He had football practice four nights a week in the beginning because school hadn’t started back yet. It started in August . . . I would start calling [home] maybe at 4:00 from work. [I’d tell him] “Get your things together.” [But] he was never ready . . . So I would come home and grab him and hurry up and find something to eat. [Sometimes] in the summer . . . we could eat afterwards.
Tyrec’s mother also spent time fund-raising. She took a leadership role in selling cheesecakes, at ten dollars apiece, to co-workers, relatives, and neighbors. She sold more than twenty.
Although the pace of practices slowed in early September, football was still a demanding commitment. Games were on Saturday mornings at 8:30 or 9:00 A.M. Tyrec and his mother needed to get up at 7:00 in order to get to there on time. Often they would go out to eat after the game and would not get home until 3:00 or even 5:00 P.M. Frequent changes in the schedule, with practices ending early, games being shifted around, and other last minute changes further drained Ms. Taylor’s energy. Before the season was even halfway over, she was exhausted:
By that time I was really tired. I mean, it had become a lot. When school started it went from four nights to two so that was a break right there. But that by the time it got cold—I mean they gave us a half hour because it started at 6:30, so you just—you come home and you eat and you run right out. After practice, we did homework.
Despite the difficulty involved, Tyrec’s mother continued to show up to watch him play. She felt that it was important to be there for him.
I had to give him support that I was behind him; that’s why I went. And I didn’t want him to feel like I didn’t care . . . I missed a few. I didn’t feel bad about it, either, because I went to more than I missed. I usually was there.
Ms. Taylor believed that her son’s involvement in football had been positive. She noted that Tyrec “loved it,” and she stressed the way the sport helped develop her son’s masculinity, especially his athletic skills.
Tyrec is all boy. His motor skills . . . He’s very coordinated like that, so he can do anything like that . . . very well. He knew that he could do it, and I think he wanted to prove it to himself that he could do it. I think he just liked it. He had all the kids around here playing football every day (laughter) . . . right out here on the street.
When asked what she liked about Tyrec’s involvement in football, she said that she thought the experience had given her son “a little bit of independence, and it showed that he had some [independence].” When pressed to explain what she meant by independence, Tyrec’s mother elaborated:
That he’s brave enough to go and meet people and, you know—and be on a team and blend in with the team. I was glad that he could do that. I think I would have had a hard time as a child. I wasn’t that good at blending in.
Unlike middle-class parents, however, Ms. Taylor didn’t see Tyrec’s football experience as crucial to his overall development. “I don’t know how it’s helped him,” was her reply to the question “Are there any ways that you think it has helped him in other aspects of his life . . . Even in little ways?” Ms. Taylor’s first and most decisive point was that she could not think of any way that it helped him. When asked, “Were there any spillover effects that you didn’t expect—in some other areas of his life?” she generated this answer:
Well, just the responsibility part, knowing that this is what I have to do and this is what I’m gonna do. They give him a routine of his very own: I have to do this and then I have to do my homework and then I have to eat, you know. So I thought that was good.
When the season ended, so too did Tyrec’s participation.5 He did not play on the team as a fifth-grader. Although Ms. Taylor seemed genuinely pleased that her son had enjoyed being on the football team, she saw no reason for him to repeat the experience. She loved Tyrec, cared for him, and wanted him to be happy. Since simply stepping out the front door and joining his neighborhood friends for informal play obviously gave Tyrec much pleasure, his mother felt that was preferable to having him involved in an activity that required extensive involvement on her part. For her, as with other working-class and poor mothers, being a good mother did not include an obligation to cultivate her children’s various interests, particularly if doing so would require radically rearranging her own life.
LEARNING SKILLS FOR LIFE
Tyrec plays over and over with a relatively stable group of boys. Because the group functions without adult monitoring, he learns how to construct and sustain friendships on his own and how to organize and negotiate. By contrast, Garrett’s playmates change frequently, forming and dispersing with each new season and each new organized activity. The only constant is the presence of adults in each setting, ensuring that the players all know the rules, if not one another’s names.
Much of the informal play Tyrec and his friends engage in takes place outdoors, at times and in places mainly of their own choosing. The boys often play games they have devised themselves, complete with rules and systems of enforcement. Thus, the organization of Tyrec’s daily life provides him with opportunities to develop skills in peer mediation, conflict management, personal responsibility and strategizing. The following excerpts from field notes give a sense of this ongoing acquisition of social competencies, which involves a game between Tyrec and a group of friends, Shawn, Ken, Reggie, and Clayton:
The game was sort of like volleyball but much more complex. The players are organized in a rough circle. They volley the ball to one another. Each player must watch carefully to make sure that the person who volleyed the ball to them jumped before hitting the ball. If you hit the ball but did not jump then you are out. If you can cause a person to go out then you “gain a life.”
They often dispute whether or not the person jumped:
“Naw, man, that ain’t [it]. You did just like this.” (Shawn jumps, but his feet barely leave the ground.) “That ain’t my point.” Ken did not protest. He just said, “Okay, play it over.” Play resumes for another two minutes, then they argue again.
When the disputes evolve into prolonged arguments, the boys typically resort to some sort of informal conflict resolution. In this instance, they walk up the block to find a friend to adjudicate:
Shawn suggested that they go ask Reggie. Reggie lives in the next block to Tyrec. They put down the ball and walked to the end of Reggie’s block and they yelled to [people inside the house] . . . “Yo! Reggie–Reggie.” “Come here.” “Is Reggie up there?” Reggie walks down . . . Each person tried to tell his story at the same time. Reggie hollered, “Wait, one at a time. Ken, you first.” Ken gave his version of the story, then Tyrec gave his, and Shawn went last. It turns out Shawn was correct. Ken was out. Ken did not protest. He accepted Reggie’s ruling. He just sat on the hood of a parked car and watched. Reggie and Clayton now join in the fun.
With a new cast of players, the game resumes, interspersed with arguments, for another thirty minutes. Next, they set up a race, running to a point three blocks away, a public building with a small plot of grass outside. There, they initiate a different game (“Scram Ball”); the boys’ play continues well into the hot summer night.
As they pursue their various activities, Tyrec and his friends frequently show genuine excitement and pleasure or, sometimes, agitation. Unlike middle-class children, working-class and poor children rarely complain of being “bored.” We heard Tyrec whine about a variety of things (e.g., being restricted to inside play), but unlike middle-class children, we never heard him complain that he had nothing to do. Despite the lack of organized activities, he has no trouble filling up his schedule. He has ideas, plans, and activities to engage in with his friends. Unlike his middle-class counterparts, Tyrec needs no adult assistance to pursue the great majority of his plans. He doesn’t need to pressure his mother to drive him to a friend’s house or to organize a sleep-over or to take him to a store.