The girls and their parents (along with two guinea pigs, Scratch and Tiny) live on a quiet, circular street lined with large, recently built, two-story suburban homes with a market value of about $200,000 each. The Marshalls’ neighbors include other Black middle-class families as well as white ones. Their beige-colored house has a small lawn and flowers in the front and a large lawn in the back (the girls are pleading with their parents to install a pool). Along with the family’s two cars (a Volvo and a large Sable station wagon), the driveway is home to a basketball hoop. Fern often plays ball there with her friends; sometimes Mr. Marshall joins in. Inside the house are four bedrooms, two and one-half baths, a formal living room with a piano and African art decorating the walls, and a “great room” that opens into the dining area and a large kitchen. This family living area, which is light and airy, has a relaxed feel to it, with a television, director’s chair, and comfortable tan corduroy couch on which the girls may leave a book or a Walkman. A gymnastics balance beam is resting on the floor; people step over it as they move through the family room area.
Each of the girls has her own bedroom, and in each there is a television and a telephone, along with the girls’ collections of CDs, Walkmans, radios, and other electronic toys. In part because of Ms. Marshall’s work, there is a computer in the house. Although the Marshalls’ income is around $100,000 per year, the family, especially Ms. Marshall, often worries about money. We heard many comments about the cost of things and about the lack of job security in the computer industry. The company Ms. Marshall works for has downsized in recent years. She has kept her position, but she knows people who have not.
The Marshalls’ well-to-do, racially integrated, suburban neighborhood is a transitional area. It is near the boundary with the central city and with a large, all-Black middle-class area; on the other side lies a predominantly white residential area. Stacey and Fern attend a local public school that is part of a district known for having good schools; most of the families in the district are white, but about one-quarter are Black, and there is a sprinkling of Asian and Hispanic families. The racial balance of the girls’ daily lives (and of their parents’ lives, as well) varies across settings. In many interactions, all of the key players are Black. Ms. Marshall explains that the girls had many very close white friends when they were younger, but over the years, racial barriers have become more prominent. For Fern, the turning point came in middle school; for Stacey, the shift is just occurring. Their social lives now exclusively involve other African American girls who live in their immediate neighborhood or just a few minutes away. The beauty parlor where the girls go on many Saturdays is all Black. The church the family attends is all Black. The Marshalls also frequently socialize with a close friend of Mr. Marshall who lives in an all-Black part of the city. There are, however, some important and time-consuming parts of the Marshalls’ lives that take place in predominantly white settings, including shopping in retail stores, participating in organized activities, going to summer camps, and taking part in classes in the gifted program at school.
The family is busy. The hectic pace of their lives is similar to that of the Tallinger and Williams families. Gender plays a powerful role in determining the kinds of organized activities in which the children participate. But, in middle-class families, the sheer number of such activities does not appear to vary by gender. Stacey is active in gymnastics. Fern is active in basketball. Both girls attend Sunday school; Stacey is in the church youth choir, which rehearses on Friday nights and performs every third Sunday. Both girls are “junior ushers” at church. During the school year, Fern takes piano lessons; until quite recently, Stacey also took piano. During the summer, the girls move from one elaborate summer camp to another (e.g., gymnastics camp, basketball camp, and horseback riding camp). It is their mother who coordinates the girls’ many different activities.
Like Mr. and Ms. Williams, Mr. and Ms. Marshall prefer to reason with their children rather than to issue directives. Although we occasionally saw the parents exhibit nonverbal frustration, we never heard them yell at the girls or hit them or threaten to hit them. Rather, they seem committed to the idea of helping their children develop as unique, and uniquely talented, individuals. Mr. and Ms. Marshall are reluctant to squelch Stacey’s and Fern’s thoughts or actions, even when the girls’ behavior might strike others as being rude toward adults. The example below describes an episode at the home of close friends, where Ms. Marshall and the field-worker stopped to drop off the girls. The friends’ twenty-year-old son, Mark (whose relationship to Stacey and Fern is similar to that of a cousin), is visiting from California and is having a birthday.
Mark asked everyone how church was. The girls gave a less than enthusiastic reply. Tom (Mark’s father) said, “Now, how about some ice cream and cake, people?” Lorrie and I were trying to extricate ourselves from the proceedings. [Stacey was] sitting in a chair playing with one of those water toys that squirt a jet of air, and the goal is to get all the rings onto one stick. It seemed that Stacey was in a real hurry to have us out of there, because she said, “Good-bye, Mom.”
There is more chatter and more delay as additional attempts are made to encourage Ms. Marshall and the field-worker to stay and join the party:
Then, Stacey said, “Just leave, Mom—I can’t take much more of you.” Even Fern was a little taken aback by that—she told Stacey to hush up. And Tom looked at her disapprovingly as he went to answer the phone that had just started to ring. Lorrie mounted no defense of her own, just sighed, looked at Mark, and said, “Mark, you wanna take them back with you?” Everyone laughed, and Stacey said, “I’ll go to California—can I go to Disneyland?”3
If Stacey’s mother is embarrassed or dismayed by her daughter’s remark, she doesn’t show it. Unlike parents in working-class or poor families, who are comfortable issuing directives, neither Mr. nor Ms. Marshall normally discourages either of their daughters from expressing their feelings simply because those feelings might dismay other adults. Moreover, in other settings, Ms. Marshall directly instructs the girls in strategies for interacting with adults. As we see next, she also works to bring about changes in the way other adults interact with Stacey and Fern.
SELECTING AND CUSTOMIZING CHILDREN’S
LEISURE ACTIVITIES
Most middle-class parents are committed to involving their children in a steady schedule of organized activities attuned to the children’s particular interests. Such activities often last only a matter of weeks; many change with each season. And, in the summer, the number of choices and the amount of time available both rise steeply. Finding out about activities, assessing their suitability, meeting enrollment deadlines, and coordinating transportation is a time-consuming act of labor. In most homes, it is mothers, not fathers, who do this work. This is true even when the mothers are employed full time. Ms. Marshall, for instance, who enrolled her girls in a series of different summer camps, did all of the coordinating and scheduling. Fern’s and Stacey’s camps were located in different parts of the suburbs, and they had different registration dates, forms to fill out, precamp requirements (physicals), specialties, and directors. Although Mr. Marshall will share in the driving if requested, Mr. and Ms. Marshall agree that it is overwhelmingly Ms. Marshall who handles the girls’ lives and their activities, as well as any complaints about Fern’s or Stacey’s institutional experiences.
Ms. Marshall’s efforts on behalf of her daughters are not unusual. Most middle-class mothers undertake similar labor with respect to organized activities. The way in which Stacey came to be involved in gymnastics, for example, is typical in that it takes effort by the mother.