about that. Not only is that not fair, but we’ve also been careful to make sure he mixed with a group . . . let’s say of white kids whose parents . . . uh, I, never thought I’d be using this—but my dad used to say—are cultured. You know. They’ve been introduced to many different types of people and can accept that there are differences in people in a positive manner.

  Note that Ms. Williams’s concerns reflect two distinct goals. She does not want Alexander to be the only Black child in any given activity. In this regard, she seems quite successful. Across all the activities we observed—piano, soccer, guitar, choir, baseball, basketball, and the school play—Alexander was one of the few Black children, but he was never the only Black child. At school, his grade level is about 10 percent Black. His friends include both Black and white children. The Baptist church the family attends has an all-Black, middle-class membership. Ms. Williams’s success in achieving her second goal, that the whites with whom her son interacts be “cultured,” is more difficult to assess. This does not diminish its importance to her, however. During an interview, she related a story about a painful incident that had taken place several years earlier.

  Alexander had attended the birthday party of a child the Williamses did not know well. The invitation was linked to his baby-sitter, Rose. From time to time, Alex would accompany Rose when she baby-sat for other families. A young boy in one of these families took a shine to Alex:

  The kid was really attached to Alex . . . Alexander was invited to, I guess it must have been his second or third birthday party . . . we went, and, um . . . the uh, grandparent was there. . . . [During the party,] the grandparent kept saying, um, “That kid is pretty dark.” (laughing) [He asked,] “Who is that kid?” Well, I didn’t have to say anything because Rose took care of it. (laughing)


  This event reinforced Ms. Williams’s conviction that she “needed to be very careful” about monitoring the activities Alexander took part in:

  We’ve never been, uh, parents who drop off their kid anywhere. We’ve always gone with him, and even now we go in . . . to school in the morning and check . . . You know, not every day but, you know, just go and check and see what’s going on.

  The Williamses are generally happy with their son’s school experiences, but they objected to the racial balance at the beginning of the school year.10 Mr. Williams reports:

  For some reason, this year Alexander was the only Black kid in his class—which was—which was very bad planning, because there were two fifth grades and there were . . . five (laughs lightly) Black kids in the other fifth-grade classroom, one in this classroom. Utterly ridiculous. Something that I raised holy hell about.

  The Williamses are well positioned to take prompt action on Alex’s behalf because they are well informed. They may be pleased with the school’s emphasis on cultural diversity, but they continue to keep a watchful eye on both the curriculum and their son’s overall school experience. This monitoring is similar to what Ms. Williams’s mother and father did when she was a child. The elementary school in the mid-sized town in the South where she grew up was all Black. Her parents’ worries centered on academic standards:

  They came quite often. They were always there . . . They were very concerned that we were not getting what we needed to get, in terms of education. We had excellent teachers. I just remember that.

  In ninth grade, when Ms. Williams entered an integrated school, her parents’ concerns shifted and escalated:

  Then, when the schools were integrated, that was a bigger concern. They, they had to come and check to make sure that, that we weren’t being knifed or, you know, hair pulled, you know, which happened quite a bit, you know. A lot of mean things happened.

  By contrast, in Alexander’s life, overt racial incidents are unusual, as his mother acknowledges:

  Those situations have been few and far between. I mean I can count them on my fingers. I remember . . . when Alexander was in first grade . . . first or second grade . . . there was a little white kid at school who said to Alexander and another little Black kid, “All you guys could be is garbage men when you grow up.” (She laughs.) . . . And Alexander’s standing there saying, “Well, I don’t understand that ’cause my Dad’s a lawyer.” (laughter) So, it didn’t even faze him what the kid was really saying.

  Despite Mr. and Ms. Williams’s shared sensitivity to the importance of racial issues, they do not always agree about the best way or proper time to teach their son about cultural diversity. Mr. Williams seems mildly frustrated by what he views as his wife’s “protective” approach. He prefers to talk about race overtly. He strives to “alert” his son, but he does so in a more “superficial” way than he would like. Mr. and Ms. Williams also appear to have different ideas about the possibility for improvement and social change in race relations. Ms. Williams is the more hopeful of the two.

  Ms. Williams seems less willing than others to “read” race into a situation.11 As the incident described below shows, she handles a potentially humiliating experience in a small, family-owned hardware store calmly and with no visible signs of distress and in a different fashion than the field-worker, a young African American man, would have:

  (The store is crowded; about a dozen people wait in line.) . . . Christina was stooped over the counter. Her checkbook was on the counter top and she had a pen in hand before the [older woman] clerk stopped her. “We no longer accept checks. Do you have a credit card?” There were people behind us in line and others steadily coming through the door. (I thought Christina was going to “go off.” I certainly would have.)

  Christina remained calm. . . . She looked the woman in the eye and spoke in a casual voice, “Yes, I do, but last time that I was here, I paid with a check.” The woman also spoke casually, “Well, since it is holiday season, we are trying to limit the amount of checks that we accept.”

  The clearing of throats could be heard behind us. Christina did not pay any attention to it. “Mom,” (Alex, shaking his head) “you can’t. You promised that you would not use your credit card.” Christina had put her checkbook away and was now digging in her wallet, retrieving a credit card. Alex: “Let’s get Dad’s.” Christina looked at Alex, then smiled. She put her card back in the holder. Speaking to the salesperson, she said, “Can you hold the sled for me?” . . . When we approached the door, the woman behind the counter asked, “You’ll be right back?” Christina pointed in the direction of the car as she said, “I’m just going to the car and get my husband’s credit card.” Christina smiled as she left. . . . (I was upset with Christina. This woman was patronizing her.)

  Exiting, Ms. Williams and the field-worker discuss the possibility of racism without ever explicitly using the term:

  We walked out of the store. I asked Christina, “What did you think that was about? Why didn’t she take the check?” Christina, while looking across the street to where Terry was once parked, said nonchalantly, “I don’t think it was like that. . . . I can understand why she did not want to accept a check. I have a friend [who told me that] someone had written fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of bad money orders.” Alex: “How much? Fifteen hundred dollars?” Christina, looking around for Terry, said, “Fifteen thousand. Ten times more than fifteen hundred.”12 (During this conversation, Mr. Williams pulls up in front of the store. Alex gets one of his father’s credit cards and he, his mother, and the field-worker go back into the store and finish the transaction.)13

  As the field-worker’s comments make clear, others likely would have perceived the clerk’s actions as a racially based insult.14 Ms. Williams did not. Equally important, she offered an alternative explanation that distracted her son. Thus, Alex seemed to process the events in the hardware store as nothing more than a temporary delay in the purchase of the sled he wanted. As the next section shows, Ms. Williams brings the same careful attention to other aspects of her son’s life as she devotes to the dynamics of race. Mr. Williams, too, takes an active, though less sustained, role in “developing Alexander.”

  EMERGING SIGNS OF ENTITLEMENT

  In interactions with professionals, the Williamses, like some other middle-class parents in the study, seem relaxed and communicative. They want Alex to feel this way too, so they teach him how to be an informed, assertive client. On one hot summer afternoon, Ms. Williams uses a doctor visit as an opportunity for this kind of instruction. During the drive to the doctor’s office, the field-worker listens as Ms. Williams prepares Alexander to be assertive during his regular checkup:

  As we enter Park Lane, [Christina] says quietly to Alex, “Alexander, you should be thinking of questions you might want to ask the doctor. You can ask him anything you want. Don’t be shy. You can ask anything.” Alex thinks for a minute, then says, “I have some bumps under my arms from my deodorant.” Christina: “Really? You mean from your new deodorant?” Alex: “Yes.” Christina: “Well, you should ask the doctor.”

  Alex’s mother is teaching him that he has the right to speak up (e.g., “don’t be shy”; “you can ask anything”). Most important, she is role modeling the idea that he should prepare for an encounter with a person in a position of authority by gathering his thoughts ahead of time. During the office visit, both mother and son have the opportunity to activate the class resources that were evident during the conversation in the car.

  The doctor, a jovial white man in his late thirties or early forties, enters the examination room and announces that he will begin by going through “the routine questions.” When he notes that Alexander is in the ninety-fifth percentile in height, Alex interrupts him.

  ALEX: I’m in the what?

  DOCTOR: It means that you’re taller than more than ninety-five out of a hundred young men when they’re, uh, ten years old.

  ALEX: I’m not ten.

  DOCTOR: Well, they
graphed you at ten. You’re—nine years and ten months. They—they usually take the closest year to get that graph.

  The act of interrupting a person of authority is a display of entitlement. It is also indicative of middle-class child-rearing priorities: the incivility of interrupting a speaker is overlooked in favor of encouraging children’s sense of their individual importance and of affirming their right to air their own thoughts and ideas to adults. The casualness with which Alexander corrects the doctor (“I’m not ten”) is a further indication of this child’s easy assumption of his rights. A final signal, in the form of a clear directive Alex issues to the doctor, comes later, after he has listened to the doctor provide instructions over the phone for the emergency treatment of a child just admitted with an eye wound. “Stay away from my eyelids!” Alex commands, only half jesting.

  The value of a feeling of ease when interacting with a professional is underscored when the discussion shifts to Alexander’s diet. Ms. Williams readily admits that they do not always follow nutritional guidelines:

  DOCTOR: Do you get your fruits and vegetables too?

  ALEX: Yeah.

  CHRISTINA (high-pitched): Ooooo. . . .

  DOCTOR: I see we have a second opinion. (laughter)

  ALEX (voice rising): You give me bananas and all in my lunch every day. And I had cabbage for dinner last night.

  DOCTOR: Do you get at least one or two fruits, one or two vegetables every day?

  ALEX: Yeah.

  DOCTOR: Marginally?

  CHRISTINA: Ninety-eight percent of the time he eats pretty well.

  DOCTOR: OK, I can live with that.

  This honesty is a form of capital because it gives the doctor accurate (rather than vague, incomplete, or incorrect) information.15 Class resources are again activated when Ms. Williams reveals that she “gave up” on a medication. The doctor pleasantly but clearly suggests that she should continue the medication longer. In steering Ms. Williams in a different direction, the doctor acknowledges her relative power by framing his answer as if he is “arguing for it,” rather than plainly directing her to execute a medically necessary action. She, in turn, accepts his explanation of the drug’s benefits and indicates a willingness to keep her son on the medication for the full recommended period.