The entire interaction takes less than a minute, but it is a tense minute, or at least it seems so for Spencer.
SIBLING COMPETITION AND CONFLICT
Spencer’s relative inferiority as an athlete colors his relationship with Garrett. Sometimes he goes out of his way to identify areas in which his older brother is not accomplished. For example, one afternoon as Garrett and a field-worker are shooting baskets in the driveway, Spencer offers this observation:
“Garrett isn’t really that good at basketball. He isn’t.” Garrett quickly refutes Spencer saying, “Oh yeah? I’m better than you.” Spencer seems to ignore him. He is undaunted by Garrett’s comment. Spencer continues, “I mean, this isn’t what he does well in. He’s not the best player.” Garrett seems a bit more irritated by Spencer’s comments and says with calm defensiveness, “Oh yeah? That’s why I had [x] rebounds in the game. More than anyone in gym class.” Spencer matter-of-factly states, “I am saying this isn’t the game you are the best in.”
Spencer also periodically flaunts his status as part of the school’s gifted program. Garrett, despite two attempts, missed the program’s cutoff of an IQ of 125 (he scored 119). When Spencer qualified, Garrett reacted with great, tearful distress. For his part, Garrett sometimes seizes opportunities to highlight his superior skills. During a piano lesson, for instance, he deliberately launches into the piece Spencer is to perform at an upcoming piano recital, knowing that he plays the piece better than his brother, and knowing that Spencer can hear him as he plays:
GARRETT: I can play . . .
PIANO TEACHER: Don’t. (Garrett keeps playing.) Don’t play that. It bothers him that he can’t play it as fast. (Garrett continues playing and is grinning.) You are ruining the piece for him. (Garrett still plays.) I don’t want you to play it anymore. (Garrett stops.)
Despite this kind of competition, though, the tenor of Spencer and Garrett’s relationship is often friendly. Garrett can be helpfuclass="underline"
Garrett has pulled out a workbook and is looking down at the math problems on it. . . . Spencer says, “Garrett, I don’t understand how to do this.” Garrett quietly says, “Here, let me see.” It is an addition problem. Garrett says, “What’s seventy-five plus ninety-nine?” Spencer rolls his eyes and says, “I don’t know. I can’t add it in my head!” He sounds mildly annoyed by Garrett’s question, as if he is incredulous that Garrett even asked it. Garrett puts the paper down near the corner of the table so that Spencer can see it, and he slowly says, “Okay, what’s nine and five?” Spencer says, “Nine and five . . . um, fourteen. I got that.” Garrett writes down the numbers and says, “And you carry the one here,” and points to the carried number. He continues, “Now what is one and seven and nine?” Spencer pauses for a moment and says, “Seventeen.” Garrett writes down the number. Don strides through the kitchen as Garrett hands the paper back to Spencer. Don asks suspiciously, “What’s going on here?” Garrett replies quietly, “I showed him how to do something.”
Spencer cannot seem to forge a workable relationship with Sam, however. The two squabble frequently and sometimes viciously.
Spencer suddenly shrieks from the living room, “Stop it! Stop it! Get away from me!” Sam begins to wail. I hear a door slam heavily upstairs and then Louise tramps loudly down the stairs. She walks into the living room and demands, “What is going on here?” Spencer explains, “He keeps following me around!” Louise says, with rising irritation, “I don’t care if he follows you.” She says accusingly, “You followed Garrett around when you were his age! There’s no excuse for you to act the way you are acting. There’s no excuse.”
Spats like this are common and are usually resolved by a third party. One parent or the other intervenes and redirects one or both of the boys.
The Tallinger children, like many of their middle-class peers, frankly state their preferences regarding siblings. References to “hating” a family member are common and elicit no special reaction, either from other children or adults. For example, one evening when Spencer and Sam are out in the front yard playing softball with their teenage baby-sitter Frankie (and a field-worker),
Spencer asks Sam who he hated the most. Sam said Garrett. Spencer told Sam to pretend he was hitting [with the bat] Garrett’s head. Frankie said, “Sam, you told me that you hated Spencer the most.” Spencer repeats, “Pretend it’s Garrett’s head.”
The open displays of hostility between siblings that we observed in the middle-class families we visited had no real equivalent in the working-class and poor homes. Siblings in those families clearly annoyed one another, but we never heard the frank, even casual, references to hatred that were common in middle-class homes. Likewise, the middle-class pattern of noisy sibling conflicts resolved by adult intervention was not common in working-class and poor families. In the latter, sibling conflict was both less vociferous and less likely to occur in a setting in which an adult was present.
THE RELATIVE UNIMPORTANCE OF RELATIVES
The Tallinger family’s social life is organized mainly around the children’s activities and the parents’ jobs, rather than around contact with extended family. Such attenuated kinship ties contrast dramatically with the patterns we observed in working-class and poor families, where extremely strong social ties with immediate and extended family members are common. In the working-class and poor families, parents speak daily with their brothers and sisters and their parents. Cousins play together several times a week. The Tallingers see Ms. Tallinger’s mother, who lives a few minutes away, at least once a week, but visits with Mr. Tallinger’s mother, who lives about an hour and a quarter’s drive away, occur only on major holidays (Mr. Tallinger sees his mother more frequently—about once a month, when his work brings him into her area).
Neither Garrett nor Spencer is pressured to forgo an organized activity in order to spend time with relatives, even those they see only a few times a year. When conflicts arise, the children are allowed, as Ms. Tallinger explains, “to choose” where to spend their time. Thus, when the Tallingers host an outdoor college graduation party for Mr. Tallinger’s only nephew, a party that includes all of Mr. Tallinger’s family (i.e., his mother, sisters, nieces, and nephews), Garrett does not plan to attend.
Louise explains, “He is going to go to baseball for a half hour, and then he is going with the Heaths to his soccer game, and then they are going to drive him to his Intercounty soccer game.” . . . Don, with a deep sigh of frustration, says, “We aren’t going to any of the games.” Field-worker: “How did you choose between baseball and soccer?” Don says, “Soccer is more of a priority. Isn’t that right, Garrett?” Garrett, standing in the middle of the kitchen, nods in agreement.
For Garrett, playing soccer is “more of a priority” than spending time with relatives, but the Tallingers do care about kinship ties. Ms. Tallinger and her mother talk on the phone at least three times a week, Nana (Ms. Tallinger’s mother) frequently attends the children’s school events, and she has a key to the Tallingers’ house. Mr. Tallinger, as noted, visits his mother regularly, and his extended family gets together for all major holidays. Garrett has a male cousin his age who lives only twenty minutes away. According to Ms. Tallinger, Garrett and this cousin have a “wonderful” time when they are together—but they meet only on major holidays. For the Tallingers, time spent with extended family is not unimportant; it’s just less important than sports.