MOM: Come on! Tomorrow you’ve got a big day. (Billy didn’t move.)
Mom went in the other room and got a brown leather belt. She hit Billy twice on the leg . . . Billy was sitting between Big Billy and [the researcher]. Big Billy and [his friend] Tom watched. She said, “Get up right now. Tomorrow I can’t get you up in the morning. Get up right now.” Billy got up and ran up the steps.
In all of these extended interactions there were elements of reasoning, in the sense that Ms. Yanelli explained why she demanded various behaviors from Billy. Nevertheless, the fundamental process emphasized a series of directives (i.e., “Billy shower,” “you’re done”). Most important, when the mother felt her son was not sufficiently responsive, she found the force of physical discipline to be a valuable resource. Although Mr. Yanelli was an observer, rather than participant, in these interactions he was supportive of the approach. Indeed, from time to time, if Billy was dragging his feet on a task, his father would comment to no one in particular, “He needs to be beat!” In an interview, Ms. Yanelli indicated that her use of a belt varied enormously; she estimated that over the previous two weeks, she had used it once a week. While we were visiting, it would come up from time to time depending on how the day was going, but we observed her hit with a belt or threaten to hit with a belt at least once a week.4 In some working-class families, the lines were clearer. It is also important to stress that some working-class families in the study did not use hitting or belts. Thus, there was important variation within the class. But this form of discipline was not observed in middle-class families.5
To return to the ideas discussed in Chapter 2, the school selectively validated certain cultural practices as legitimate. Other practices, such as hitting children, while virtually universal in other historical periods, were deemed unacceptable. Adherence to the practices of the accomplishment of natural growth, rather than concerted cultivation, had important consequences when the families interacted with the school. The Yanelli family keenly felt the school to be a threatening force. In other words, their failure to use elaborate reasoning (a cultural practice) was transformed into a lack of resources when they confronted school authorities. They felt worried, powerless, and scared.
For example, Little Billy’s mother was worried that the school might turn her in to the state. Because of behavior problems at school, the educators stridently insisted that the school therapist who regularly visited the school see Little Billy. Once Billy’s mother met with the school counselor, however, he warned her, as noted at the beginning of the chapter, that he was legally required to turn her in to government officials if he found that she was engaging in child abuse. Ms. Yanelli felt rightfully threatened, since she felt that, as noted above, “Billy gets so out of control that maybe he does need it once in a while.”
I said to the therapist, you know, we’ll be in [the grocery store] once in a while and Billy will slide down the aisle on his stomach and I’ll take him by the hair and I’ll pull him down the aisle. Is that child abuse? . . . So, am I going to have people over here saying I abuse my child if Billy sits in a class with him and says my mom pulled my hair? . . . I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to take it as it comes. But there are times when I chase him up the stairs with a belt in my hand. I do.
This clash, between the parents’ ideas of what Billy needs and the school standards for child rearing, created small crises in the home. One day in May, for example, I stopped by for a visit (after the formal observations were over) to find Ms. Yanelli deeply upset. She had been disciplining him, and Billy had raised his arm to block the impact of his mother’s belt, ending up with three very distinct red marks on his forearm from where it had landed. His mother was frantic that “he had to go school that way.” She was agitated, pacing around the kitchen smoking a cigarette, trying to figure out what to do.6
In short, Ms. Yanelli’s failure to use reasoning and her adoption of a belt made her vulnerable, since she moved in a “field” (the school) that privileged reasoning. If she had lived a century earlier, the use of a belt would not have been so problematic. Today, however, it carries a potentially catastrophic risk: that her son could show the teacher his marks on his arm, she could be arrested for child abuse, and her son could be put in foster care temporarily or permanently. Regardless of the likelihood of this sequence occurring, Ms. Yanelli was worried about the actions of the school.
Thus, different family backgrounds engender different levels of benefit in educational fields. In this instance, the cost to working-class families for their lack of capital takes the form of an ongoing feeling of the threat of a looming catastrophe. This gap in the connections between working-class and poor families and schools is important. It undermines their feeling of trust or comfort at school, a feeling that other researchers have argued is pivotal in the formation of effective and productive family-school relationships.7
TAKING STOCK
Middle-class parents (including wealthier members of the middle class) such as the Marshalls, Williamses, and Tallingers often exuded confidence in their interactions with school officials. They did not appear to hold similar fears of the school. The idea that authorities would “come and take my kids away” was never expressed in any observation of or interview with middle-class parents in the way it repeatedly appeared among working-class and poor families. For example, after returning from an out-of-state soccer tournament for Garrett, Ms. Tallinger recounted that she and some other parents had left the children in a hotel room with a video and a cellular phone and gone out to dinner at a restaurant about a block away. She told me in a light tone with a smile on her face, “Don’t turn us in!” Overall, the demeanor of Garrett’s mother was vastly different from that of Little Billy’s mother. She was joking about the matter rather than treating it gravely. More to the point, middle-class parents never gave any indication that they worried about what the school could do to them. They did not appear to see themselves in the vulnerable position that gave rise to so much fear and worry on the part of Little Billy’s parents. Thus, their use of reasoning as a child-rearing strategy had an invisible benefit: it put them in sync with patterns of dominant cultural repertoires. This facilitated their ease with school officials.
In sum, these standards are developed by professionals and encoded in schools. In other words, social workers, psychologists, medical doctors, and other professionals have issued standards for proper child rearing and caution about what constitutes incorrect child rearing.8 Teachers and administrators in schools have adopted these standards. Moreover, the schools, for better or worse, are an arm of the state, and are therefore legally required to report children they believe to be abused or neglected. Since school attendance is compulsory for young children, families cannot avoid the school or, indirectly, the eyes of state officials. In this context, the middle-class families—with their greater likelihood of adopting professionals’ standards—appear to enjoy largely invisible benefits not available to working-class and poor families.
CHAPTER 12
The Power and Limits
of Social Class
At the end of fifth grade, the children looked forward with trepidation and excitement to their transition to being with “big kids” in the local middle school. Lower Richmond and Swan schools each separately marked this life transition with a graduation ceremony, held on hot, sunny days in June. At Lower Richmond, there was tremendous enthusiasm for the ceremony, particularly on the part of the children and their families. Many parents arrived at school carrying bouquets of flowers and clusters of circular, shiny silver balloons emblazoned with phrases such as “CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATE!” Mothers, especially African American mothers, were in starched, immaculate, pale-colored suits and outfits of the style often worn to weddings, church, and special events. The girls, including Wendy Driver and Tara Carroll, wore frilly dresses. A number of girls wore prom dresses. Billy Yanelli was in a formal jacket, slacks, white shirt, and tie. Harold McAllister was less formal but no less carefully prepared in an assiduously ironed, print dress shirt, slacks, and dress shoes. The school provided yellow carnation wrist corsages for the girls and boutonnieres for the boys. In the “cafetorium,” parents, grandmothers, young children, and older siblings sat on children’s chairs, reading the list of graduates, chatting, and laughing together. To the strains of a scratchy “Pomp and Circumstance,” the children entered in a formal march: from opposing sides of the auditorium, two children, each at the same moment, began a promenade (step, pause, step, pause). Some of the boys, including Harold McAllister, had a pained expression on their faces when beginning the processional. When Harold heard family members hooting, he flashed a grin, and then adopted a look of studied casualness.