PART I
Organization of Daily Life
SOCIAL CLASS DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN’S life experiences can be seen in the details of life. In our study, the pace of life was different for middle-class families compared to working-class and poor families. In the middle class, life was hectic. Parents were racing from activity to activity. In families with more than one child, parents often juggled conflicts between children’s activities. In these families, economic resources for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, children’s activities, and other routine expenses were in ample supply. Of course, some parents often felt short of money. At times they were not able to enjoy the vacations that they would have liked. But, as I show, families routinely spent hundreds and even thousands of dollars per year promoting children’s activities.
Because there were so many children’s activities, and because they were accorded so much importance, children’s activities determined the schedule for the entire family. Siblings tagged along, sometimes willingly and sometimes not. Adults’ leisure time was absorbed by children’s activities. Children also spent much of their time in the company of adults or being directed by adults. They also had informal free time, but generally it was sandwiched between structured activities. In the organization of daily life, children’s interests and activities were treated as matters of consequence.
In working-class and poor families, the organization of daily life differed from that of middle-class families. Here, there was economic strain not felt by many middle-class families. Particularly in poor families, it took enormous labor to get family members through the day, as mothers scrimped to make food last until they were able to buy more, waited for buses that didn’t come, carried children’s laundry out to public washers, got young children up, fed, dressed, and ready for school and oversaw children’s daily lives. Children were aware of the economic strain. Money matters were frequently discussed.
Although money was in short supply, children’s lives were more relaxed and, more importantly, the pace of life was slower. Children played with other children outside of the house. They frequently played with their cousins. Some children had organized activities, but they were far fewer than in middle-class families. Other times, children wanted to be in organized activities, but economic constraints, compounded by lack of transportation, made participation prohibitive. When children sought to display their budding talents and pursue activities more informally around the house, adults often treated children’s interests as inconsequential. In addition, since they were not riding around in cars with parents going to organized activities or being directed by adults in structured activities, children in working-class and poor families had more autonomy from adults. Working-class and poor children had long stretches of free time during which they watched television and played with relatives and friends in the neighborhood, creating ways to occupy themselves. In these activities, there was more of a separation between adults’ worlds and children’s worlds.
In sum, there were social class differences in the number of organized activities, pace of family life, economic strain of family life, time spent in informal play, interest on the part of adults in children’s activities, domination by children’s activities of adult lives, and the amount of autonomy children had from adults. To be sure, other things also mattered in addition to social class. Gender differences were particularly striking. Girls and boys enjoyed different types of activities. Girls had more sedentary lives compared to boys. They also played closer to home. Race also played a role, particularly as racial segregation of residential neighborhoods divided children into racially segregated informal play groups (although race did not influence the number of activities children had).
Part I takes us through the lives of three families to illuminate these issues. First, it provides a close look at one middle-class family to show the life of Garrett Tallinger, a white middle-class boy. (Although I selected a white middle-class boy for this chapter, at some level, the decision was arbitrary. Any of the other middle-class children we observed, including the Black middle-class boy and the Black middle-class girl, could have this place in the book.) Then, I seek to show that there are important differences between the lives of middle-class children and working-class and poor children. I also discuss differences between working-class and poor families, as well as highlight differences in the experiences of boys and girls. In particular, I compare the life of Garrett with two other children: a Black working-class boy, Tyrec Taylor, and a white girl from a poor family, Katie Brindle. Although each chapter provides some basic information about each child, each chapter also seeks to highlight particular dimensions in social class differences. In particular, Chapter 4 portrays a less hectic life that emphasizes the importance of informal play with fewer organized activities (Tyrec Taylor), and Chapter 5 discusses economic strain and the treatment of children’s activities as inconsequential (Katie Brindle). Both Chapters 4 and 5 highlight the autonomy of children from adults. While these chapters seek to offer an in-depth portrait of selected families, the tables in Appendix C offer an overview of the schedule of organized activities for the twelve families we visited as well as a summary for the eighty-eight children with whose families we conducted interviews.
CHAPTER 3
The Hectic Pace of
Concerted Cultivation:
Garrett Tallinger
(One Wednesday in May, Don Tallinger arrives home from work. It’s about 10:00 P.M.) Don wanders over to [the] phone and stands in front of the calendar, looking to see what is written in on it. When he discovers that the next evening is blank except for “Mary” [the field-worker], Don emulates the way weight lifters celebrate a victory as he [silently] lifts both arms above his chest with fists clenched. (He has a slight smile as he does this.)
Mr. Tallinger’s elation over an evening with no prior commitments is testimony to his family’s hectic pace. His reaction highlights the degree to which the concerted cultivation of children controls adults’ leisure time. Both Don Tallinger and his wife, Louise, work full time in professional jobs with travel requirements. Their three children, Garrett (a fourth-grader), Spencer (a second-grader), and Sam (a preschooler), are enrolled in a variety of activities. On any given weeknight or weekend day, one, two, or sometimes all three of the boys have events, often at different times and in different parts of town. Organized sports are a top priority for the family. The Tallingers’ Christmas card, which shows the three boys standing in their front yard on a crisp-looking fall day, captures the central role accorded to organized sports. Garrett, Spencer, and Sam are dressed in their soccer uniforms—shiny blue-and-white shorts and shirts—and each boy has one foot poised on his own soccer ball. All are smiling broadly.
This chapter focuses on the organization of daily life in the middle-class Tallinger family. This family’s busy schedule is not unique; it is one we found repeated, with variations, in many middle-class homes.1 The Tallingers and others like them are committed to child-rearing strategies that favor the individual development of each child, sometimes at the expense of family time and group needs. By encouraging involvement in activities outside the home, middle-class parents position their children to receive more than an education in how to play soccer, baseball, or piano. These young sports enthusiasts and budding musicians acquire skills and dispositions that help them navigate the institutional world. They learn to think of themselves as special and as entitled to receive certain kinds of services from adults. They also acquire a valuable set of white-collar work skills, including how to set priorities, manage an itinerary, shake hands with strangers, and work on a team. They do so at a cost, however.