4. Not all adults, of course, comply with these special requests. Children also vary, in part by temperament, in how gregarious and assertive they are.
5. The Suzuki method is labor intensive. Beginning at age four, children are required to listen to music an average of one hour a day. Both the child and the parents also are expected to practice daily and to attend every scheduled lesson.
6. Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes, and Control.
7. Christina commented, “I like the fact that the two coaches are young guys, but they are not coaching them. Look at the other coach, how he’s talking to his team from the sideline.” Terry, sounding angry, says, “Those guys would not know what strategy was if it smacked them in the face. Look at them—their team is losing and they’re sitting on the bench, laughing.” By the second half, it was evident that Alex’s team was not going to win. The parents, especially Terry, quieted down considerably.
8. The field-worker was astounded by Alex’s knowledge. He wrote in the field notes, “I lost it (the thread of the conversation after Alex mentioned copyright). I was impressed that he knew about copyright laws.”
9. See also findings reported by Jennifer Hochschild in her book Facing Up to the American Dream.
10. By the time this interview took place, the observation period had ended, and Alexander was in fifth grade.
11. For discussions of Black middle-class adults managing racial encounters in public, see especially Joe Feagin and Melvin P. Sikes, Living with Racism.
12. Note that although she is clearly distracted, Ms. Williams automatically transforms her interaction with her son into an educative moment, by stressing the difference between $1,500 and $15,000.
13. Ms. Williams never indicated to the field-worker why she did not want to use one of her many credit cards. Her sense of privacy was keen. Many of our visits with the family took place during events that occurred outside the home. While other families in the study often volunteered exactly what they were doing on various weekends, Ms. Williams preferred to say they would “be away” or that a time “was not good.” In general, the Williams family did not volunteer information that other families in the study routinely discussed. We sought to be sensitive to family members’ preferences, despite the very intrusive nature of the field-work. We did not probe for details of matters only tangentially related to our research interests. As a result, we never determined the source of the problem here.
14. I have frequented the same store and have paid for my purchases with checks. I am white and middle-aged. One of the clerks, an older woman, often would look at my checks suspiciously and ask, “Have you written checks here before?” Neither she nor any other clerk has ever refused one of my checks, however. Nor have I ever seen a sign posted in the store to indicate that checks are not accepted.
15. Not all parents readily provide health-care professionals with accurate information. We observed a pattern of silent resistance or defiance directed toward medical personnel by (mainly) working-class and poor parents.
16. Not all physicians invite the kind of participation from children that this one did, but even when professionals were less open, we saw this mother and others actively seek to monitor and intervene in their children’s experiences.
17. At the car show, Alex gave a different selection when he told the fieldworker his three favorites. Mr. Williams noticed.
18. The field-worker noted, “This is an affectionate family, not an aggressive affection as in the poor families.” He objected, however, to the display: “I was glad to see the unity in the family but . . . it was not developmentally appropriate. They are either on the extreme of too old or too young.”
19. Many psychologists also insist that this kind of confusion over parent-child roles is harmful for children. For complaints see Paul Kropp, I’ll Be the Parent, You Be the Child, and Dana Chidekel, Parents in Charge.
CHAPTER 7: LANGUAGE AS A CONDUIT FOR SOCIAL LIFE
1. On Father’s Day weekend, for example, Harold took the bus across town by himself and visited. With help from his grandmother, he made his father breakfast.
2. The family also has a German shepherd, Luke, who stays in the front yard, tied to a tree. He does not come in the house. Family members pet and talk to Luke as they come and go. He is the only dog on the block.
3. Since the study was completed, a major welfare reform was passed, changing the terms of public assistance for poor families.
4. Other researchers have described similar sorts of economies among the poor. See Kathy Edin and Laura Lein, Making Ends Meet, and Susan Holloway et al., Through My Own Eyes.
5. During an interview, his mother reported that Harold wanted to be on a sports team but that she “couldn’t find one around here” and was not going to travel “all the way over” (about a forty-five-minute bus ride) to a community that did have a team. We found that there was a football team that was close to the housing project, but Ms. McAllister was not aware of it. It also was costly. In addition to paying registration fees, the players were involved in fund-raisers, and Harold would have had to have bus fare to get back and forth to practices and games.
6. Whites who drive into the housing project often receive prolonged, hostile stares from residents (arriving in a car is itself the sign of outsider status, since few living in public housing can afford a car). This hostility is situationally specific, however. When I attended the big family reunion picnic after the study ended, although I was one of only two white people in a crowd of more than two hundred, no one stared (perhaps because neither white drug users nor Department of Human Service officials would likely attend such an event).
7. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid.
8. It is striking that she only mentions the Black male field-worker, and did not include the white female field-worker, or me, a middle-age white woman. I concluded that she did not see white women to be at risk for intimidation in the project in the way a young Black male would be.
9. In one of the more carefully done studies of speech, Betty Hart and Todd Risley, Meaningful Differences, found (using a sample of forty-two children) that by about the age of three, children of professionals had larger vocabularies and spoke more per hour than the parents of similarly aged children on welfare.
10. As I explain below, Harold did engage in elaborated and embellished speech in his interactions with peers.
11. On the issue of language use and social class, see the classic work of Basil Bernstein, especially Class, Codes, and Control.
12. Unlike Ms. Williams, Ms. McAllister does not use this as a “teachable moment” for a short math lesson.
13. I found this exchange distressing, partly because Runako did not actually hear the announcement that Ms. McAllister would not be cooking that evening. I also found it difficult to accept the idea of a child going to bed hungry. In keeping with the field work approach, however, I did not say anything or express my concern. Indeed, worried about being seen as judgmental on a highly sensitive topic, I didn’t ask Ms. McAllister about the logic behind her reasoning. I presumed, however, that aside from potato chips and orange juice, there wasn’t much food in the house or, given the tight economic constraints, what food there was had been reserved for other purposes.
14. Note that in the example presented earlier, when Ms. McAllister yells at Alexis for swearing, she implicitly acknowledges that her daughter may say such words outside the house (“Don’t in here.”).
15. The field-worker explained the meaning of this term in his field notes: “Breaking someone’s ankles is an offensive term used to refer to how low the ball is being dribbled (i.e., at ankle height). At this height, it is very difficult to control and dribble the ball. The term also refers to the speed and swift change of direction that an offensive player uses. This can cause the defensive player to twist his ankles.” The field-worker, himself a good basketball player, also described Harold’s game as “A lot better than [mine].”
16. This term, often pronounced
as “bull,” is used as a taunt here, referring to someone with prowess, but as Elijah Anderson notes in Code of the Street, it can also mean friend (p. 81). In our observations we did not see Harold engage in a classic form of “the dozens.” Janice Hale-Benson, Black Children.
17. As the field-worker pointed out in his field notes, this episode demonstrates that often it is more important how one looks or performs in attempting to reach a goal than it is to actually achieve the objective.
18. The field-worker, Caitlin, wrote: “I give her what I hope is an understanding look and reach out to pet her shoulder.” The fight was difficult for the field-worker (Caitlin) to witness, especially because the children seemed upset.
19. Ms. McAllister threatened Jill with a stick, but she did not hit her. A few days later, when I visited, Ms. McAllister reported that she would have hit her sister if the field-worker had not been present.
20. Another field-worker arrived early the next morning. His field notes record Ms. McAllister’s concern.
JANE: (smiling) I know Caitlin think I’m crazy. (I try to act as if I haven’t heard.) Me and my sister had got into it yesterday, and I know Caitlin was scared, but I had to kick [my sister] out. I was tired of her shit. She on drugs. . . . I threw all of [Jill’s] shit out of the door and Caitlin was like this [Jane stands stiff and erect, wide-eyed]. I felt bad that she had to see me get like that. (She begins to laugh again.) I know I scared her. (Jane is shaking her head as she smiles.) The kids were out there watchin’. I tried to give them the signal to get her out here. So I tell [them] to pick up the glass and stuff out on the pavement in the front. Caitlin starts pickin’ it up, too. I have to tell her, “Not you, Caitlin!”
21. The field-workers have not seen any of the children eat a green or yellow vegetable since the visits began. The dinner including canned spinach and yams came after this checkup.
22. Carol Heimer and Lisa Staffen, For the Sake of the Children.
23. It is theoretically possible that concerted cultivation, particularly the emphasis on reasoning, could still cultivate a keen sense of familial obligations. But there are countervailing forces. In concerted cultivation there is a stress on individualized choices and leisure activities, which take people out of the family into wider and more diverse arenas. This reduces the time available for family members to “hang out” together. Schedule conflicts also increase. There also are increasing numbers of conflicts as children, with voices that count in family decision making, often complain about having to sit through family gatherings. They prefer to spend time with their own friends. In the accomplishment of natural growth, children have fewer individualized alternatives.
24. Anderson, Code of the Street.
25. There are limits to familial support, as when Ms. McAllister felt she had no choice but to have her drug-addicted sister, Jill, leave. Still, Ms. McAllister’s decision was rooted in other family obligations. Notably, her duty as Harold and Alexis’ mother “to make it a home not a house” overrode her obligation to her twin sister. In middle-class homes, Black and white, familial obligations were fewer, partially because family members were farther away. But see the next chapter for a discussion of a Black middle-class girl, Stacey Marshall, who has a very acrimonious sibling relationship as well as weak extended ties.
CHAPTER 8: CONCERTED CULTIVATION IN ORGANIZATIONAL SPHERES
1. For similar results on parent involvement in schooling see Elizabeth Useem, “Student Selection into Course Sequences in Mathematics,” Annette Lareau, Home Advantage, and the U. S. Department of Education, The Condition of Education, 2001. But see also John Diamond, “Beyond Social Class.”
2. During the summer, the girls went to spend a week visiting their maternal grandparents, but after a few days, they called home, clamoring for their parents to come and get them. They found life with these elderly relatives unduly restrictive.
3. The field-worker was shocked. She noted that Stacey’s remark “[was] something that would have gotten a lot of kids slapped in the mouth.”
4. It is also possible, of course, that children could learn helplessness and dependence upon their parents to fix life problems for them.
5. As Appendix A explains, Stacey was not a student at Swan and thus was in a different district. While the cutoff for entrance to the gifted program at Swan School is 125 (which Garrett Tallinger missed by a few points), at her school the cutoff was 130.
6. When I asked Ms. Marshall what she would have said to the coach, she explained that she would start by tackling the problem indirectly:
That I’m concerned, that she’s a little uncomfortable at lunchtime. I would probably ask, I’d say, “How are things?” I would start out with, “Is everything okay?” You know, “Do you know my kid Fern? I’m just a little concerned because she said, she’s, you know, she’s eating alone.” Or, “I just, I’d like for this to be a wholesome experience and just wonder. . . . ”
7. In the language of Pierre Bourdieu, the Marshall family was reading “the field.” (See Appendix B for a discussion of the concept of field.)
CHAPTER 9: CONCERTED CULTIVATION GONE AWRY
1. Indeed, Ms. Handlon reported, “The first week I had to walk her to her class. She wouldn’t get out of the car unless I did.” She said that Melanie was not crying, but “I could tell she was just scared and she asked, ‘Will you walk me in?’ It was probably about a week and then she was confident enough for me to just drop her at the door so she could go in by herself.”
2. When we interviewed Ms. Handlon in the fall, she estimated that in the previous two weeks she had had eight casual conversations with other mothers about school matters. The conversations were often brief and occurred before or after Melanie’s organized activities (e.g., Girl Scouts, meetings, church) or before or after school.
3. Note that these are preexisting networks; Ms. Handlon does not have to build them. She chooses to participate and then draws on the information she learns.
4. Ms. Handlon does not usually help either of the older boys. Harry generally does little homework; his grades suffer. Their mother is dismayed by this, but she feels she needs to let the boys, especially Harry, learn for themselves that they need to do their homework.
5. Since home observations were confidential, we did not tell the teachers what we observed.
6. Negotiations were routine, as this Saturday morning when Tommy decides to make some fresh juice: Mrs. Handlon says that it is fine to use this squeezer.
Tommy says, “Can I use the electric one?” Mrs. Handlon says, “No use this one.” Tommy says, “Why can’t I use the electric one?” Mrs. Handlon says, “This one is here.” Tommy says, “I don’t mean to argue but the electric one is already out.” Mrs. Handlon says, “Well that must mean somebody used it. All right, you can use it if you rinse it out when you’re done.”
Mrs. Handlon sounds a little frustrated at the end of this conversation.
7. Note that Ms. Handlon had fewer class resources than did Ms. Marshall. She had considerably less education, and in her job as a secretary she did not exert the same kind of managerial authority. Her husband had more class resources, but he was not active in managing Melanie’s schooling. Thus, it is possible that Ms. Handlon’s inability to effectively activate class resources could be linked to her own, relatively limited, resources. Also there are families who are rich in class resources but who have parents or children who are impaired, for example, with mental health problems or substance abuse problems. My point here is that class location does not guarantee the transmission of advantages.
CHAPTER 10: LETTING EDUCATORS LEAD THE WAY
1. Wendy was nine when the visits began but turned ten during the course of the study.
2. When we began observing the family, Ms. Driver and Mr. Fallon and the children had been living together for just under a year. They eventually married (Valerie was about two years old at the time).
3. When their father died, Wendy and Willie became eligible for Social Securi
ty benefits, which they now receive.
4. See Maria Kefalas, Working-Class Heroes, for a discussion of a comparable neighborhood in Chicago.
5. Field-workers noted that during a typical two-hour visit to the Driver family, they would hear more than twenty-five references to kin.
6. Moreover, as we observed in all the families, regardless of social class, much more attention is paid to Wendy’s physical appearance than to Willie’s. The adults, and Wendy herself, focus repeatedly on her clothes, hairstyle, shoe size, and overall creation as a present and future object of beauty.
7. Willie expressed an interest in joining a hockey team, but the combined costs of the equipment and the activity fee were prohibitively expensive. Ms. Driver wished that there were programs “where kids could just go and play for nothing.”
8. In an exit interview, Ms. Driver complained that Willie had acted differently during the visits, often “pushing it” and “not taking ‘no’ for an answer.” She noted, however, that he seemed to have begun testing the limits in other situations as well.
9. In the end, the teachers recommended that Wendy repeat fourth grade, and the principal approved their decision. On the last day of school, however, Mr. Tier learned that a higher district official would not permit the retention (for reasons not made clear to Mr. Tier). Instead, in fifth grade Wendy went into an intensive special education program at Lower Richmond, in a classroom with only thirteen children. Mr. Tier was mollified because he felt Wendy “would be getting the attention she needs.”
10. Mr. Johnson’s explanation was different. He said, “We had one little problem. I yelled at her one time and she stopped coming. . . . I had given her an assignment, and she came in and she told me her mother didn’t know how to do the assignment.” The assignment, for Black history month, was to match names to occupations. Mr. Johnson thought Wendy was making up an excuse for not doing her work: “I mean, it just didn’t make sense to me. So I got a little perturbed and I told her, ‘You can’t tell me, if your mother completed high school [she] couldn’t do this.’ I mean, you just say that you didn’t do it. . . . If you didn’t do something, you just didn’t do it. I can accept that more so than you telling me that your mother—so that upset her.” Her classroom teacher, Mr. Tier (who did not have a good relationship with Mr. Johnson) presumed that Mr. Johnson’s schedule had changed and that Wendy would resume at some point.
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