Turning to the audience (which at this point consists only of me), Amy announces firmly, “That is the end of part one.” I smile and say, “Good job!” The girls regroup, plot out part two, come into the living room, and present that installment. Again, their grandmother offers the girls only the slightest acknowledgment, and Ryan continues to completely ignore his niece and daughter.
The vacuuming has gotten noisier; Ryan says, “This don’t sound right.” Ryan pulls the vacuum back, and in the entryway (exactly where the girls are performing), he lays the vacuum down and exposes the bottom of the machine. Ryan crouches down to look at the machine; Grandmom, ignoring the girls, gets on her knees to inspect.
The girls bow together and retreat to plot the third part. I join the investigation of the vacuum cleaner. The brush is matted with tinsel that has become tightly wound around the roller. Grandmom and I work together to extract the tinsel. Meanwhile, the girls have finished preparing part three. They come back. They stand right next to Grandmom and begin their skit. Since I am now down on the floor, involved with the vacuum cleaner, no one at all watches this phase of the play.
The girls do not pause or ask anyone to watch, but Amy announces in a loud stage voice, “Part Three.” This time they do a little dance . . . They hop up and down and swing their legs back and forth and chatter about Santa and his elves and how they are coming for a visit.
Grandmom is looking annoyed. The girls are standing almost on top of her and their legs are close to her; they are singing in loud and enthusiastic voices. She grimaces but doesn’t tell them to stop. She focuses more closely on the machine.11
Katie’s activities are not always ignored. For example, her mother watches, smiling occasionally, as Katie presents an at-home reenactment of the school ceremony in which she received a perfect attendance award for a three-month period in the early fall. Ms. Brindle also approves of Katie’s involvement in choir, a one-hour, after-school (no-fee) activity that Katie signed herself up for (and walks to and from school once a week to take part in). As she explains during the in-depth interview, Ms. Brindle thinks Katie’s participation in the choir is a good idea for a couple of reasons:
It’s just that it gives her something to do and to be with other kids and that makes her feel better, to do that, instead of being home and being bored . . . It makes her happy, you know. It gives her something to do. I have no complaints.
She does more than provide verbal support. Ms. Brindle makes a special trip to the store and spends money that could have been used for many other purposes to purchase a special dark skirt that Katie wore at the choir’s holiday performance.12 What Ms. Brindle doesn’t do that is routine for middle-class mothers is view her daughter’s interest in singing as a signal to look for other ways to help her develop that interest into a formal talent. Similarly, Ms. Brindle does not discuss Katie’s interest in drama or express regret that she cannot afford to cultivate her daughter’s talent. Instead, she frames Katie’s skills and interests as character traits—singing and acting are part of what makes Katie, Katie. She sees the shows her daughter puts on as “cute” and as a way for Katie “to get attention.” She thinks that other people telling Katie that she is doing a good job might give her daughter more confidence, but she does not see developing Katie’s incipient talents as part of her role as a mother.
There is no emphasis on providing materials Katie might use at home to further develop her creativity. Moreover, because children in poor neighborhoods have relatively few possessions, creating entertainment from makeshift sources is common. For instance, all of the makeshift costumes Katie and Amy so enjoy playing with remain stashed at Grandmom’s; Katie has none at her apartment. While middle-class homes typically have a nearly inexhaustible supply of paper, crayons, markers, stickers, and assorted other craft supplies for children’s use, the Brindle house has none, literally. The family does not own a ruler or marking pens. Paper of any kind is in short supply. When Katie fashions snowflakes from clean cardboard she found in a dumpster at the apartment complex, her mother accepts the one Katie has made for her, saying only, “Winter will be over soon.” She offers no praise, no comment about Katie’s resourcefulness or creativity. Ms. Brindle sees these various creative endeavors as Katie’s projects, not hers. Thus, when Katie asks her to help build a dollhouse out of a cardboard box, she refuses, casually and without guilt.
Similarly, Ms. Brindle does not seem to think that Melmel needs any special assistance or toys. She appears to see little difference between Melmel’s entertaining himself by pounding on the coffee table, rolling around on the floor, or poking Jenna’s puppy versus playing with his “developmentally appropriate” toys, which except for special occasions, remain neatly stacked in a closet.
Certainly, the many burdens in Ms. Brindle’s life contribute to her relative inattention to the details of Katie’s leisure pursuits. The economic burdens are formidable and are compounded by her daughter’s health problems. But, large as those problems are, they probably account only in part for the approach Ms. Brindle takes. Even if she had less on her mind, Katie’s mother probably would not substantially change how she views her daughter’s talents or alter her response to Katie’s bids for adult attention. She tries hard to meet her children’s basic needs. She is willing to sell her belongings and move a thousand miles away in order to care for her oldest daughter. She enjoys seeing Katie having fun with her cousin, Amy, and Melmel swaying with the movement of the bus. But nurturing her children’s creative development is not something she sees as her responsibility. In general, she believes that children’s play is for children.
DISCUSSION
In our observations, simple life tasks were harder to accomplish for families that had the most limited economic resources, so poor mothers had more economic strain in their lives than did working-class mothers. In both social classes, children were keenly aware of their family’s limited economic resources. Katie worried when it appeared that her mother had been shorted food stamps; she was cautious about asking for food at her Grandmom’s house, even though she was hungry. In the Brindle family, it was routine for the refrigerator to be empty once or twice a month. Although both poor and working-class families faced formidable economic constraints, poor families were more overwhelmed. Among the poor families, some families, such as the Brindles, had many more life difficulties than did other poor families. Similarly, children such as Katie Brindle, with her history of sexual abuse, had faced many more life difficulties than had other children.13 Thus, within broad social class categories, there is variation in the biographies of individuals.
When I began this study, I expected to find marked differences in child-rearing strategies between poor and working-class families. This was not the case. As with Tyrec Taylor, Katie Brindle’s life is dominated by informal play, both with children she joins outdoors, in the parking lot of her apartment building, and with her cousin, Amy, at their Grandmom’s house. In both working-class and poor families, parents seemed preoccupied by the amount of work involved in caring for children and by the effects of inadequate economic resources. In a somewhat different vein, the pleasures and obligations of rich and deep kinship ties also demanded adults’ attention. These factors combined to make parents keenly aware of constraints, and also to set constraints in children’s lives. Nevertheless, within those boundaries, children were allowed a great deal of latitude (especially in comparison to middle-class children). Parents appeared to believe that children would thrive naturally, without the benefit of special toys or lessons. These things might make children happy, but they were not, in these parents’ view, critical for children’s well-being. As a result, there was a separation between children’s and adults’ spheres.