Ms. Marshall not only had an idea about the nature of the problem, but she also had in mind the proper organizational solution.
His approach was a bit different than what I told him I thought he should have taken. He said, “Well,” he said, “If you were calling earlier, we could have put a camera on the bus.” I said, “I’m not asking you to put a camera on the bus; I’m asking you to let this man know that the children perceive something and that parents, at least one parent, is aware of something that he said.” He went into the fact that our school district subcontracts the busing service. . . . (This meant that, legally, the district could not speak directly to the driver.) I said, “Well, next thing you do is call the supervisor.” (emphasis added)
In the fall, Ms. Marshall plans to call the transportation administrator before school starts to find out who will be driving the school bus. In the meantime, she seems distressed and somewhat at a loss as to what to say when Stacey and Fern express concerns about Art, stressing only that they have to “judge a person as a person” as they make their way in the world.
A CRUCIAL DIMENSION OF CONCERTED CULTIVATION:
OVERSEEING INSTITUTIONS
In the theoretical language of Pierre Bourdieu, both Black and white middle-class parents, and mothers in particular, routinely scanned the horizon for opportunities to activate their cultural capital and social capital on behalf of their children.7 By shrewdly framing their interventions in ways that institutions such as schools and public and private recreational programs found compatible with their organizational processes, parents could gain important advantages for their children. These benefits go beyond specific short-term goals, such as securing a place in the classroom of “the best” fourth-grade teacher or getting into “the best” gymnastics program. By teaching their daughters and sons how to get organizations to meet their individualized needs, white and Black middle-class mothers pass along skills that have the potential to be extremely valuable to their children in adulthood. These are class-based advantages. As later chapters will show, the institutional relationships forged by working-class and poor families differ in important ways from those of middle-class parents, Black and white.
Among middle-class families, race played a role, not in terms of whether or how parents intervened in their children’s organizational lives, but rather, in the kinds of issues that they kept their eyes on and in the number of potential problems parents and children faced. Middle-class Black parents—whose children tend to spend a large part of their daily lives in predominantly white environments—were attuned to issues of racial exclusion and insensitivity on the part of other children as well as adults. Ms. Marshall and other African American parents were also alert to the possibility that whites might have low expectations for their children, be it in gymnastics or math. This vigilance meant that Black middle-class parents, mothers especially, undertook more labor than did their white middle-class counterparts, as they worried about the racial balance and the insensitivity of other children, and framed appropriate responses to their own children’s reactions. From time to time, children and parents both encountered difficult and painful situations, such as the one the Marshall girls faced when they rode the school bus. Acknowledging the legitimacy of their children’s observations while still trying to preserve hope for a racially integrated society where people are treated equally was an ongoing challenge for Ms. Marshall and other Black middle-class mothers.
There could be important benefits—or profits—for children when their mothers engaged in concerted cultivation by overseeing, criticizing, and intervening in their institutional lives. Stacey was in the gifted program when she otherwise would not have qualified, she was able to participate in an advanced beginner gymnastics class with additional staffing due to her mother’s interventions, and she was in the area’s best gymnastic and horseback riding camps thanks to her mother’s research. Occasionally Stacey did not appreciate her mother’s efforts, but for the most part she appreciated having her mother smooth the way. For the most part, Ms. Marshall’s interventions did seem to make things easier for her daughter. This kind of positive connection between intervention and outcome was not always the case in other families, however. The next chapter, which describes the battles over homework that the Handlon family endured, shows the more difficult side of middle-class parents’ commitment to intervening in their children’s institutional lives.
CHAPTER 9
Concerted Cultivation
Gone Awry:
Melanie Handlon
“I just figure, if kids didn’t have homework, life would be easy.” (Ms. Handlon)
In the middle class, children’s activities outside of the home often penetrate deeply into the heart of family life and in so doing create opportunities for conflict. For the Handlons, it is homework that poses the most consistent threat to household harmony. Homework conflicts occur, or are mentioned, during virtually every visit field-workers make to the Handlon home. Ms. Handlon’s observation that “life would be easy” if it weren’t for homework sums up the enormous impact the issue has on this family.
Like the Tallingers, Marshalls, and Williamses, the Handlons have important forms of social, economic, and cultural capital. They are well positioned to intervene in their children’s institutional lives. Some of the strategies Mr. and Ms. Handlon pursue are familiar components of concerted cultivation. For example, much like Ms. Marshall, Ms. Handlon tries to ensure the academic success of her daughter, Melanie, by tailoring Melanie’s classroom experiences. Unlike Ms. Marshall, though, Ms. Handlon makes only intermittent contact with school staff and is only partly successful in achieving the accommodations she seeks. What is most striking about the Handlons’ approach to child rearing is the emphasis they put on activating their resources inside the home. Ms. Handlon makes sustained, intense efforts in the area of homework. She expends large quantities of time and energy each weekday afternoon, trying to help Melanie complete her assignments. Ironically, this strategy yields few positive results. It pits mother against daughter, emotionally exhausting both, yet seems to yield few institutional profits.
THE HANDLON FAMILY
June Handlon, a thin, middle-aged woman with wavy red hair, has a relaxed way about her. Her husband, Harold, is a tall, friendly man with a boyish grin. Although he is an enthusiastic golfer, Mr. Handlon nevertheless is about fifty pounds overweight. He has an M.A. in credit and financial management and works as a credit manager in a major corporation. Ms. Handlon completed two years of junior college and is employed as a secretary by the Sylvan Presbyterian Church. She works thirty hours per week.
The Handlons have three children: Harry, an eighth-grader; Tommy, a sixth-grader at the nearby middle school; and Melanie, the focal child, a fourth-grader at the neighborhood elementary school. Harry is tall and thin, with longish brown hair that is mostly hidden under a nearly ever-present baseball cap (worn backward); he loves country music, street hockey, and, most of all, auto racing. Tommy, by contrast, prefers theater and plays to sports. Melanie resembles neither of her brothers. Field notes from the first visit to the Handlon home describe Melanie this way:
Melanie answers the door with a shy smile. She is young and maybe 4’ 4” tall. Her hair is long and blond. . . . She has a thin white plastic headband on her head, which pulls her hair back from her face. Her face is pudgy; she has chubby cheeks, which make her eyes seem very small and squinted. She wears a purple turtleneck and matching purple knit pants. The clothes fit her tightly and reveal that she has a young potbelly.