Although the Lower Richmond staff did not acknowledge (and may have been unaware of) the role of social class in shaping their ideal vision of how parents should interact with the school, their wishes amounted to a mandate for concerted cultivation. Mr. Tier’s expectation that Ms. Driver “beat him on the head” and take a more aggressive role in guiding Wendy’s education presupposed a set of educational and social skills not typically possessed by working-class mothers with high school educations. To match Ms. Marshall’s actions, for example, Wendy’s mother would have had to engage in extensive discussions about the substantive nature of her daughter’s educational problems. This in turn would have required a familiarity and facility with terminology such as “auditory reception,” “language arts skills,” and “decoding skills,” jargon far more specialized and complex than the term “tooth decay,” whose true meaning apparently had escaped Ms. Driver. And, even had she strengthened and expanded her vocabulary, she still would have needed confidence in her ability to reconcile the conflicting views of Wendy’s teachers. In a situation with many uncertainties, confronted by experts who did not agree about the best course of action, Ms. Driver would have needed a bedrock faith in herself as the person best able to determine the right course of action for Wendy. She would have needed to set aside any worries about making mistakes and have been willing to define her intervention as being as valuable, and possibly more valuable, than what would have happened had Wendy’s education been left to the school staff only.
In other situations, such as with the cable company and her landlord, Ms. Driver displayed exactly this sense of certainty. She identified certain actions on the part of others as unacceptable and persisted as long as necessary to achieve her goals. She demanded responses from these providers. But, intimidated by the professional expertise and authority of school personnel, she did not make similar demands with educators. She did not, for example, pressure the school to review Wendy’s situation more rapidly (in third grade) or push to have her daughter placed in full-time special education (in fourth grade) or insist that Wendy not be promoted (at the end of fourth grade). Instead, she worried, waited, and wondered what “the school” would do next.
CHAPTER 11
Beating with a Belt,
Fearing “the School”:
Little Billy Yanelli
The therapist that day . . . he says well you realize that me being a therapist and working for the state or whatever that if I find out you’re beating your child that I have to report that.
Now I go through different phases with Billy. I want to be the kind of parent that never hits my kid and everything but Billy gets so out of control that maybe he does need it once in a while. (Ms. Yanelli)
When the founders of the country were raised, children were routinely disciplined by physical force. By the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first, dominant child-rearing ideology suggests the importance of reasoning with children and giving children “appropriate choices.” Compared with earlier historical times, authoritarian child-rearing methods, particularly disciplining children through corporal punishment, have fallen out of favor.
Yet compliance with professional standards varies systematically rather than randomly. Parents who use belts are at risk for being considered abusive much more than parents who engage in verbal abuse of children (i.e., a mother who tells a child “I don’t want to be your mother anymore”). Schools, as arms of the state, selectively enforce child-rearing standards. This has important consequences for the comfort, trust, and experience of family members in these institutions.
In a white working-class neighborhood with narrow streets and narrow houses, “Little Billy” Yanelli lives with his mother and father (who are unmarried). They reside in a small two-bedroom brick house in the city. The front door is just a few steps from the curb and opens immediately into a small living room. The living room is dominated by a huge television with an extra-large screen that takes up most of the wall; the television is always on. With a sofa, recliner, love seat, and coffee table, space is at a premium. There is not really room for two people to walk through the room at the same time. The house (two bedrooms, one bathroom, one small living room, dining room, kitchen, and a finished basement) has a small yard where Mr. Yanelli, known to family members as “Big Billy,” grows tomatoes in the summer. The living room, as well as the entire house, is always immaculately kept. When field-workers comment on the orderliness, Ms. Yanelli replies: “Well this house is so small that if there’s one coat on a chair or a pair of shoes, it’s a mess.” Little Billy’s parents recently bought the house and renovated it. Mr. Yanelli did all of the work himself on nights and weekends.
Linda Yanelli is thirty-six but looks younger, in part because at home she often is dressed in denim cutoffs and a cotton T-shirt; she has bare feet and her brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Ms. Yanelli cleans houses in the suburbs (off the books) for $12 an hour. Her job is tiring. In teams of four, she and her co-workers move from house to house in her bosses’ car; she does not get a regularly scheduled lunch break. On Thursdays, for example, she doesn’t get home until after 6:00 P.M. because her team cleans nine houses in one day. As a result of his job as a house painter, Mr. Yanelli, a thin, quiet, man in his late thirties, is often dressed in paint-splattered pants and shirts.1 Someone who has been working since he was fourteen, he dislikes his work intensely, particularly since he switched to a new job with a boss he sees as demanding and greedy. He is up and out at work early in the morning and is often home by 4:30 P.M. He enjoys his son, however, and takes an active role in driving him to his baseball games, assisting the coach, and chastising Billy to swing at the ball. (He will yell, “Swing!” Shaking his head ruefully, he says, “He is afraid of the ball.”) Mr. Yanelli also plays cards with Little Billy. As he passes through the house, Mr. Yanelli will affectionately ruffle the top of Billy’s head, calling him “Muke,” a favorite nickname. In accord with the traditional gender division of labor, however, he is not involved at all in Billy’s child care or schooling: “it is her department.” Ms. Yanelli also has a twenty-one-year-old son, Manny, from a previous marriage who works and lives at home (although he spends quite a bit of time at his girlfriend’s house). When he is working, everyone gets along fine; when he is not working there can be tension between Mr. Yanelli and Manny.
Both of the Yanelli parents dropped out of high school. Neither of the adults has health insurance; the cost of getting sick is a constant cause of worry.2 When they are really sick, they go to the hospital emergency room, which can cost hundreds of dollars, and then pay off the bill, bit by bit. Money is always tight, although much less so than years ago when Ms. Yanelli was on welfare. Today, she is very proud of the fact that they have a credit card. They do not, however, have a checking account; all bills are paid with money orders. Both enjoy “playing the numbers” and regularly place small bets, as well as bets on the local football team. Occasionally they will “hit” a number; a $250 hit paid for their new dining room furniture.