Unequal Childhoods

by Annette Lareau

  Organization of Daily Life

  Organized activities, the backbone of Alexander Williams and Garrett Tallinger’s leisure time, are nonexistent in Harold’s life.5 He structures his time much to his own liking. He enjoys tossing a football around with his friends and relatives; he also organizes basketball games, playing off the bare, rusty hoop that hangs from a telephone pole on a side street in the housing project. One obstacle to enjoying sports is a shortage of equipment. Hunting for balls is routine part of Harold’s leisure time. For example, one very hot and humid June day, Harold, his cousin Guion, and a field-worker wandered around the housing project for about an hour, searching for a basketball. Later that afternoon, after spending some time listening to music and looking at baseball cards, Harold joined Guion and other children in a water fight that Guion instigated. It was a lively game, filled with laughter, and with efforts to get the adults next door wet (against their wishes).

  Harold’s daily activities keep him busy, but unlike Alexander Williams and Garrett Tallinger, he almost never seems exhausted by his regime. The lack of adult-organized activities leaves him free to create his own amusements and to set his own pace in pursuing them. He hones his skills at sports, and he is resourceful in finding equipment and playmates. He is adept at dealing with children much younger and much older than he is. But Harold does not acquire the adult-legitimated skills that provide an emerging sense of entitlement, nor does he develop a familiarity with the work-related routines that middle-class children acquire by participating in a roster of organized activities.

  When Harold plays outside, his demeanor is very different from the way he behaves inside the apartment. Inside, he is quiet, almost sedate. He rarely talks loudly, doesn’t hop around, makes only a few, brief comments, and is not argumentative. Outside, especially when he is engaged in sports, the respectful, often subdued attitude he shows around adults gives way to a much more animated and assertive self. (This shift is clear during a basketball game described later in this chapter.) Sometimes, if he is agitated or angry, Harold will stutter. His mother explains:

  He’s been in speech class now for like three years, but he just don’t take his time. If he would take his time and talk—but if he’s laughing or crying, you’ve got to wait until he calms down in order to hear him.

  Harold is more likely to be laughing than crying. The McAllisters are a strikingly playful group; there is frequent laughter and joking. Even when we were getting the study under way, humor was evident. The field-worker asked Harold what time he got up on Saturday mornings. When Harold said 7:00 A.M., the field-worker replied that she would come a bit earlier, then, perhaps around 6:30. Runako’s immediate observation, “Dang, they worse than the Jehovah Witnesses!” prompted appreciative laughter among all present. Harold’s mother is especially droll. She often delivers her funniest remarks deadpan (i.e., without affect). For example, at the reunion picnic, there are about two hundred people present when I show up. Ms. McAllister alerts one of the fieldworkers who is already there:

  JANE (speaking to the field-worker): Annette is here.

  FIELD-WORKER (looking around): Where?

  JANE: She the only white person here and you can’t find her? (laughter)

  The Role of Race

  Just how rarely white people are seen in the project is clear when I spend the night and accompany Ms. McAllister at around 10 P.M. as she walks over to an apartment to return Dara’s TransPass. En route, Ms. McAllister stops to chat with a couple of friends who are sitting in an old white truck, drinking. Ms. McAllister introduces me, “This is my friend Annette. She’s writing a book about my son.” Later, she explains the reason for that introduction:

  JANE: When they see a white person walking around with somebody Black, they think you on drugs. (Shared laughter.)

  JANE: I’m serious. They like, “Yo” [want to buy?]

  FIELD-WORKER: When I walk around during the day, they think I’m from DHS [Department of Human Services].

  JANE: I’m tellin’ you.6

  Harold’s world is only slightly less Black outside the project. The degree of racial segregation in the surrounding urban area is considered “hyper,” as it is in many cities in the United States.7 In the business district a few minutes from Harold’s apartment, the shopkeepers are a mixed group. At Maria’s Convenience Store, where Harold goes on errands for adults (and, sometimes, to buy treats for himself), the staff includes whites, Asians, and some African Americans. A white working-class residential neighborhood is within walking distance of the housing project, but Harold does not go there to play. On Halloween Ms. McAllister reports that she and a friend take their children across the racial divide “for the candy.” They go to the same houses every year and “the people know us.” Occasionally there are problems, including people who turn off their lights when they see Black children approaching. Ms. McAllister tempers her disgust at such behavior, noting simply that “the parents were acting stupid.”

  At school, the racial balance shifts. As noted earlier, Lower Richmond, which is part of a large urban district, is racially integrated: about one-half of the students are white, as are most of the teachers. Most of the administrative staff, such as the yard duty teacher and the cafeteria ladies, are white. Some of the teachers’ aides are Black and most of the bus drivers are Black. Harold’s third-grade teacher was an African American woman; this year, his teacher is a white male.

  Ms. McAllister tells the African American field-worker interviewing her at the start of the study that she does not know of any Black or white children at Harold’s school who have been treated unfairly because of their race. Although clearly aware of people who “act stupid,” Ms. McAllister, unlike Mr. and Ms. Williams, does not express concern about the impact of race on her children’s lives. Instead she stresses the importance of proper care for children in general and is especially critical of adults who “do nothin’ for their kids.”

  GUIDING NATURAL GROWTH

  Ms. McAllister, like Ms. Williams, strongly believes that parents should provide good care for their children. Unlike Ms. Williams, she defines that care in terms of natural growth. That is, she stresses the importance of parents providing food, shelter, clothing, and good supervision. Ms. McAllister is a block captain for her section of the housing project. Among other things, during the summer, she controls the “sprinkler cap” for a nearby fire plug that project residents may use on hot summer days. With the cap on, the fire hydrant releases a spray of water that is safe for the children to play in. She criticizes the way other parents in the housing project handle this and other child-related activities:

  They have five fire plugs over there. They are rowdy over there. They had three of them on yesterday full blast . . . These people don’t do nothin’ for their kids. They’ll [the kids] leave at nine o’clock [in the morning] and come back at four and not tell their parents where they went. (Shakes head, disgusted.)

  Although Ms. McAllister does not actively intervene in her children’s daily lives, she does meet what she identifies as her parental obligations. Thus, even though it requires taking the bus, she attends parent-teacher conferences. Similarly, although she is not personally comfortable around health-care professionals, she takes Harold to the doctor for a physical so that he can attend Bible camp. On very limited funds, she manages to buy sufficient food for her nephews as well for her own children. She makes dinner. She arranges for Harold’s father to take him shopping when he needs new clothes for camp. Sometimes, she simply “hangs out” with the children, watching them play basketball and joking with them.

  Ms. McAllister also emphasizes that she does special things with her children: “In the summer, I’ll take them on a picnic on the blanket.” And,

  We always go [to the zoo] on Valentine’s Day cuz that’s when the kids get in free. We go like four or five times a year, summertime, too. I like goin’ down there in the evening time on Wednesday where you’ve got less kids and it’s nice.

  Ano
ther demonstration of Ms. McAllister’s commitment to good care for children involves a difficult decision she had to make. After prolonged difficulty with her twin sister, Jill (before the study began), whose cocaine addiction interfered with her taking proper care of Halima and Monique, Ms. McAllister called the Department of Human Services (DHS) and reported her sister’s neglect. She explains:

  FIELD-WORKER: Who called DHS?

  JANE: I did. I got tired of it. Halima was having an asthma attack and she don’t come back for four hours. I got tired of it. I called DHS six or seven times that day. I got tired of my kids watching them. Lenny and Lori and Harold and Alexis and Guion and Runako. They should have their own (hesitates) should have their own childhood. She’d go off and leave them.

  The children’s physical safety is also of importance to Ms. McAllister. For example, at Halloween, she took the children trick or treating and she restricted them to eating only packaged candy; they were not allowed to eat “candy corn, . . . cookies, oranges, and apples.” Also, as is noted later in the chapter, she instructs the younger children to steer clear of adults in the housing project who “have problems” and scolds teenaged Lori for spending time with the “wrong kind” of people. She extends a similarly protective stance toward the field-workers. She remarks to me casually:

  I told the drug dealer, “That [field-worker] is doing a study of my son. I want you to not mess with him or I’m going to come down.”8

  Ms. McAllister is proud of her high school diploma, and she conveys to the children her expectation that they will pass each grade. Alexis reports:

  She says if you didn’t pass you’ll be on punishment for the whole summer. And my eyes go wide opened, like this (demonstrates). I’d be scared when I give her my report card. And she says—’cause I didn’t see it yet—and she said, “You didn’t pass.” And I was scared. I said, “Let me see!” And I looked at my report card, and I said, “I passed.”

  Alexis also emphasizes her mother’s qualities:

  My family is not nasty. Because my mom, I mean, this guy that threw a bottle in the street and it was rolling and the car almost got a flat tire. So my mom told me to push the glass over on the curb. And he said—the guy said, “Look at her, she’s cleaning up. She’s cleaning up the glass.” Cuz my mom is clean like that.

  Similarly, Harold appears proud that his mother has the key to the sprinkler cap for the fire hydrant. Overall, Ms. McAllister is seen by family members and neighbors as a capable mother and a good citizen.

  THE LANGUAGE OF DAILY LIFE:

  KEEPING THINGS SHORT AND SIMPLE

  Life in the McAllister household, as in the other poor and working-class families we observed, does not revolve around extended verbal discussions. The amount of talking in these homes varies, but overall, it is considerably less than in the middle-class homes.9 Sentences tend to be shorter, words simpler, and negotiations infrequent, and word play of the kind we observed with the Tallingers and Williamses is almost nonexistent.10 This does not mean that poor and working-class families consider conversation unimportant. McAllister family members talk about relatives and friends, tell jokes, and make comments about what is on television—but they do so intermittently. Short remarks punctuate comfortable silences. Sometimes speech is bypassed altogether in favor of body language—nods, smiles, and eye contact. Ms. McAllister typically is brief and direct in her own remarks, and she does not try to draw her children out or seek their opinions. In most settings, the children are free to speak, but they are not usually specifically encouraged to do so. The overall effect is that language serves as a practical conduit of daily life, not as a tool for cultivating reasoning skills or a resource to plumb for ways to express feelings or ideas.11

  Around the house, the children frequently discuss money among themselves. They look at newspaper ads and comment on the prices of various things. They talk about who gave them money (for example, as when a neighbor gave Runako five dollars for escorting her to the bank’s ATM). The serious financial hardships the McAllisters contend with make all family members sensitive to the exact price of items, as well as where to find a bargain:

  Jane hands Harold and Alexis each a bag of caramel corn, which they open soon afterward. She scolds, “Why you opening those things?” They don’t answer. Somehow the price of the caramel corn comes up. Jane says she got them on sale at a gas station up the hill—two bags for a dollar, when usually they cost fifty-nine cents each.12

  Interspersed with this sort of intermittent talk are adult-issued directives. Children are told to do certain things (e.g., shower, take out the garbage) and not to do others (e.g., curse, talk back). Ms. McAllister uses one-word directives to coordinate the use of the single bathroom. There are almost always at least four children in the apartment and often seven, plus Ms. McAllister and other adults. Ms. McAllister sends the children to wash up by pointing to a child, saying, “Bathroom,” and handing him or her a washcloth. Wordlessly, the designated child gets up and goes to the bathroom to take a shower.

  Children usually do what adults ask of them. We did not observe whining or protests, even when adults assign time-consuming tasks, such as the hour-long process of hair-braiding, which Lori is told to do for the four-year-old daughter of Aunt Dara’s friend Charmaine:

  Someone tells Lori, “Go do [Tyneshia’s] hair for camp.” Without saying anything, Lori gets up and goes inside and takes the little girl with her. They head for the couch near the television; Lori sits on the couch and the girl sits on the floor. [Tyneshia] sits quietly for about an hour, with her head tilted, while Lori carefully does a multitude of braids.

  Lori’s silent obedience is typical. Generally, children perform requests without comment. For example, at dinner one night, after Harold complains he doesn’t like spinach, his mother directs him to finish it anyway:

  Mom yells (loudly) at him to eat: “EAT! FINISH THE SPINACH!” (No response. Harold is at the table, dawdling.) Guion and Runako and Alexis finish eating and leave. I finish with Harold; he eats his spinach. He leaves all his yams.

  Perhaps because of the expectation that children will do as directed, adults do not routinely offer explanations for directives; periodically, though, the rationale is interwoven with the order itself:

  Jane and Runako walk slightly in front of me. I’m in between the two, but Runako keeps curving in front of me. Jane scolds him: “Runako! Walk straight! Don’t get in her way!” He laughs and moves over, then says something about how his friends always get on him for walking crooked. Shortly, he moves in front of me again. This time, Jane snaps: “Runako! Cut that out!” He looks startled (his eyebrows shoot up, and he has a guilty-looking smile).

  Runako is not consciously disobeying his aunt—he just lets his attention wander. Sometimes, contravening an adult’s directive is a more deliberate decision. Harold speaks up when he feels strongly about something. He voices his objections economically but clearly. Discussions that in the Williamses’ home might unfold over several minutes or more are raised and resolved very quickly, as the following example shows. Here, Harold, his father, and I are shopping for items Harold needs for Bible camp.

  Harold picks up a plain blue [beach towel] in the bottom rack. He holds it up. His dad says, “You want a plain one?” Harold nods. His dad takes the towel and puts it in the basket. His dad then wanders down an aisle . . . He then picks up a peach [towel] set with an off-white, satin appliquéd duck on it and looks at it. He says, “These come [in a set] but they don’t have a big towel.” (Mr. McAllister seems to think this is a better buy.)

  Harold firmly rejects the peach towel set:

  Harold takes a step down the aisle and looks at the [towel set] and then firmly shakes his head. “Them girl colors,” he says. His dad picks the set up and raises it, suggesting that Harold is wrong and should get it. He looks at it and looks at Harold. His dad seems (nonverbally) to be protesting mildly but is smiling, too. Harold does not seem to think it is funny. He shakes his head again and sa
ys decisively, “Girl colors.” His dad smiles . . . [but] seems unsure of what to do next. He walks around and looks at what is in the cart and picks up the blue towel again. [He] unfolds the blue towel, and I offer to help him by extending my arm; we unfold it completely. It is about five feet long. Harold shakes his head; he says, “It big.”

  Throughout the entire exchange, Harold utters less than ten words. His father says somewhat more, but still far less than Mr. or Ms. Williams would as they sought to elicit Alexander’s opinions.

  Although Harold objects to the peach towel set, he doesn’t actually argue with his father. He merely reiterates his position. We observed a child in this family actively argue with an adult only once. The subject, food, may have been a deciding factor in both the child’s persistence and the adult’s forbearance.

  As we leave to take the bus to go to Lavina’s house for a birthday party for a three-year-old cousin, Ms. McAllister yells out at all of us as we start across the road toward the bus stop: “Ya’ll eat at Lavina’s, and get filled up at Lavina’s, because I ain’t cooking when we come back.”

  Late that night, around 10 P.M., the family has come back and is sitting watching a play-off basketball game on television and getting ready to go to bed. In Jane’s room, Alexis is sitting in the middle of the bed with her back against the wall, and Runako is sitting on the edge of the bed with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out. It is hot. The air conditioner isn’t on.

  Runako, who was not with the group when Ms. McAllister made the announcement, asks for food. Note that he does not correct his aunt when she presumes that he heard her warning to eat at Lavina’s. Instead, he asserts he does not like—and therefore never eats—hot dogs: