Unequal Childhoods

by Annette Lareau

  MELANIE: What do I do?

  Melanie’s mother reads the directions out loud and goes over the first problem with Melanie.

  MS. HANDLON: See? You carry this remainder and put it in this box.

  MELANIE: Oh.

  As they move to the second problem, Ms. Handlon continues to help Melanie in a very hands-on fashion.

  MS. HANDLON: Okay, what do we do here? How many times will seven go into fifty-two? Well, what’s five times seven?

  MELANIE: Thirty-five.

  MS. HANDLON: Right. So, that’s too small. So, what’s seven times six? What’s seven times seven?

  MELANIE: Forty-two. Forty-nine.

  MS. HANDLON: Right. So, where do you put that? And what’s the remainder? You have to borrow. Right. And then put the remainder in the next box. And how do you do this problem?

  On another problem, Melanie resists her mother’s effort to make the task seem easier:

  MS. HANDLON: This is an easy problem.

  MELANIE: These are hard.

  MS. HANDLON: It’s five! You know your fives.

  MELANIE: I know my ones, my fives, and my tens.

  MS. HANDLON: So, count by fives. (Melanie counts.)

  MS. HANDLON: Right. So what’s the answer? (Melanie gives an answer.)

  MS. HANDLON: Right. And where do you put that? (Melanie writes it down. Ms. Handlon takes the pencil and erases Melanie’s entry.)

  MS. HANDLON: Not there. (Melanie tries again.)

  MS. HANDLON: Right. And where’s the remainder? (Melanie says an answer.)

  MS. HANDLON: No. What’s the remainder? (Melanie gives another answer.)

  MS. HANDLON: Right, and put that there. And then carry that to the next problem. Good.

  Melanie and her mother proceed in this fashion for about fifteen minutes. Then the interaction starts to break down. From Melanie’s perspective, the problems are hard and she thinks she can’t do them. She wants to stop. Her interest flags and her answers are increasingly far off base. Ms. Handlon reacts quickly.

  MELANIE: This is hard.

  MS. HANDLON: Melanie, I think you’re making this harder than it is. How did you do it in school?

  MELANIE: We used cubes.

  MS. HANDLON: How did you figure out the problems?

  MELANIE: We worked as a group.

  MS. HANDLON: Who was in your group?

  MELANIE: Emily was. But we all worked together.

  MS. HANDLON (suggesting a new strategy): Would it help if you used pennies?

  When Melanie nods, her mother searches briefly in drawers and in her purse. She comes up with several stacks of pennies, which she puts on the table. Melanie starts lining the pennies up in two adjacent, horizontal lines. She stands up to do this and moves a little to the side of the table. Ms. Handlon comes over, stands next to her and asks, “What are you doing?” Without giving Melanie a chance to explain, Ms. Handlon moves the pennies out of the rows Melanie has organized. Melanie protests:

  MELANIE: No! This is how we did it.

  MS. HANDLON: Okay, show me how you did it. (Melanie lines up forty-two pennies in two adjacent, horizontal rows. She then takes the pennies and puts them in groups of four. Her mother again intervenes.)

  MS. HANDLON: Melanie, explain to me what you are doing. (Melanie continues to move the pennies but says nothing. Then she stops moving the coins.)

  MS. HANDLON: And?

  MELANIE: And I count the groups.

  MS. HANDLON: But you’re supposed to divide by seven.

  MELANIE: OOHH . . . .

  MS. HANDLON: That’s why I didn’t understand what you were doing. (Melanie reorganizes the coins, putting the pennies in groups of seven. She solves the next two problems. When she tries to tackle a problem that requires dividing twenty-seven by six, her mother again becomes heavily involved. Ms. Handlon starts putting the pennies into groups of six for Melanie.)

  MS. HANDLON: What’s six times one?

  MELANIE: Six.

  MS. HANDLON (putting six more pennies down): What’s six times two?

  MELANIE: Twelve.

  MS. HANDLON (putting six more pennies down): What’s six times three?

  MELANIE (counting the pennies): Eighteen.

  MS. HANDLON (putting six more pennies down): What six times four?

  MELANIE (again counting the pennies): Twenty-four.

  MS. HANDLON: Right. So, what’s the answer?

  MELANIE: Twenty-four.

  MS. HANDLON: No, that’s what you get when you multiply the numbers. That’s not the answer.

  MELANIE: Four.

  MS. HANDLON: Right. And what’s the remainder?

  MELANIE: Three.

  MS. HANDLON: Right.

  As they slowly move from problem to problem, the tension between Melanie and her mother builds. Melanie becomes more and more agitated. Her face turns red, and although she is not crying, she appears to be on the verge of tears. More than forty-five minutes have elapsed since they began the math homework. Ms. Handlon suggests that they take a break and “put some ornaments on the Christmas tree.” Melanie doesn’t want a “break”; she wants to replace the homework session with cookie baking. Her mother repeats the suggestion of a break and Melanie repeats her desire to make cookies. Ms. Handlon resolves the stalemate by continuing to put down piles of pennies for Melanie and asking her leading questions to get the answers. After about five minutes, Melanie’s mood seems to brighten a little. Ms. Handlon gets up for less than a minute, and Melanie continues working. The last two problems Melanie does on her own.

  MS. HANDLON: See, you can do it. You just have to try.

  MELANIE: This is hard.

  The tensions and conflicts that arise as Ms. Handlon and Melanie try to work together to complete her homework assignments are exhausting and distressing. Moreover, because Melanie’s mother accepts the principle that Melanie must do her homework and also perceives that some assignments, especially math, require assistance, the homework battles are repeated nearly every afternoon.4 Ms. Handlon believes that in some cases she and Melanie struggle over problems that are caused by the teachers.

  Some of the teachers are just not doing a good job. They can’t explain things. I think some of them are setting the kids up for failure. Sometimes the kids will bring home questions and assignments and the teacher will write it in such a way that there are really two ways of reading into it. So, if I can’t understand it, how can they expect the kids to?

  According to Ms. Handlon, Melanie is unnecessarily burdened by her teachers’ inability to supply adequate instructions for the assignments they send home. Not surprisingly, the teachers trace the causes of Melanie’s ongoing academic difficulties to quite a different source.

  THE PERILS OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN SCHOOLING

  In the fall grading period, when Melanie receives the lowest grade possible in both math and social studies, her classroom teacher, Ms. Nettles, seems nearly as frustrated with this outcome as Ms. Handlon is. Ms. Nettles is consistently friendly and cheerful during her interactions with Melanie’s mother. She cooperates willingly with Ms. Handlon’s request for spelling lists, preparing five weeks of lists in advance and sending them home with Melanie. She seems untroubled that the lists might give Melanie an advantage over her classmates; neither does she complain of the extra work it takes for her to produce the lists for Ms. Handlon. Ms. Nettles is similarly accommodating in her response to Ms. Handlon’s request that she supply Melanie’s private tutor with sample math problems. In addition, when Melanie’s illnesses cause her to miss days of school, Ms. Nettles makes up packets of materials to be worked on at home.

  Given the efforts of Ms. Nettles and other teachers at school and Ms. Handlon’s efforts at home, why does Melanie continue to flounder? The classroom and resource teachers firmly reject Ms. Handlon’s contention that her daughter has too much homework and that Melanie’s confidence is fatally undermined by the educators’ tendency to emphasize her mistakes and shortcomings instead of praisi
ng her progress. Ms. Nettles estimates that the work she assigns the children to do at home can be completed in thirty to forty-five minutes. Garrett Tallinger, who is in Melanie’s class, routinely finishes the homework (without his parents’ help) in less than this amount of time. Neither do the teachers see any indication that Melanie is “intimidated” or “overwhelmed” by her day-to-day classroom experiences. Ms. Nettles agrees that Melanie “struggles” and that she may have a learning disability, but she rejects Ms. Handlon’s view that Melanie is miserable in the classroom:

  The whole bit about her not having success in school . . . If you’re not here to observe how she is—but I am. And [Melanie] seems content. She seems fine. It’s almost like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Melanie’s teachers think her school experience could be much improved if, among other things, Ms. Handlon would comply more consistently with the universalistic, bureaucratic rules of school. Ms. Nettles, in particular, is annoyed by the fact that Melanie habitually arrives late to class. With unusual directness, she complains about this to Ms. Handlon during the parent-teacher conference:

  She comes in very late. She usually is the last one here. I mean, I don’t even mark her absent any more . . . But some kids are here as early as ten minutes to nine, so if she’s coming at ten after they’ve already had a twenty-minute head start. So, maybe just getting [Melanie here and] started a little bit earlier would be helpful.

  Similarly, Ms. Nettles is dismayed by Ms. Handlon’s failure to follow up with the paperwork necessary to get Melanie tested for learning disabilities. She reveals her frustration in a comment to the researcher after the parent-teacher conference has concluded:

  I mean, I really pushed and stressed to [Ms. Handlon] to have [Melanie] tested because I think she does have a lot of learning problems. And we must have had those forms home to her like a month ago, and the last time I asked they still weren’t back.

  The elementary school has an on-site reading specialist; she works with Melanie three times a week. It shocks Ms. Nettles that Ms. Handlon has never met this resource teacher.

  Most people who have their child seeing a reading specialist will make it a point to set up conferences. I mean, Nita is doing as many conferences because she meets with many different grade levels—and it’s like that never occurred to her. I mean, [Melanie’s] been seeing her for two years. Don’t you think you’d want some feedback?

  Ms. Nettles is certain that Ms. Handlon knows Melanie sees the reading specialist each week; when Melanie’s absences mount up, her mother explicitly inquires about the reading material her daughter needs to review. In Ms. Nettles’s opinion, it is Melanie’s mother’s duty to arrange a meeting with the reading specialist. Moreover, she feels that it is Ms. Handlon, not the resource teacher, who should be responsible for taking the initiative to request such a meeting.

  In addition to failing to meet the teachers’ expectations in some areas, Ms. Handlon is not always successful in her efforts to forge a closer connection between family and school because the educators view her actions as misguided or pointless. For instance, Ms. Nettles dismisses as simply “odd” Ms. Handlon’s special trip to school with Melanie for a brief visit on the first day so that her daughter could meet her new teacher. The teacher also questions the legitimacy of the illnesses that prompt Melanie’s many absences.

  Ms. Nettles describes Melanie’s mother as “defensive” and preoccupied with things like whether or not past and present teachers have been sufficiently supportive of Melanie’s self-esteem. These concerns, the teacher feels, prevent Ms. Handlon from paying attention to other, arguably more important, issues (such as having Melanie tested for learning disabilities). After the parent-teacher conference, Ms. Nettles remarks to the researcher, “I don’t think she was really listening.” Most of Melanie’s problems, Ms. Nettles suggests, may be traced to Ms. Handlon’s overprotective parenting style:

  Mom has consistently been putting things off and making excuses for Melanie since day one. I mean, Melanie was sick over thirty days last year. I think it’s a big step for her to be here. But, I think her mom is like, in denial. Melanie is having a very good year. Melanie is very happy, and I think a lot of Melanie’s problem is her mother.

  Finally, Melanie’s teachers are not aware of either the amount or the frequency of Ms. Handlon’s efforts to help her daughter do her homework. They have no knowledge of the dramas that unfold in the Handlons’ dining room as Melanie and her mother tackle her assignments day after day.5

  WHY ACTIVATING CAPITAL DOES NOT ALWAYS

  YIELD PROFITS

  The Handlons, a family with a solid middle-class position, engaged in concerted cultivation. Mr. Handlon had a master’s degree and had a managerial position; his wife had attended junior college. All of the children participated in many organized activities. To be sure, there were moments when Ms. Handlon issued directives, especially when frustrated while helping with Melanie with homework. But, although parent-child interactions are not elaborated in this chapter, for most of them, both parents engaged in the kind of reasoning and negotiation that was carried out in Alexander Williams’s home.6 Similar to Ms. Marshall, Ms. Handlon was well informed about school dynamics. Ms. Handlon believed that she had the right to intervene in her daughter’s experiences outside the home and, as we have seen, had many criticisms over school practices. Nonetheless, despite these resources, Ms. Handlon was unable to gain clear advantages for Melanie in the areas that were of greatest concern to her, namely, grading and homework. She did, however, succeed in customizing specific elements of Melanie’s educational experience: Ms. Nettles agreed to supply the spelling lists, to prepare materials for Melanie’s tutor to use, and to send home packets of exercises covering the curriculum Melanie missed during her frequent illness-related absences from school. But the benefits that she gained for her daughter were fewer than one might expect.7

  As Pierre Bourdieu points out, the complex nature of social life means that multitudes of subtle skills are drawn on in the transmission of social class privilege. Accordingly, there are important variations in the effectiveness of parents’ efforts to activate cultural capital. Factors such as the shrewdness of the intervention, the degree to which the parent frames the complaint in a fashion that compels a response from the person in power, and the nature of the child’s difficulties each play a role. In the realm of education, there are at least three important reasons why the activation of cultural capital may fail. First, educators sometimes are not aware of middle-class mothers’ strenuous efforts to comply with school policies. They cannot be expected to grant privileges in return for actions they know nothing about. The children, however, are not only aware of their parents’ efforts but often feel oppressed by them. Despite being well-intentioned, parents’ interventions can create acute discomfort in their children and may decrease rather than stimulate students’ motivation to work hard in school. Thus, any advantages that might result in instances where educators do recognize parents’ capital can be negated by the children themselves. Second, educators frequently adopt a relatively rigid definition of what constitutes helpful behavior; parents’ actions that fall outside those bounds are ignored or discredited. Thus, parents who repeatedly fail to sign and promptly return to school the forms teachers send home, for example, are considered seriously remiss, regardless of their social class standing. Third, even with similar levels of class resources, some parents may be able to activate the resources more effectively than others. Although Stacey’s and Melanie’s mothers were equally devoted to their daughters, Ms. Marshall seemed to be able to make more headway than Ms. Handlon.

  Ms. Handlon was not alone in trying to be helpful with her children’s schooling but not realizing the advantages she had hoped for. Working-class and poor parents often had that experience, as I show in the following chapters, beginning with the experience of Wendy Driver.

  CHAPTER 10

  Letting Educators Lead

  t
he Way: Wendy Driver

  I don’t want to jump into anything and find out that it’s the wrong thing. (Ms. Driver)

  This is Wendy’s work. She spelled “driver” wrong. . . . If it was me, if our roles were reversed [and I were her parent], I’d be beating [the teacher] on the head. (Mr. Tier, Wendy’s fourth-grade teacher, speaking to her mother during a parent-teacher conference)

  Across all social classes, parents pay close attention to their children’s education. Working-class and poor parents are no less eager than middle-class parents to see their children succeed in school. They take a different approach to helping them reach that goal, however. As Wendy Driver’s mother indicates in the quote above, working-class and poor parents often fear doing “the wrong thing” in school-related matters. They tend to be much more respectful of educators’ professional expertise than are their middle-class counterparts. Thus, working-class and poor parents typically are deferential rather than demanding toward school personnel; they seek guidance from educators rather than giving advice to them; and they try to maintain a separation between school and home rather than foster an interconnectedness. Ironically, as Wendy’s fourth-grade teacher’s comment suggests, educators often are not happy with this approach. They want parents of their working-class and poor students to be more assertive. Put differently, they wish these parents would engage in forms of concerted cultivation.

  The pattern of parental deference to educators is not the result of idiosyncratic differences in parents’ personalities. The same parents we observed silently accepting different teachers’ (sometimes contradictory) assessments of their children were firmly vocal with their cable companies, landlords, and local merchants. Working-class and poor parents are capable of being demanding with other adults. Rather, they do not define this approach as appropriate when dealing with school or medical professionals, perhaps in part because they lack the requisite vocabulary to effectively challenge such individuals. Moreover, these parents view education as the job of educators and thus they expect teachers and school staff to be the ones primarily responsible for seeing that their children learn all that they should.