Unequal Childhoods

by Annette Lareau

  The response from the instructor to Stacey’s prepared statement serves to further antagonize Ms. Marshall:

  I remember Stacey came out that night from class, and she—she got in, crying. She said, “You were right. She did ask me.” And I said, “Well, what did you say?” She said, “We told ’em that I just didn’t think I was ready for it.” And I said, “Well, what did they say?” She said, “Tina just went ‘Hmm’” (said in a disdainful, haughty voice). You know, like that. And here I’m thinking to myself, “Well, I don’t really think that was appropriate.”

  Ms. Marshall is angered by Tina’s criticisms because she believes they were harmful to Stacey. In addition, though, she feels that the instructor’s remarks created more work for her.

  Stacey is the type of child that needs a lot of warm fuzzies. She’s a child that is very quick to think the negative. (Sigh.) And . . . she would come out and she said, “Well, Tina said this.” I would say to myself, “Well, she may be stretching it a little.” But the reality of it is, something was said. And obviously it wasn’t the right thing. In part this is probably selfish too. I [saw it as], “Oh, God. There’s more work for me.” You know, to boost this kid’s morale.

  Partly because of these ongoing problems, and partly because Wright’s is a long drive from the Marshall family’s home, Stacey’s mother began looking for a new program. She was engaged in this process when we began our observations of the family. She made numerous telephone calls to various programs in the county, drove to and inspected two different programs, attended two parent meetings of a program that she enrolled Stacey in but then withdrew her from (Ms. Marshall and other parents were outraged that a construction project begun after the session started reduced the size of the floor and, in their opinion, also created a safety hazard), and called the director of one of the programs to complain. The whole time, she worried. The decision regarding gymnastics seemed to weigh more on Ms. Marshall than on any other member of the family. Even as she was working full time, running the household, driving the children around, and negotiating a variety of complex tasks, she continued to examine the possibilities, determined to find the best choice for Stacey in gymnastics.

  In many cases, Stacey accompanied her mother as she hunted for the right program. As a result, she learned what criteria to apply when assessing a program, and she developed a specific vocabulary with which to express her opinion. For example, when Stacey, her mother, and the researcher tour a YMCA with a gymnastics program, Stacey joins in a conversation about the length of the runway. Although only ten, she speaks with authority:

  Stacey says, “It saves like six feet of where it is now, so it’s in closer . . . So that way they can pull out the rest of the floor . . . We’re gonna end up having a longer vaulting runway. . . . ”

  A few days later, meeting with the coach for the program, Stacey is easily able to describe her skill level and she, not her mother, describes her skills. Thus, when the coach and Stacey’s mother discuss the appropriate level, Stacey remains an integral part of the adults’ discussion. Outside, she is ready to render an opinion:

  Once we were inside the car, Lorrie asks Stacey what she thought. Stacey says, “It’s good.” After a couple of seconds’ pause, Stacey said, “If we come on Saturday, then we can see it when they have the whole gym.”

  Ms. Marshall will make the final decision about where to enroll Stacey, but she clearly values her daughter’s opinion. Stacey is encouraged to give her assessment and when she does, it is treated as important, if not definitive.

  INTERVENING IN SCHOOL: EARLY AND OFTEN

  Unlike working-class and poor parents, who may, for example, stand their ground with the landlord but silently accept the pronouncements of a classroom teacher, Ms. Marshall takes the same quiet yet assertive approach with all representatives of the many institutions and organizations that affect her daughters’ lives. For example, the school Stacey and Fern attend has a gifted-and-talented program that draws an elite group of students and provides them with an enriched, challenging curriculum. Ms. Marshall viewed her daughters’ inclusion in the program as a clear advantage; thus, when the girls just missed the IQ score cutoff (Stacey’s score of 128 was 2 points shy of the 130 needed), their mother took prompt action.5 Using informal advice from educators in the school, tips from friends in other districts, the family’s substantial economic resources, and her own vast supply of determination, Ms. Marshall learned the guidelines for appealing a decision and followed them. She arranged to have her daughters tested privately (to the tune of $200 per child) and was able to get both girls admitted to the program.

  Much as getting Stacey enrolled in the private gymnastics class was only the first in a long series of interventions, so too with the gifted-and-talented program. Ms. Marshall remained in close contact with the consultant for the program, overseeing the selection of teachers for her children and complaining when the math teacher did not inform her (per the policy of the gifted program) of a looming “C” in math. In addition, she consistently drew educators’ attention to her daughter’s slow, careful, and methodical learning style. These habits often resulted in Stacey not finishing all of the work assigned in the time allotted (e.g., she might finish only about half of the math problems on an exam). In formal testing situations, Stacey did not do as well as she might have, were the test not timed. Ms. Marshall did not pressure her daughter to hurry or insist that she learn new strategies for working faster. Instead, this mother sought to make sure that all key personnel were aware of her daughter’s special circumstances. Her clear expectation was that once notified of Stacey’s learning style, the teachers would adjust what they required her to accomplish.

  Ms. Marshall’s belief that she has the right and the responsibility to intervene in the classroom is widely shared by middle-class parents, mothers particularly. At Swan, the middle-class, predominately white suburban school where the research assistants and I carried out classroom observations, the teachers noted that parents frequently came barging into school to complain about minor matters. For example, a scheduling conflict that resulted in some third-graders not getting a chance to perform a skit for their peers in the other third-grade classrooms prompted three different mothers to come in to school the very next morning to let the teacher know how disappointed their children were and to inquire into exactly why some children had gotten the opportunity to perform and others had not. More generally, parents of Swan students did not hesitate to criticize teachers’ choice of projects, book report assignments, homework levels, or classroom arrangements. Some mothers had a much more aggressive style than did Ms. Marshall. At Swan School, for example, Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan circulated a petition (with limited success) demanding that a song with the lyric “come let us bow and worship Him now” be removed from the multicultural holiday program. The Kaplans then wrote a letter to the superintendent charging it was a “violation of the separation of church and state.” (Over the choir teacher’s objections, the song was ultimately removed; the district also instituted a review of policy on the matter.) Yet, despite these differences in style, it was nonetheless the same approach: these middle-class families were engaged in a pattern of concerted cultivation with a close monitoring of their children’s institutional experiences.

  RACE: CONSTANT WORRIES, INTERMITTENT INTERVENTIONS

  As a Black mother who grew up in a town with racially segregated swimming pools, Ms. Marshall knows from personal experience that subtle forms of discrimination are always present. When her own children face difficulty in an institutional setting, the possibility that they are experiencing racial insensitivity or discrimination automatically looms:

  It always comes up for me. And part of that has to do with the fact that I grew up in the [South]. I know what it is to have experienced um . . . just, discrimination. Um . . . I know that subtle—subtle discrimination still exists. Any time something happens, with my kids, you know, . . . on a sports team or whatever, in the classroom, I have to kinda g
rapple with . . . is, well, is race an issue? There’s a part of me that believes that . . . sometimes it comes into play—in terms of labeling or—or categorizing. You know. Um . . . when Stacey came out [from the gym at Wright’s] and she said, “Well, Tina was sayin’ these things.” I had to turn an ear. I had to wonder, you know, “Why’s she sayin’ that?”

  Trying to decide whether “turning an ear” is sufficient or whether the situation calls for a more active intervention is not easy. Because the potential for racial discrimination is always present, isolating race as the key factor in a specific situation can be hard. Ms. Marshall’s response to Stacey’s experiences at Wright’s is a complicated mixture of ambivalence, second guessing, and insecurity:

  [I thought] . . . that it’s, that it’s a racist attitude. And, um . . . that she’s [Tina] [is saying things to Stacey] because this is a little Black kid. You know, that . . . she’s not gonna do it [become a star performer]. However . . . from what I’ve seen, newspaper clippings, they had minority kids who had risen to the top there. So it’s not an issue of the entire team is white [or that] my kid would never get on it. That’s not true. If my kid was good enough, I—I think they would, I—I’m pretty sure that they’d let her on it. You know, primarily because the goal is to win. You know, and if you’re black, red, yellow, green, they would put their kid on the team. You know, because they want to win.

  When Fern feels excluded from the camaraderie at her basketball camp (where she is the only Black child among about a hundred girls), Ms. Marshall again hesitates, pondering what the best response might be.

  Fern came home one day and she was talkin’ to Stacey about it. She . . . I said, “How are things?” She said, “Fine,” she said, “except for lunch.” I said, “Who’d you eat with?” “Myself.” (Deep sigh from Ms. Marshall)

  Fern sees it as a racial issue:

  Fern said, “You know.” I said, “Well, did you talk to ’em?” She said, “Yeah, I talked to them.” . . . Apparently there was dialogue . . . about who scored in the game . . . and they were doing things, but when it came time for lunch—she ended up at a table by herself . . . The staff [members] are other kids—high school kids, girls on the team . . . So to some extent . . . maybe there’s not another adult that’s taking the lead to, like, pull Fern into a lunchtime group. I said to her, “Do you want me to say something?” She said, “No.” And part of it is because it’s just a week. (Fern’s camp lasts one week.)

  Ms. Marshall had had only one brief telephone chat with the coach before she enrolled Fern and felt that she did not “have a relationship” with him that would provide a framework “to have a dialogue.” She considered, but ultimately decided against, speaking to him.6

  In some cases, though, she does intervene, usually after a period of watchful scrutiny. She described a situation that arose with the girls’ school bus driver:

  Fern had shared with me last year. She said, “Art’s racist. He makes all the Black kids sit on the back of the bus and he only yells at us. . . .” And blah-blah-blah. Again, in that, you know, I’m listening to this and I’m thinking, “Well, is this just a child, you know, being overly sensitive, or—or what?”

  Unlike Fern, who by the time she was twelve brought up racial issues in conversations at home almost daily, Stacey rarely interpreted or discussed events as being racially loaded. But she too noted problems with Art:

  When Stacey started riding the bus this year, she started saying the same thing. She says, “Art’s, Art only picks on us.” She says, “He won’t even let us open the windows.”

  Although aware of her daughters’ concerns, Ms. Marshall did not immediately launch an intervention or share the girls’ observations with school staff. Instead, she kept her eye on the situation.

  I never just leave ’em at the bus stop. The bus picks them up at the end of the corner here. I will always stay there in the car, and I began to watch. You know, just kind of look and see where kids are on the bus.

  In addition to restricting where the children could sit, the bus driver also inconsistently enforced policies regarding who could ride the bus:

  Policies seemed to be upheld differently for the different races. Apparently there was, on one day, a little white boy was bringing a friend home, and didn’t have a note (from his parents). The boy was allowed to ride the bus. A few days later, a little Black girl was riding home with a friend and she was not permitted on the bus.

  Near the end of the school year, there was a discussion in Fern’s social studies class and other children—including white students—echoed her opinion of Art, who said, “Yeah, Art does this.” The white children’s validation helped Ms. Marshall overcome her hesitancy about complaining. She called the district’s administrative offices and spoke to the director of transportation services who told her, “You know, we don’t, we don’t stand for that.”

  Ms. Marshall not only had an idea about the nature of the problem, but she also had in mind the proper organizational solution.

  His approach was a bit different than what I told him I thought he should have taken. He said, “Well,” he said, “If you were calling earlier, we could have put a camera on the bus.” I said, “I’m not asking you to put a camera on the bus; I’m asking you to let this man know that the children perceive something and that parents, at least one parent, is aware of something that he said.” He went into the fact that our school district subcontracts the busing service. . . . (This meant that, legally, the district could not speak directly to the driver.) I said, “Well, next thing you do is call the supervisor.” (emphasis added)

  In the fall, Ms. Marshall plans to call the transportation administrator before school starts to find out who will be driving the school bus. In the meantime, she seems distressed and somewhat at a loss as to what to say when Stacey and Fern express concerns about Art, stressing only that they have to “judge a person as a person” as they make their way in the world.

  A CRUCIAL DIMENSION OF CONCERTED CULTIVATION:

  OVERSEEING INSTITUTIONS

  In the theoretical language of Pierre Bourdieu, both Black and white middle-class parents, and mothers in particular, routinely scanned the horizon for opportunities to activate their cultural capital and social capital on behalf of their children.7 By shrewdly framing their interventions in ways that institutions such as schools and public and private recreational programs found compatible with their organizational processes, parents could gain important advantages for their children. These benefits go beyond specific short-term goals, such as securing a place in the classroom of “the best” fourth-grade teacher or getting into “the best” gymnastics program. By teaching their daughters and sons how to get organizations to meet their individualized needs, white and Black middle-class mothers pass along skills that have the potential to be extremely valuable to their children in adulthood. These are class-based advantages. As later chapters will show, the institutional relationships forged by working-class and poor families differ in important ways from those of middle-class parents, Black and white.

  Among middle-class families, race played a role, not in terms of whether or how parents intervened in their children’s organizational lives, but rather, in the kinds of issues that they kept their eyes on and in the number of potential problems parents and children faced. Middle-class Black parents—whose children tend to spend a large part of their daily lives in predominantly white environments—were attuned to issues of racial exclusion and insensitivity on the part of other children as well as adults. Ms. Marshall and other African American parents were also alert to the possibility that whites might have low expectations for their children, be it in gymnastics or math. This vigilance meant that Black middle-class parents, mothers especially, undertook more labor than did their white middle-class counterparts, as they worried about the racial balance and the insensitivity of other children, and framed appropriate responses to their own children’s reactions. From time to time, children and parents both encountered d
ifficult and painful situations, such as the one the Marshall girls faced when they rode the school bus. Acknowledging the legitimacy of their children’s observations while still trying to preserve hope for a racially integrated society where people are treated equally was an ongoing challenge for Ms. Marshall and other Black middle-class mothers.

  There could be important benefits—or profits—for children when their mothers engaged in concerted cultivation by overseeing, criticizing, and intervening in their institutional lives. Stacey was in the gifted program when she otherwise would not have qualified, she was able to participate in an advanced beginner gymnastics class with additional staffing due to her mother’s interventions, and she was in the area’s best gymnastic and horseback riding camps thanks to her mother’s research. Occasionally Stacey did not appreciate her mother’s efforts, but for the most part she appreciated having her mother smooth the way. For the most part, Ms. Marshall’s interventions did seem to make things easier for her daughter. This kind of positive connection between intervention and outcome was not always the case in other families, however. The next chapter, which describes the battles over homework that the Handlon family endured, shows the more difficult side of middle-class parents’ commitment to intervening in their children’s institutional lives.

  CHAPTER 9

  Concerted Cultivation

  Gone Awry:

  Melanie Handlon

  “I just figure, if kids didn’t have homework, life would be easy.” (Ms. Handlon)

  In the middle class, children’s activities outside of the home often penetrate deeply into the heart of family life and in so doing create opportunities for conflict. For the Handlons, it is homework that poses the most consistent threat to household harmony. Homework conflicts occur, or are mentioned, during virtually every visit field-workers make to the Handlon home. Ms. Handlon’s observation that “life would be easy” if it weren’t for homework sums up the enormous impact the issue has on this family.