ORGANIZATION OF DAILY LIFE: DEVELOPING GARRETT
In the Tallinger family, the older children’s schedules set the pace of life for all family members. Mr. and Ms. Tallinger often have limited time between work and the start of an activity. They rush home, rifle through the mail, prepare snacks, change out of their work clothes, make sure the children are appropriately dressed and have the proper equipment for the upcoming activity, find their car keys, put the dog outside, load the children and equipment into the car, lock the door, and drive off. This pattern repeats itself, with slight variations, day after day. Garrett has the most activities. Thus, it is his schedule, in particular, that determines where the adults must be and when they must be there, sets the timing and type of meals for everyone, including Sam, and even shapes the family’s vacation plans.
As Table 2, showing Garrett’s activities, indicates, during the month of May, Garrett has baseball, Forest soccer (a private soccer club), Inter-county soccer (an all-star, elite team of boys drawn from various soccer clubs), swim team practice, piano lessons, and saxophone. Only the saxophone lessons take place at school; all the rest are extracurricular activities that Garrett’s parents have enrolled him in, with his consent. The table doesn’t include Spencer’s activities; nor does it reflect the parents’ commitments. During the week of May 23, when Garrett has his regular baseball, soccer, and swim team events, Mr. Tallinger is scheduled to umpire a game on Monday evening, and Spencer has a baseball game on Tuesday and a Cub Scout meeting on Thursday. On the weekend, the entire family drives four hours to an out-of-state soccer tournament. They are gone Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and return home Monday. On Tuesday, Garrett has swim team practice, soccer tryouts, and Intercounty soccer practice. On Wednesday, he has swim team practice (which he can ride his bike to) and a baseball game. On Thursday, when Garrett has practice for swim team and for Forest soccer, Spencer has a baseball game at 5:45 P.M. Then, on Saturday, Spencer has another baseball game (at 9:15 A.M.) and Garrett has two soccer games, one at 10:15 A.M. and one at 3:00 P.M. Not all middle-class families, of course, are as sports-oriented—or as busy—as the Tallinger family. Still, many middle-class children in the study had a hectic schedule of activities. Middle-class children also had more activities than did working-class and poor children (see Table C4, Appendix C). There were some gender differences in activities; boys had more athletic activities than did girls (Tables C5 and C6, Appendix C).
TABLE 2. GARRETT TALLINGER’S SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES1
Mr. and Ms. Tallinger each have out-of-town travel scheduled in May. During the week of May 9, Mr. Tallinger, who had been slated to be on the West Coast, returns early. He takes a flight at midnight on Wednesday, arrives home Thursday morning, sleeps for a few hours, and then heads off to the office. That night, he takes Garrett to his soccer practice. The week of May 23, Mr. Tallinger is away overnight on Tuesday and comes home just before 10:00 P.M. on Wednesday. The next day, May 26, Ms. Tallinger catches a 6:30 A.M. flight out of state but returns home by 8:00 P.M. The following Wednesday repeats this pattern of Mr. Tallinger arriving home very late on Tuesday night and Ms. Tallinger leaving for a trip out of state early the next morning.
The sheer number of activities increases the potential for overlapping events and last-minute conflicts. Thus, all events—including outings for Sam—have to be scheduled:
Louise returns from getting the mail. She stands in the doorway and exclaims, “And Sam, this is for you!” She opens up the envelope and Sam scurries over next to her. She hands Sam the card (an invitation to a birthday party), and he smiles as he looks at the dinosaur-like animal on the front of the invitation.
Four-year-old Sam is already aware of the importance of the family calendar. He knows that his older brothers’ commitments may preempt this invitation:
[Louise] says, “I know we have to be somewhere on the eleventh. If we are home in the morning, you can go to this.” . . . Louise walks over to the calendar and flips ahead to June. She looks at the calendar for a moment. Sam asks hopefully, with a trace of concern, “Can I go to it?” Louise says, “You’re in luck; we’re home in the morning.”
In some ways, though, Sam has more autonomy than his older brothers; less of Sam’s daily life is taken up with discrete, prescheduled activities. Neither Garrett nor Spencer typically has long stretches of time to organize or define for himself. Scheduled activities are so central to their lives that the boys use activities to keep track of days of the week (including evenings). Garrett and Spencer also designate time as before, during, or after a given activity (e.g., soccer, practice, swimming, and piano). Moreover, like other middle-class children we observed, the boys spend a significant amount of time simply waiting for the next event. Most of their activities—including school—require adult-provided transportation, and most of these activities begin and end on timetables set by adults. Sports, such as Garrett’s baseball games, all occur in settings organized and planned by adults; the kind of “pick-up” games of softball or basketball with neighborhood children that we observed among working-class and poor children are rare to nonexistent in Garrett’s life.
Of course, not every moment of every day is adult-determined. The Tallinger boys sometimes take the bus home after school, make themselves a snack, and watch television for about an hour until their parents get home, all without adult supervision. Garrett, Spencer, and Sam also play outdoors informally. Before and after scheduled events, the three often run around the yard playing baseball (with a tennis ball), or they ride their bikes. Sometimes, their parents join them for backyard ball games. The Tallinger children do not, however, go out and play all day, the way children from poor families typically do. There are not many children in the Tallingers’ neighborhood, and no boys their ages. Sometimes, a friend bikes over to visit, but more often, a parent drives the children to “play dates.”
The Tallingers enjoy wordplay as well as physical play. One night, before the parents sit down to dinner, the boys tell riddles to each other and to the field-worker.
Spencer smilingly begins to probe me with a battery of riddles. He begins by asking, “Mary, if a rooster lays an egg on a barn roof, which side will the egg fall off?” I smile and pause for a moment, then say with a tone of mock suspicion, “Well, let’s see. I didn’t think that roosters laid eggs.”
Joking occurs at the dinner table, too. Spencer reminds his mother to sign the form for his field trip to the art museum. In a display of intellectual competitiveness, Garrett tests his brother’s knowledge of Van Gogh. This inspires Mr. Tallinger to wordplay of his own:
Garrett then challenges Spencer, “Do you know what Van Gogh did?” Spencer says, “Yes, he cut off his ear and sent it to his friend.” Don chortles quietly and says, “So you could say, he sent it ear mail!” Everyone laughs at the pun.
Ms. Tallinger also enjoys being playful with her sons, as the following example shows:
In his bedroom, [Garrett] stands close to her, eye to eye, goofing around, looking right into her eyes, and then lifting his hands so his palms are pressing up against her palms. She plays along, not pushing him. She does it three times and laughs.
This evolves into a game of stare-down:
[Garrett] says, “Stare at me. Stare-down? And see who blinks first?” She says, “Okay.” They stand, palm to palm, staring intently. Louise blinks first and moves away; they both laugh. He says, “Want to do it again?” She does it again, and they both hold it for about fifteen seconds and then, once again, she looks away. He laughs quietly, but pleased; she laughs also.