MOM: Billy, please finish that homework. It’s 8:00 almost. I’m going to shut the TV off. What number are you on? What time did you start your homework?
BILLY: 5:00.
MOM: If you started at 5:00 you should be done at 6:00.
MOM: Billy answer me. Tell me where you’re at. (She sounded upset.)
A bit later, Little Billy finished his homework and began a game of Scrabble with his mother and the researcher. This became the source of a new conflict:
MOM: It’ll be time for your shower when you’re finished.
BILLY: We’re playing Scrabble.
MOM: You’re getting a shower. Then you can play Scrabble. (Mom’s voice was loud and she sounded angry.)
Billy finishes his homework and his mother, the field-worker, and Billy begin a game of Scrabble. Before the game is done, Ms. Yanelli tells Billy it is time for his shower. He ignores. After repeatedly telling Billy to get in the shower his mother got out a belt.
MOM: Billy shower. I don’t care if [you] cry, scream.
BILLY: We’re not done [with the Scrabble game].
MOM: You’re done. Finish your homework earlier.
(Billy stays seated.)
MOM: Come on! Tomorrow you’ve got a big day. (Billy didn’t move.)
Mom went in the other room and got a brown leather belt. She hit Billy twice on the leg . . . Billy was sitting between Big Billy and [the researcher]. Big Billy and [his friend] Tom watched. She said, “Get up right now. Tomorrow I can’t get you up in the morning. Get up right now.” Billy got up and ran up the steps.
In all of these extended interactions there were elements of reasoning, in the sense that Ms. Yanelli explained why she demanded various behaviors from Billy. Nevertheless, the fundamental process emphasized a series of directives (i.e., “Billy shower,” “you’re done”). Most important, when the mother felt her son was not sufficiently responsive, she found the force of physical discipline to be a valuable resource. Although Mr. Yanelli was an observer, rather than participant, in these interactions he was supportive of the approach. Indeed, from time to time, if Billy was dragging his feet on a task, his father would comment to no one in particular, “He needs to be beat!” In an interview, Ms. Yanelli indicated that her use of a belt varied enormously; she estimated that over the previous two weeks, she had used it once a week. While we were visiting, it would come up from time to time depending on how the day was going, but we observed her hit with a belt or threaten to hit with a belt at least once a week.4 In some working-class families, the lines were clearer. It is also important to stress that some working-class families in the study did not use hitting or belts. Thus, there was important variation within the class. But this form of discipline was not observed in middle-class families.5
To return to the ideas discussed in Chapter 2, the school selectively validated certain cultural practices as legitimate. Other practices, such as hitting children, while virtually universal in other historical periods, were deemed unacceptable. Adherence to the practices of the accomplishment of natural growth, rather than concerted cultivation, had important consequences when the families interacted with the school. The Yanelli family keenly felt the school to be a threatening force. In other words, their failure to use elaborate reasoning (a cultural practice) was transformed into a lack of resources when they confronted school authorities. They felt worried, powerless, and scared.
For example, Little Billy’s mother was worried that the school might turn her in to the state. Because of behavior problems at school, the educators stridently insisted that the school therapist who regularly visited the school see Little Billy. Once Billy’s mother met with the school counselor, however, he warned her, as noted at the beginning of the chapter, that he was legally required to turn her in to government officials if he found that she was engaging in child abuse. Ms. Yanelli felt rightfully threatened, since she felt that, as noted above, “Billy gets so out of control that maybe he does need it once in a while.”
I said to the therapist, you know, we’ll be in [the grocery store] once in a while and Billy will slide down the aisle on his stomach and I’ll take him by the hair and I’ll pull him down the aisle. Is that child abuse? . . . So, am I going to have people over here saying I abuse my child if Billy sits in a class with him and says my mom pulled my hair? . . . I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to take it as it comes. But there are times when I chase him up the stairs with a belt in my hand. I do.
This clash, between the parents’ ideas of what Billy needs and the school standards for child rearing, created small crises in the home. One day in May, for example, I stopped by for a visit (after the formal observations were over) to find Ms. Yanelli deeply upset. She had been disciplining him, and Billy had raised his arm to block the impact of his mother’s belt, ending up with three very distinct red marks on his forearm from where it had landed. His mother was frantic that “he had to go school that way.” She was agitated, pacing around the kitchen smoking a cigarette, trying to figure out what to do.6
In short, Ms. Yanelli’s failure to use reasoning and her adoption of a belt made her vulnerable, since she moved in a “field” (the school) that privileged reasoning. If she had lived a century earlier, the use of a belt would not have been so problematic. Today, however, it carries a potentially catastrophic risk: that her son could show the teacher his marks on his arm, she could be arrested for child abuse, and her son could be put in foster care temporarily or permanently. Regardless of the likelihood of this sequence occurring, Ms. Yanelli was worried about the actions of the school.
Thus, different family backgrounds engender different levels of benefit in educational fields. In this instance, the cost to working-class families for their lack of capital takes the form of an ongoing feeling of the threat of a looming catastrophe. This gap in the connections between working-class and poor families and schools is important. It undermines their feeling of trust or comfort at school, a feeling that other researchers have argued is pivotal in the formation of effective and productive family-school relationships.7
TAKING STOCK
Middle-class parents (including wealthier members of the middle class) such as the Marshalls, Williamses, and Tallingers often exuded confidence in their interactions with school officials. They did not appear to hold similar fears of the school. The idea that authorities would “come and take my kids away” was never expressed in any observation of or interview with middle-class parents in the way it repeatedly appeared among working-class and poor families. For example, after returning from an out-of-state soccer tournament for Garrett, Ms. Tallinger recounted that she and some other parents had left the children in a hotel room with a video and a cellular phone and gone out to dinner at a restaurant about a block away. She told me in a light tone with a smile on her face, “Don’t turn us in!” Overall, the demeanor of Garrett’s mother was vastly different from that of Little Billy’s mother. She was joking about the matter rather than treating it gravely. More to the point, middle-class parents never gave any indication that they worried about what the school could do to them. They did not appear to see themselves in the vulnerable position that gave rise to so much fear and worry on the part of Little Billy’s parents. Thus, their use of reasoning as a child-rearing strategy had an invisible benefit: it put them in sync with patterns of dominant cultural repertoires. This facilitated their ease with school officials.
In sum, these standards are developed by professionals and encoded in schools. In other words, social workers, psychologists, medical doctors, and other professionals have issued standards for proper child rearing and caution about what constitutes incorrect child rearing.8 Teachers and administrators in schools have adopted these standards. Moreover, the schools, for better or worse, are an arm of the state, and are therefore legally required to report children they believe to be abused or neglected. Since school attendance is compulsory for young children, families cannot avoid the school or, indirectly, the eyes of state of
ficials. In this context, the middle-class families—with their greater likelihood of adopting professionals’ standards—appear to enjoy largely invisible benefits not available to working-class and poor families.
CHAPTER 12
The Power and Limits
of Social Class
At the end of fifth grade, the children looked forward with trepidation and excitement to their transition to being with “big kids” in the local middle school. Lower Richmond and Swan schools each separately marked this life transition with a graduation ceremony, held on hot, sunny days in June. At Lower Richmond, there was tremendous enthusiasm for the ceremony, particularly on the part of the children and their families. Many parents arrived at school carrying bouquets of flowers and clusters of circular, shiny silver balloons emblazoned with phrases such as “CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATE!” Mothers, especially African American mothers, were in starched, immaculate, pale-colored suits and outfits of the style often worn to weddings, church, and special events. The girls, including Wendy Driver and Tara Carroll, wore frilly dresses. A number of girls wore prom dresses. Billy Yanelli was in a formal jacket, slacks, white shirt, and tie. Harold McAllister was less formal but no less carefully prepared in an assiduously ironed, print dress shirt, slacks, and dress shoes. The school provided yellow carnation wrist corsages for the girls and boutonnieres for the boys. In the “cafetorium,” parents, grandmothers, young children, and older siblings sat on children’s chairs, reading the list of graduates, chatting, and laughing together. To the strains of a scratchy “Pomp and Circumstance,” the children entered in a formal march: from opposing sides of the auditorium, two children, each at the same moment, began a promenade (step, pause, step, pause). Some of the boys, including Harold McAllister, had a pained expression on their faces when beginning the processional. When Harold heard family members hooting, he flashed a grin, and then adopted a look of studied casualness.
Jane, Lori, and Alexis laugh when they see Harold enter the room, and say “Yo, Harold! Go!” Someone whistles lowly. Someone else says, “Lookin good, Har.” Harold grins at his family, and as he walks, makes an attempt to appear cool and casual, as if all this fuss doesn’t mean so much to him.
Many of the children looked elated, smiling broadly at their families as they made their formal entrance. During the ceremony, some Lower Richmond parents erupted with joy when their children received special recognition; they yelled out “All Right!” or “Yes!” or the child’s name. Some parents stood up to applaud their children.
Even on this very happy occasion, however, feelings of distrust toward the school sometimes surfaced. A number of parents disapprovingly discussed how a few children had been banned from the ceremony for behavior problems. Billy Yanelli’s father and mother were sitting proudly in the audience (both having taken off from work). Although Mr. Yanelli told me, “I like this school” (particularly compared to the one that Billy was about to attend), his discomfort was apparent.
Big Billy Yanelli made a number of . . . derogatory . . . comments throughout the ceremony, either to himself or for the benefit of [Ms. Yanelli], who sat next to him—mostly ignoring him. Once, when a male teacher climbed the steps to the stage, Big Billy said: “He’s so stupid. What a goof.” At the beginning of the ceremony, as the principal adjusted the microphone and prepared to speak, Big Billy pretended to mimic her: “Okay, everyone is suspended.”
The celebration at Swan had a somewhat different feel. Many Swan children, including Garrett Tallinger and Melanie Handlon, smiled and seemed pleased, but they were not bursting with excitement. Those Swan parents who were dressed more than casually simply had on their work outfits (i.e., suits, skirts and jackets—a “professional” rather than dressy kind of look). Swan boys looked neat but also casual: a number wore polo shirts, some wore button-down shirts, and only a few had on ties. Girls wore what looked like nice Sunday dresses—not very frilly but pretty and neat. Educators gave out awards for accomplishments ranging from perfect attendance to special achievement in math. Swan parents conveyed mild and polite pride when their children were recognized; they clapped politely but briefly, took pictures, and stayed in their chairs.
The future also was portrayed differently at Swan:
Swan seemed much more hopeful and Lower Richmond more aware of danger and trouble kids might face in their lives. Swan songs were about how bright the future was, how many new doors would open for the kids, how exciting it all was. The first two songs sung at Lower Richmond had to do with confronting despair, jealousy, pain, and trouble, with waking up the next day ready to try again, with renewal for struggle, with how many kids were hurting in the world. One of the male teachers also gave an admonition to the kids to “keep their hands in their pockets next year” in middle school when someone taunted them. The emphasis appeared to be on a certain kind of behavior (restraint, “good citizenship,” avoiding fights, being respectful) rather than on academic achievement, as it was at Swan.
Of course, the parents themselves differed in how much education they had. For example, the Yanellis both went only through tenth grade. They hoped that their son Little Billy would go to a state college, but they were unsure. The middle-class families had little doubt that their children would attend college. Middle-class children, including Stacey Marshall, often chattered about which college they might want to go to when they were older. The Tallingers visited the campuses of Ivy League universities when they were in the area for soccer tournaments. Alexander Williams’s parents were helping one of his cousins pay for her education at an elite private university. Thus, for these middle-class children, it was a matter of which college they would attend. In these contrasting visions of the future, the fifth-grade graduation was a different milestone.
THE POWER OF SOCIAL CLASS
In the United States, people disagree about the importance of social class in daily life. Many Americans believe that this country is fundamentally open. They assume the society is best understood as a collection of individuals. They believe that people who demonstrate hard work, effort, and talent are likely to achieve upward mobility. Put differently, many Americans believe in the American Dream. In this view, children should have roughly equal life chances. The extent to which life chances vary can be traced to differences in aspirations, talent, and hard work on the part of individuals. This perspective rejects the notion that parents’ social location systematically shapes children’s life experiences and outcomes. Instead, outcomes are seen as resting more in the hands of individuals.
In a distinctly different but still related vein, some social scientists acknowledge that there are systemic forms of inequality, including, for example, differences in parents’ educational levels, occupational prestige, and income, as well as in their child-rearing practices. These scholars, however, see such differences within society as a matter of gradation. To explain unequal life outcomes, they see it as helpful to look at, for example, differences in mothers’ years of education or the range of incomes by households in a particular city. These different threads are interwoven in an intricate and often baffling pattern. Scholars who take this perspective on inequality typically focus on the ways specific patterns are related (e.g., the number of years of mothers’ schooling and the size of children’s vocabularies, or the number of years of mothers’ education and parental involvement in schooling). Implicitly and explicitly, social scientists who share this perspective do not accept the position that there are identifiable, categorical differences in groups. They do not believe that the differences that do exist across society cohere into patterns recognizable as social classes.
In this book, I have challenged both views. Rather than seeing society as a collection of individuals, I stressed the importance of individuals’ social structural location in shaping their daily lives. Following a well-established European tradition, I rejected analyses that see differences in American families as best interpreted as a matter of fine gradations. Instead, I see as more valuable a categorical
analysis, wherein families are grouped into social categories such as poor, working class, and middle class. I argued that these categories are helpful in understanding the behavior of family members, not simply in one particular aspect but across a number of spheres. Family practices cohere by social class. Social scientists who accept this perspective may disagree about the number and type of categories and whether there should be, for example, an upper-middle-class category as well as a lower-middle-class one. Still, they agree that the observed differences in how people act can be meaningfully and fruitfully grouped into categories, without violating the complexity of daily life. My own view is that seeing selected aspects of family life as differentiated by social class is simply a better way to understand the reality of American family life. I also believe that social location at birth can be very important in shaping the routines of daily life, even when family members are not particularly conscious of the existence of social classes.
Thus, I have stressed how social class dynamics are woven into the texture and rhythm of children and parents’ daily lives. Class position influences critical aspects of family life: time use, language use, and kin ties. Working-class and middle-class mothers may express beliefs that reflect a similar notion of “intensive mothering,” but their behavior is quite different.1 For that reason, I have described sets of paired beliefs and actions as a “cultural logic” of child rearing. When children and parents move outside the home into the world of social institutions, they find that these cultural practices are not given equal value. There are signs that middle-class children benefit, in ways that are invisible to them and to their parents, from the degree of similarity between the cultural repertoires in the home and those standards adopted by institutions. In the next section, I acknowledge areas of family life that did not appear to be heavily influenced by social class. Then I turn to highlighting the ways that social class membership matters and to discussing why these differences exist and what can be done to lessen or eliminate them.
Unequal Childhoods Page 31
