MONEY: EVER PRESENT AND NEVER MENTIONED
In addition to spending large amounts of family time on sports, the Tallingers spend large amounts of money. Garrett’s activities are expensive. Soccer costs $15 per month, but there are additional, larger expenses periodically. The Forest soccer team’s new warm-up suits, socks, and shirts cost the Tallingers $100. Piano runs $23 per weekly lesson per child. Tennis clinic is $50; winter basketball, $30. It costs the family money to drive to out-of-state tournaments and stay overnight. Fees for Garrett’s summer camps have varied; some have cost $200 per week. When, at our request, Ms. Tallinger tallied the cost of registration, uniforms, equipment for activities, camp costs, and hotel costs for one year, she reported expenditures for Garrett alone as exceeding $4,000 per year, a figure that other middle-class families also report.2
These costs are not discussed within earshot of Garrett, Spencer, or Sam. In fact, money matters of any sort are rarely mentioned in the Tallinger home. For example, when signing the form for baseball pictures, Mr. Tallinger queries Garrett regarding his height, weight, position, and team number. He plans to order nine trading cards, but when Garrett says, “Last year we got twelve,” Mr. Tallinger (without comment) adjusts the form and fills in a figure of $11, which is never mentioned.
Near the end of the study, the Tallingers develop serious financial difficulties. Cash flow problems at the firm they both worked for result in irregular paychecks for both parents. This, in turn, leads to delayed mortgage payments, as Ms. Tallinger reveals in an interview:
I mean, we had seven thousand dollars in penalties on our mortgage. For being late . . . And the reason we’re late is because our company can’t pay us.3
Their financial problems are of great concern to both parents; Mr. Tallinger acknowledges that he is literally losing sleep. Still, no mention is made to the children. Ms. Tallinger, recalling the anxiety she felt as a child when her absent father’s support checks did not arrive or arrived late, tries to spare her sons similar concerns. She does, though, let the children know that certain kinds of vacations, such as going to Disney World, are expensive and that all family vacations require saving in advance. But possible limits on money are never referred to when the family debates going out for fast food, when it is time to sign up for a sports team, when a dentist appointment is scheduled, or when arrangements are made to attend an out-of-state soccer tournament. By not mentioning money, the Tallingers and other middle-class parents convey a subtle sense of entitlement to their children. Garrett and his peers are never denied participation in an activity because of its cost. As I discuss in later chapters, in both white and Black working-class and poor homes the opposite is true. Financial matters are discussed openly and nearly constantly, and children are well aware of what their parents can or cannot afford to spend money on.
To be sure, middle-class children like the Tallinger boys are not oblivious to economic differences. Ms. Tallinger knows that her sons admire the larger, more affluent homes of some of the boys on Garrett’s soccer team:
We don’t pretend anything. When they go to other little boys’ homes, [they are] very different than ours. (laughter) And they like that house a lot. They like the Jennings’ house. They can see it’s a bigger house. They have big-screen TVs. I mean, they notice that people live differently than they do. But they also go to other people’s homes and see that there’s a difference in the other direction.
Garrett has an additional reason for being attuned to relative deprivation. Most of his friends from soccer go to private school, and Garrett had, as well, for one year. Since the Tallingers could not afford to send three children to private school, however, they moved Garrett to the local public school. At the end of the study, when we asked Garrett during an interview what one change he would make in his family, if he could, he replied, “Have more money so I could go to my old school.”
Thus, despite living in a $250,000 home with a swimming pool, having parents who earn more than $175,000 per year, and being regularly enrolled in activities that cost the family thousands of dollars, Garrett is bothered by what he perceives as insufficient wealth. From his perspective, his parents’ financial reach is limited because it does not encompass something he very much wants—a return to private school. He takes for granted the fact that his parents can afford the cost of clothing, groceries, fast food, cars, medical appointments, and assorted activities for their children. In fact, when offered a free toothbrush by the dentist, he declines. For Garrett, expenditures like these are simply part of his life; they are (unexamined) entitlements. He can’t—and doesn’t—even imagine that for working-class and poor children, these same taken-for-granted items and opportunities are viewed as (unavailable) privileges.
LEARNING SKILLS FOR LIFE
Middle-class children may take for granted their “right” to be involved in various activities. Their parents, though, are conscious of the advantages such participation brings to their children. Both Mr. and Ms. Tallinger strongly believe that sports teach children crucial life lessons, such as knowing “when to practice and when to perform,” as Ms. Tallinger puts it during an interview. Mr. Tallinger, noting that it’s “good to be competitive,” adds
You could apply all the clichés you can think of. But when you’re the hero, you get all the satisfaction out of that; and when you’re the goat, you find out who your friends are in a hurry. . . . I’ve found very few other activities where you can experience that as directly.
Young athletes get a head start on maturity:
I think it makes you mentally tough. So that when things are not going your way you have the ability to kind of buckle down or dig down deeper, whatever it is, and try harder and not look for excuses.
They also learn to be team players:
So you learn to play as part of a team . . . His soccer coach is fantastic, preaching to them. If our team scores a goal, it’s the whole team that scores the goal, and if we get scored upon, it’s the whole team that let the goal in, not one guy. And they all seem to be sucking that up and abiding by that attitude.
Finally, nine- and ten-year-old children who play on organized sports teams develop the ability to perform in public, in front of adults, including strangers.4 As children regularly see themselves and other members of the team do well and do poorly, performance-based assessment gradually becomes routine. Also, exposure to public scrutiny is itself graduated. During practices, spectators tend to be mainly mothers who alternate between chatting with one another and watching the field; comments from the sidelines are low key. During games, however, parents’ demeanors change. There is much more overt emphasis on the importance of children performing well. Cheering is mixed with explicit advice—and criticism—as this excerpt from a tape recording at an Intercounty soccer game shows (the speakers include Mr. Tallinger and the fathers of two other players):
—Garrett, hold the ball!
—That’s it, Tom!
—Garrett! Look behind you!
—Garrett, come on! Get back.
—Hold up, Garrett!
—Yeah, that’s it, that’s it, take a run Garrett, take a run!
—Watch your feet, watch your feet!
—Paul, if you need a rest, ask for it!
—Way to go, Jim!
Organized sports, like the soccer teams Garrett is part of, with their mandatory tryouts and public games, can help prepare participants for performance-based assessment at school, as well. For example, auditions are required in order to qualify for the “select choir” at the middle-class neighborhood school the Tallinger children attend. Similarly, the “rules of the game” children learn on the playing field can be applied to schoolwork. Mr. Tallinger recalls, in an interview, making this point to Garrett: