Jane, Lori, and Alexis laugh when they see Harold enter the room, and say “Yo, Harold! Go!” Someone whistles lowly. Someone else says, “Lookin good, Har.” Harold grins at his family, and as he walks, makes an attempt to appear cool and casual, as if all this fuss doesn’t mean so much to him.
Many of the children looked elated, smiling broadly at their families as they made their formal entrance. During the ceremony, some Lower Richmond parents erupted with joy when their children received special recognition; they yelled out “All Right!” or “Yes!” or the child’s name. Some parents stood up to applaud their children.
Even on this very happy occasion, however, feelings of distrust toward the school sometimes surfaced. A number of parents disapprovingly discussed how a few children had been banned from the ceremony for behavior problems. Billy Yanelli’s father and mother were sitting proudly in the audience (both having taken off from work). Although Mr. Yanelli told me, “I like this school” (particularly compared to the one that Billy was about to attend), his discomfort was apparent.
Big Billy Yanelli made a number of . . . derogatory . . . comments throughout the ceremony, either to himself or for the benefit of [Ms. Yanelli], who sat next to him—mostly ignoring him. Once, when a male teacher climbed the steps to the stage, Big Billy said: “He’s so stupid. What a goof.” At the beginning of the ceremony, as the principal adjusted the microphone and prepared to speak, Big Billy pretended to mimic her: “Okay, everyone is suspended.”
The celebration at Swan had a somewhat different feel. Many Swan children, including Garrett Tallinger and Melanie Handlon, smiled and seemed pleased, but they were not bursting with excitement. Those Swan parents who were dressed more than casually simply had on their work outfits (i.e., suits, skirts and jackets—a “professional” rather than dressy kind of look). Swan boys looked neat but also casuaclass="underline" a number wore polo shirts, some wore button-down shirts, and only a few had on ties. Girls wore what looked like nice Sunday dresses—not very frilly but pretty and neat. Educators gave out awards for accomplishments ranging from perfect attendance to special achievement in math. Swan parents conveyed mild and polite pride when their children were recognized; they clapped politely but briefly, took pictures, and stayed in their chairs.
The future also was portrayed differently at Swan:
Swan seemed much more hopeful and Lower Richmond more aware of danger and trouble kids might face in their lives. Swan songs were about how bright the future was, how many new doors would open for the kids, how exciting it all was. The first two songs sung at Lower Richmond had to do with confronting despair, jealousy, pain, and trouble, with waking up the next day ready to try again, with renewal for struggle, with how many kids were hurting in the world. One of the male teachers also gave an admonition to the kids to “keep their hands in their pockets next year” in middle school when someone taunted them. The emphasis appeared to be on a certain kind of behavior (restraint, “good citizenship,” avoiding fights, being respectful) rather than on academic achievement, as it was at Swan.
Of course, the parents themselves differed in how much education they had. For example, the Yanellis both went only through tenth grade. They hoped that their son Little Billy would go to a state college, but they were unsure. The middle-class families had little doubt that their children would attend college. Middle-class children, including Stacey Marshall, often chattered about which college they might want to go to when they were older. The Tallingers visited the campuses of Ivy League universities when they were in the area for soccer tournaments. Alexander Williams’s parents were helping one of his cousins pay for her education at an elite private university. Thus, for these middle-class children, it was a matter of which college they would attend. In these contrasting visions of the future, the fifth-grade graduation was a different milestone.
THE POWER OF SOCIAL CLASS
In the United States, people disagree about the importance of social class in daily life. Many Americans believe that this country is fundamentally open. They assume the society is best understood as a collection of individuals. They believe that people who demonstrate hard work, effort, and talent are likely to achieve upward mobility. Put differently, many Americans believe in the American Dream. In this view, children should have roughly equal life chances. The extent to which life chances vary can be traced to differences in aspirations, talent, and hard work on the part of individuals. This perspective rejects the notion that parents’ social location systematically shapes children’s life experiences and outcomes. Instead, outcomes are seen as resting more in the hands of individuals.
In a distinctly different but still related vein, some social scientists acknowledge that there are systemic forms of inequality, including, for example, differences in parents’ educational levels, occupational prestige, and income, as well as in their child-rearing practices. These scholars, however, see such differences within society as a matter of gradation. To explain unequal life outcomes, they see it as helpful to look at, for example, differences in mothers’ years of education or the range of incomes by households in a particular city. These different threads are interwoven in an intricate and often baffling pattern. Scholars who take this perspective on inequality typically focus on the ways specific patterns are related (e.g., the number of years of mothers’ schooling and the size of children’s vocabularies, or the number of years of mothers’ education and parental involvement in schooling). Implicitly and explicitly, social scientists who share this perspective do not accept the position that there are identifiable, categorical differences in groups. They do not believe that the differences that do exist across society cohere into patterns recognizable as social classes.
In this book, I have challenged both views. Rather than seeing society as a collection of individuals, I stressed the importance of individuals’ social structural location in shaping their daily lives. Following a well-established European tradition, I rejected analyses that see differences in American families as best interpreted as a matter of fine gradations. Instead, I see as more valuable a categorical analysis, wherein families are grouped into social categories such as poor, working class, and middle class. I argued that these categories are helpful in understanding the behavior of family members, not simply in one particular aspect but across a number of spheres. Family practices cohere by social class. Social scientists who accept this perspective may disagree about the number and type of categories and whether there should be, for example, an upper-middle-class category as well as a lower-middle-class one. Still, they agree that the observed differences in how people act can be meaningfully and fruitfully grouped into categories, without violating the complexity of daily life. My own view is that seeing selected aspects of family life as differentiated by social class is simply a better way to understand the reality of American family life. I also believe that social location at birth can be very important in shaping the routines of daily life, even when family members are not particularly conscious of the existence of social classes.