Unequal Childhoods

Unequal Childhoods

Adult nonfiction
"Laughing and yelling, a white fourth-grader named Garrett
Tallinger splashes around in the swimming pool in the backyard of his
four-bedroom home in the suburbs on a late spring afternoon. As on
most evenings, after a quick dinner his father drives him to soccer
practice. This is only one of Garrett's many activities. His brother
has a baseball game at a different location. There are evenings when
the boys' parents can relax, sipping a glass of wine. Tonight is not
one of them. As they rush to change out of their work clothes and get
their children ready for practice, Mr. and Mrs. Tallinger are harried."
The Tallingers are one of the twelve families portrayed in
Annette Lareau's Unequal Childhoods. Now in a second (2011) edition,
it's a must read for teachers, social workers, clergy, parents, and
basically all others who work with children. It exposes a hidden
classism that allows Americans and American institutions to disallow
relative privilege as a crucial factor in children's life trajectories
and demonize poorer children, families, and communities for factors
beyond their control. This bias also sees the practices of the
relatively well off as across the board superior to those of the less
affluent rather than ascribing assets to both.
"America may be the land of opportunity, but it is also a land
of inequality. This book identifies the largely invisible but
powerful ways that parents' social class impacts children's life
experiences. It shows, using in-depth observations and interviews
with middle-class (including members of the upper-middle-class),
working-class, and poor families, that inequality permeates the fabric
of the culture. In the chapters that lie ahead, I report the results
of intensive observational research for a total of twelve families
when their children were nine and ten years old. I argue that key
elements of family life cohere to form a cultural logic of child
rearing. In other words, the differences among families seem to
cluster together in meaningful patterns..."
More affluent families engage in what Lareau calls concentrated
cultivation. Family life centers around a plethora of structured
activities children engage in. A month in Garrett Tallinger's life
includes 34 organized activities, 3 involving travel or overnight.
(And he's one of three siblings!) Parents engage in reasoning rather
than directives and other linguistic techniques of improving
vocabularies and verbal skills. They also intervene with schools and
other institutions when their children experience discomfort and use a
plethora of advantages to place and maintain their offspring on a
track to the best colleges and an elite future.
In contrast, working class and poor families engage in natural
growth. Children participate in few, if any, organized activities.
They are free to structure much of their nonschool time. Playing with
neighborhood friends and engaging with relatives are central to their
lives. Parents use directives instead of reasoning and speak to kids
a lot less often. They are much less likely to intervene when
children experience school discomfort and lack the insider knowledge
and connections for advancing their children's post secondary school
prospects.
Unequal childhoods is highly readable, skillfully interweaving
background, narrative, and theory. I see it as a must read for anyone
concerned about the decidedly unequal (and becoming more so) prospects
for a decent life that our children face. I can only hope that people
in the more privileged segments of our society will read it and
realize (in an image Lareau presents) that they started out on third
base instead of hitting a triple.
On a personal note, I had a lovely weekend. Saturday I wrote poetry
outside near my dafodills and wind chimes. Eugene and I started
Mothers' Day by stopping by his mom's house to give her a card and
flowers. Then we went on a drive. We stopped at thrift shops and a
flea market. I found really cute shirts including TWO CAT SHIRTS.
(Shirts with cat pictures for me, not an attempt to improve on Joey's
purrrrrfect natural tuxedo). We had lunch at Mickey D's. I saw my
son and his fiancée. They plan to take me out for ice cream. I heard
from my girls. I'll see them Saturday.
From a global perspective, I'm a privileged parent. Our kids grew up
with good food, a warm home with running water and electricity.
Religious extremists didn't try to keep my daughters out of school.
Bombs, land mines, and AK47 bearing soldiers weren't everyday perils.
Eugene and I didn't have to entrust our family to a treacherous sea
crossing.
If you are raising or have raised children under similar privileges
please don't ignore those parenting in dire circumstances. A little
money to organizations that help refugees, welcoming any who make it
to your neighborhood, fighting for laws that don't betray the promise
most of our non indiginous ancestors arrived here under...it all
helps. I will continue to seek out and publicize books that bring
their plight to your attention.
A great big shout out to mothers striving to parent under treacherous
conditions. I can't help being reminded of a teen mother who gave
birth in a stable, the inns being full, and had to flee people who
wanted to slay her child.
jules hathaway




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