When she was starting third grade I couldn’t find a Girl Scout troop for her to be in. She had been a Brownie I think four years. Fern was in a Girl Scout troop. Stacey wasn’t old enough to be a Girl Scout. So we went to this free night [laughs]. So Stacey . . . I wanted her to do something and it was a void . . . And I didn’t want her sittin’ in front of the TV.
By making inquiries, she discovered a township program that Stacey really enjoyed and in which she quickly revealed herself to be talented. When the gymnastic instructor suggests that Stacey develop her talents, Ms. Marshall begins looking for a setting for more advanced training. Not content to rely only on the instructor’s recommendation, Stacey’s mother also taps into her own social network.
And just listening to some of the parents. I started putting my ear to the grapevine, and I heard a number of parents mention, “Well, if the kid really likes gymnastics, you send them to Wright’s.”
While in this instance Ms. Marshal was gathering information on a recreational program, in other instances she was looking to solve educational problems (as when Stacey did not qualify for her school’s gifted program). As with middle-class parents in the sample as a whole, Ms. Marshall’s “grapevine” is rich with friends and relatives who are educators, psychologists, lawyers, and even doctors (Table C8, Appendix C). As a result, middle-class parents are more likely to have informal access to valuable information and advice from professionals and experts than are working-class and poor parents.
Finding a good program, verifying Stacey’s interest, and then enrolling her does not bring Ms. Marshall’s responsibilities to an end, however. Unlike in working-class and poor families, where children are granted autonomy to make their own way in organizations, in the Marshall family, most aspects of the children’s lives are subject to their mother’s ongoing scrutiny.
When Ms. Marshall becomes aware of a problem, she moves quickly, drawing on her work and professional skills and experiences. She displays tremendous assertiveness, doggedness, and, in some cases effectiveness, in pressing institutions to recognize her daughters’ individualized needs. Stacey’s mother’s proactive stance reflects her belief that she has a duty to intervene in situations in which she perceives that her daughter’s needs are not being met. This perceived responsibility applies across all areas of her children’s lives. She is no more (or less) diligent with regard to Stacey and Fern’s leisure activities than she is with regard to their experiences in school or church or the doctor’s office. This is clear in the way she handles Stacey’s transition from her township gymnastics classes to the private classes at Wright’s.
Ms. Marshall describes Stacey’s first session at the club as rocky:
The girls were not warm. And these were little . . . eight- and nine-year-old kids. You know, they weren’t welcoming her the first night. It was kinda like eyeing each other, to see, you know, “Can you do this? Can you do that?”
More important, Ms. Marshall reports that the instructor is brusque, critical, and not friendly toward Stacey. Ms. Marshall cannot hear what is being said, but she can see the interactions through a window. A key problem is that because her previous instructor had not used the professional jargon for gymnastic moves, Stacey does not know these terms. When the class ends and she walks out, she is visibly upset. Her mother’s reaction is a common one among middle-class parents: she does not remind her daughter that in life one has to adjust, that she will need to work even harder, or that there is nothing to be done. Instead, Ms. Marshall focuses on Tina, the instructor, as the source of the problem.
We sat in the car for a minute and I said, “Look, Stace,” I said. She said, “I-I,” and she started crying. I said, “You wait here.” The instructor had come to the door, Tina. So I went to her and I said, “Look.” I said, “Is there a problem?” She said, “Aww . . . she’ll be fine. She just needs to work on certain things.” Blah-blah-blah. And I said, “She’s really upset. She said you-you-you [were] pretty much correcting just about everything.” And [Tina] said, “Well, she’s got—she’s gotta learn the terminology.”
Ms. Marshall acknowledges that Stacey isn’t familiar with specialized and technical gymnastics terms. Nonetheless, she continues to defend her daughter.
I do remember, I said to her, I said, “Look, maybe it’s not all the student.” You know, I just left it like that. That, you know, sometimes teaching, learning and teaching, is a two-way proposition as far as I’m concerned. And sometimes teachers have to learn how to, you know, meet the needs of the kid. Her style, her immediate style was not accommodating to—to Stacey.
Here Ms. Marshall is asserting the legitimacy of an individualized approach to instruction. She frames her opening remark as a question (“Is there a problem?”). Her purpose, however, is to alert the instructor to the negative impact she has had on Stacey (“She’s really upset.”). Although her criticism is indirect (“Maybe it’s not all the student . . .”), Ms. Marshall makes it clear that she expects her daughter to be treated differently in the future. In this case, Stacey does not hear what her mother says, but she knows that her wishes and feelings are being transmitted to the instructor in a way that she could not do herself.
Moreover, in what is a common procedure in the Marshall home, Stacey’s mother pursued the problem. The very next morning she called the gymnastics school and spoke with the owner. She asked (having first checked with Stacey) that her daughter be moved to the advanced beginner class. That class, however, was already full. In many organizations, Stacey would have had to stay in the intermediate class. In this case, the owner accommodated the mother and daughter, assigning a second instructor to the advanced beginner class so that Stacey could join that group. So, this series of institutional interactions results in important gains for Stacey Marshalclass="underline" she gets access to a gymnastics class better suited to her skill and experience level; and she learns by observing her mother’s actions that it is reasonable to expect organizations to accommodate the specialized needs of an individual. As the next section shows, as Stacey’s classes in the new program progress, so too does her education in the art of interacting effectively with organizations.
TRANSMISSION OF SKILLS
Ms. Marshall is a conscious role model for Stacey, deliberately teaching her daughter strategies for managing organizational matters. Although it is hard to know how much Stacey absorbs her mother’s lessons in how to deal effectively with people in positions of power in organizations, or how much she might draw on those lessons in the future, exposure to such learning as a child has the potential to be a tremendous lifelong asset.4
It is important to remember, though, that just because strategies of concerted cultivation can produce such assets does not mean that this form of child rearing is “the best.” Every method of raising children is historically specific and subject to change. Concerted cultivation is neither “the only” way nor “the right” way to raise children. However, it is the way that contemporary powerful professionals such as child development specialists assert as the most appropriate and helpful approach to child rearing. In large part because of that endorsement, it is the method favored by the middle classes. Ms. Marshall continually “touches base” with Stacey’s instructor, not only learning Tina’s opinion but also providing the instructor with information about Stacey’s assessment of her experience in the class: