Perhaps there is little understanding of the ways in which the middle-class approach to child rearing intertwines with the dominant ideology of our society, making the idea that a middle-class childhood might not be the optimal approach literally unthinkable. But, as the next chapters explain, the approach to child rearing favored by working-class parents does have real advantages for children.
CHAPTER 4
A Child’s Pace:
Tyrec Taylor
He would come running in because either he just remembered he had [football] practice or . . . one of us went and found him or sent word for him to come home. And [his friends] would all come with him, running in. Then it was just hard for him to stop playing with them, to say, well, I have to go to practice now . . . I would have to say, “Come on, Tyrec, we’re gonna be late!” And he’d be saying, “OK, I’m coming,” but he’d still be out chatting. (Interview with Ms. Taylor)
For nine-year-old Tyrec Taylor, organized activities were an interruption. In contrast to Garrett Tallinger, Tyrec centered his life on informal play with a group of boys from his Black, working-class neighborhood. Aside from going to school and to summer day camp, Tyrec took part in only two organized activities: he went to Sunday school periodically throughout the year and to Vacation Bible School in the summer. In fourth grade, he pleaded with his mother for permission to play on a community football team that he learned about through a friend. Eventually, Ms. Taylor relented and agreed that he could join the team. Once committed, she was determined to meet both the time and money demands posed by Tyrec’s activity. But, as the quote above suggests, Ms. Taylor found the experience taxing and she “pray[ed] that we don’t have to do it again.”
In focusing on the organization of daily life in Tyrec Taylor’s working-class family, this chapter highlights some aspects of the child-rearing strategy I have termed the accomplishment of natural growth. The limited economic resources available to working-class and poor families make getting children fed, clothed, sheltered and transported time-consuming, arduous labor. Parents tend to direct their efforts toward keeping children safe, enforcing discipline, and, when they deem it necessary, regulating their behavior in specific areas. Within these boundaries, working-class and poor children are allowed to grow and to thrive. They are given the flexibility to choose activities and playmates and to decide how active or inactive to be as they engage in these activities. Thus, whereas middle-class children often are treated as a project to be developed, working-class and poor children are given boundaries for their behavior and then allowed to grow.
The greater emphasis on kinship in working-class and poor families means that children spend much more time interacting with family members and providing important goods and services to kin than do their middle-class counterparts. Despite occasional quarrels, siblings offer each other more companionship and support than seemed common in the middle-class families we observed. The cultural logic of the accomplishment of natural growth grants children an autonomous world, apart from adults, in which they are free to try out new experiences and develop important social competencies. Tyrec and other working-class and poor children learn how to be members of informal peer groups. They learn how to manage their own time. They learn how to strategize. Children, especially boys, learn how to negotiate open conflict during play, including how to defend themselves physically. Boys are also given more latitude to play farther away from home than are girls.
These social competencies are as real as those acquired by middle-class children. The two sets of competencies are not the same, however; and they are not equally valued in the institutional worlds with which all children must come in contact (e.g., schools, health-care facilities, stores, workplaces). Unlike Garrett Tallinger, Tyrec Taylor and his peers do not have opportunities to start developing the kinds of skills that reap the greatest benefits in institutional settings. For example, children from working-class and poor families typically do not learn how to choose among conflicting organizational commitments, read trip itineraries, sign identification cards, travel out of state or work on an adult-led team with formal, established rules. Nor do they have the same experience as Garrett and his friends of thinking of themselves as entitled to receive customized attention from adults in institutional settings. In fact, working-class and poor children are regularly instructed to defer to adults.1
Along with these significant class differences between middle-class children, on the one hand, and working-class and poor children, on the other, there are some important differences between the lives of children in working-class families and those in poor families. Compared to poor children, working-class children have greater stability; their lives are less contingent, especially in terms of the availability of food, transportation, money for treats, and other economic resources. There are also differences by race and by gender. Although working-class and poor children pursue the same or similar activities and organized their daily lives in much the same way, they generally do so in racially segregated groups. This pattern held even among children who lived only a few blocks from one another and who went to the same school and were in the same class. And, as other studies have shown, we found gender a very powerful force in shaping the organization of daily life. Despite some active moments, girls are more sedentary, play closer to home, and have their physical bodies more actively scrutinized and shaped by others than do boys. Nevertheless, the greatest gulf we observed is one that has not been fully recognized in the existing literature: a class-rooted difference in the organization of daily life whereby middle and upper-middle-class children pursue a hectic schedule of adult-organized activities while working-class and poor children follow a more open-ended agenda that is not as heavily controlled by adults. Some important aspects of this difference can be seen in the way in which Tyrec Taylor’s involvement in football reverberates through his family members’ lives.
THE TAYLOR FAMILY
Tyrec Taylor; his mother, Celeste; thirteen-year-old sister, Anisha; and eighteen-year-old stepbrother, Malcolm, live in a rented four-bedroom house located near major bus lines in a small, stable, working-class Black neighborhood. Houses in the area sell for about $50,000. The neighborhood is “pretty quiet” according to Ms. Taylor, but she adds that “crime is everywhere, so I still have to be careful.” All of the residents on the streets immediately surrounding the Taylors’ house are African American, but a larger white neighborhood is within easy walking distance. When Tyrec and his friends have money for treats, they head for the white neighborhood to buy ice cream or drinks. Thus, for Tyrec, when compared to Black housing project residents, whites are a far more visible part of his life.
The Taylors’ house has three stories, with narrow, steep stairs. All the bedrooms are on the upper floors; there is one bathroom, which has darkly colored, exotic-looking fans opened out and hung on the walls, next to gold butterflies. On the first floor, there is a living room, a dining area, and a kitchen. The kitchen is large with metal cabinets, florescent lights, and a low table for food preparation. The living room, which is always tidy, has a multicolored shag rug on the floor, a dark blue velour couch with printed flowers wound across it, a large television angled in a corner of the room, and a bookshelf that holds a wooden giraffe, a clock, and framed pictures of the children when they were babies. In the middle of the table sits a round glass bowl filled with decorative pebbles that hold up several large, bright pink cloth flowers. The entire effect is of a carefully decorated home. Ms. Taylor, however, complains that the house is decrepit and, indeed, there are signs that it needs repair: there are rips in the screen door and rough, unfinished wood showing on the doors inside the house.