It is almost time to go. Katie pulls herself away from the TV, looks around in the dining room area, and then goes to her bedroom for a few seconds. When she returns,
she stands directly in front of her mother (blocking her mother’s view of the television) and asks, “Mom, where’s my book bag?” Her mother looks frustrated. She furrows her eyebrows, sighs deeply, and raises her voice as she says, “That is the key word, your book bag.”
Ms. Brindle joins the search. Standing at the open door to Katie’s room, she points in, looking annoyed. Katie smiles, slips by her mother and retrieves her book bag from her room. At last, it is time to bundle up for the fifteen-degree weather outside, and then say farewelclass="underline"
CiCi zips up [Katie’s] coat but doesn’t put on the hood. Katie doesn’t have any mittens on her hands . . . CiCi stands and goes over to the door and opens it. Katie goes out first. Her mom leans over and kisses her on the lips, and says affectionately, “Good-bye, monster.”
This sequence of steps took ninety minutes. It is a labor-intensive routine that Katie and her mother enact every single school day (with minor variations) and most weekends (with some modifications). This particular morning, Melmel stayed asleep, but often Ms. Brindle cares for him at the same time—changing his diaper, getting him dressed, giving him a bottle of milk or “Hi-C” juice and then carrying him around while she supervises Katie. Like other single parents with young children, Ms. Brindle’s responsibilities are many and they are nonnegotiable; her children cannot manage without her daily assistance.
POOR FAMILIES: LOVE’S LABORS MULTIPLIED
All parents are faced with multiple, daily child-rearing tasks. But, in poor families, the difficulties involved in executing those tasks are much greater than in middle-class families and working-class ones. The additional burden created by poverty is not connected to the competence of individuals (although individuals do vary in their social skills). Rather, it is the result of the uneven distribution of structural resources. Unlike in Western European countries, where all families with dependent children get a monthly stipend, in the United States, financial stability is considered a matter of individual responsibility. Public assistance does not cover the minimum costs of raising children. Moreover, the social resources available to the poor are not simply insufficient; they are also bureaucratic, slow working and stigmatized.
Ms. Brindle is not currently employed, but she has held jobs in the past and seems proud of it (e.g., noting that she had worked at McDonald’s, she adds, “I was good at it”). She hopes to return to work once Melmel starts school. In the meantime, the Brindles try to survive on public assistance. Twice a month, Ms. Brindle has to go in person to collect her food stamps and cash stipend. Usually, due to lack of child care, she takes Melmel with her. However, on this day his older sister Jenna watched him. Going to get food stamps is a chore she “hate[s].” The bus ride is long, the disbursement office is bleak, and, on days when food stamps are released, it is crowded with slow-moving lines of tired women (men are vastly outnumbered) towing young children. The lines form outside the building, before the office opens. The day we go, it takes fifteen minutes of inching forward before we even get inside. Once we have edged into the building, we join around seventy-five people who are waiting in another long line in a small, dusty and dirty room. There are no public restrooms; there are no drinking fountains. We wait another thirty minutes. The cashiers move slowly; they look bored and disinterested. At 9:05, we are done but exhausted by the wait.
While standing in line Ms. Brindle says, sounding anxious and a bit desperate, “I am out of everything. Milk, eggs, bread.” We go to the grocery store immediately after we get the food stamps. Katie’s mother buys four boxes of cereal, a loaf of white bread, a gallon of milk, bologna, American cheese, a dozen eggs, and a cake mix and frosting. It is Katie’s birthday that day. The cake mix calls for vegetable oil. This is an unusual and added expense. Ms. Brindle looks stressed while she is staring at the glistening plastic bottles of yellow oil. She sighs deeply and says, “I wish food was free.”6
We then head back home; the entire expedition having taken approximately two hours.
Under conditions where every dollar for food matters, unexpected losses present serious problems. One afternoon when Ms. Brindle returns to the apartment after getting her food stamps (she had gone by herself), she is upset. She thinks she has been shortchanged:
CiCi sat down at the dining room table. She sighed and took off her coat and put it on the chair next to her. She looked at Jenna and said, “I think they gypped me forty dollars. There were all these people in line shouting to hurry up and I tried to count it, but I couldn’t concentrate.” CiCi sounded sad.
She started counting each page in the first [food stamp] booklet and then the second booklet. . . . Katie made a noise—a humming noise (it wasn’t loud)—while CiCi was counting. CiCi said in an angry tone, “Be quiet. That’s what happened in line. I couldn’t concentrate. Everyone was yelling.” . . . CiCi looked at Jenna and said, “They’re not supposed to do that. They gave me all these books with low numbers (dollar amounts). They’re not supposed to do that. They’re supposed to give me high numbers.” Katie did not say anything after her mom yelled at her but remained quietly sitting on the couch.
Jenna, seeking to reassure her mother, says, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to feed me.” Nine-year-old Katie is keenly aware of her family’s limited resources. She rejects Jenna’s logic, saying, “Well, it’s still forty dollars.”
Doing laundry, a tedious but straightforward chore in middle class homes, is cumbersome, expensive, and frustrating for Ms. Brindle. She finds it difficult to keep a sufficient supply of quarters available. Banks often refuse to sell rolled coins to noncustomers; she does not have a bank account (using money orders when necessary). The grocery store, which does provide quarters, is a twenty-minute bus ride away. Of much greater significance, however, is the fact that the three washers and two dryers at the apartment complex are routinely out of order:
CiCi says, “I wish I had a car to drive. I’m almost out of clothes.” (She looks at her pile of dirty clothes next to the love seat.) I ask, “Is the washing machine broken?” She replies, “When I first went down, I was freakin’ out. I went down and the water was coming out of the washers. Today the washers were still full of water. And I went to the ones up [at a nearby complex]. They were locked, so I think they’re messed up too. . . . The heat isn’t on [in the laundry room]. It’s ridiculous . . . that’s why the pipes broke. It’s forty below and stuff.”
For Katie, broken washing machines sometimes mean no school. In rare cases when she is completely out of clean clothes, she has to stay at home until the laundry can be done.
Having to rely on public transportation, particularly with young children, also makes life more difficult. Little things like handing the fare to the bus driver can be challenging if you are juggling a toddler, a diaper bag, and packages. Similarly, once on the bus, even seated it can be tiring to hold or watch over young children on long rides. Buses often are late, sometimes don’t come, and always are much slower than traveling by car. Finally, taking public transportation can be hazardous. Mothers and children stand out in the heat in summer, in the cold in winter, and in rainstorms many months of the year. Buses travel along busy streets, so as they wait at bus stops, parents must watch children very closely to make certain that they keep away from oncoming traffic. Melmel likes buses; he seems to relish the sensation of movement. And Ms. Brindle sometimes uses bus rides as an opportunity for one-on-one time with her son. For example, while riding to a municipal court session (to contest her eviction notice), she smiles at Melmel and says warmly, “Melmel, I love you!”7 A ride in a car is always preferable, if it can be arranged. In Ms. Brindle’s case this is difficult because her brother’s car is sometimes not running and even when it is, her schedule and his are hard to coordinate. The same is true for her mother’s car. In addition, child car seats are required by law, but they are expensive, heavy, and difficult to move from car to car. When Melmel rides in his grandmother’s car, which has no car seat, she keeps an eye out for the police. If she sees a police officer, she pushes her grandson down below the level of the car windows, trying to hide him from view. She says she feels “like a criminal.” She can’t afford to be caught: “The ticket is a thousand dollars!”