Viviana Zelizer shows that through the end of the nineteenth century and into the early decades of the twentieth century, these practices were accompanied by beliefs supporting the importance of children working hard. If anything, the concern was that without specific training in “useful work,” children might grow up to be “paupers and thieves.”17 In children’s books and magazines, in which stories stressed “the virtues of work, duty, and discipline,” Zelizer notes, “The standard villain . . . was an idle child.”18 The period after 1920 saw a dramatic decline in children’s economic contributions, however, as child labor laws were put into place and a new vision of the “economically useless but sentimentally priceless child” took hold.19
Thus, although a definitive account of historical changes in children’s leisure practices remains to be written, it appears that it was for only a relatively brief historical period that children were granted long stretches of leisure time with unstructured play. In the period after World War II, white and Black children were permitted to play for hours on end with other neighborhood children, after school, during evenings, and on weekends. Other than going to church, the few organized activities children participated in (e.g., music lessons or Scouts) began at a later age than is typical today. The “institutionalization of children’s leisure” and the rise of concerted cultivation more generally are recent developments.20 Today’s parents are not transmitting practices they learned in their families of origin. Parents of the eighty-eight children in our study were born in the 1950s and 1960s. None reported having had a very active schedule of organized activities as a child. Rather, the middle-class parents in this study and, possibly throughout the country, appear to have been raised according to the logic of the accomplishment of natural growth.
In attempting to understand this historical shift, particularly the institutionalization of children’s leisure and the emphasis on “intensive mothering,” commentators often point to the impact of modern life, especially the impact of increasing “rationalization.”21 This view, termed the “McDonaldization of society” by George Ritzer, finds an increasing standardization of daily life, with an emphasis on efficiency, predictability, control, and calculability.22 Ritzer notes that these principles from the world of fast food have been adapted to other parts of social life, including Kidsports Fun and Fitness Club, Kinder Care, Kampgrounds of America, Toys ‘R’ Us, and other stores.23 Family life, too, is becoming increasingly rationalized, being
invaded by not only public schools, the courts, social service workers, gardeners, housekeepers, day-care providers, lawyers, doctors, televisions, frozen dinners, pizza delivery, manufactured clothing, and disposable diapers, but also, and more critically, by the ideology behind such institutions, persons, and products. They bring with them . . . the logic of . . . impersonal, competitive, contractual, commodified, efficient, profit-maximizing, self-interested relations.24
Busy affluent parents can hire chauffeurs to take children to their organized activities, hire educators at “Learning Centers” in shopping malls to help children do homework and improve in school, and hire personal shoppers to help buy and wrap holiday gifts. The services available for birthday parties (e.g., a special room at McDonald’s, an overnight at a science museum, or a professional party coordinator) are signs of the increasing rationalization of family life.
The rationalization of children’s leisure is evident in the proliferation of organized activities with a predictable schedule, delivering a particular quantity of experience within a specific time period, under the control of adults. That children’s time use has shifted from unstructured play to organized activities does not mean that families no longer have fun during their leisure hours. Many find the time spent together during soccer and baseball games, for example, to be very enjoyable. The point is that areas of family life are growing more systematic, predictable, and regulated than they have been in the recent past. Forces that have converged to bring about this change include increasing concerns about the safety of children who play unsupervised on local streets, rises in employment (resulting in adults being at home less), and a decline in the availability of neighborhood playmates due to a dropping birth rate and the effects of suburbanization, especially the increased size of homes and decreased density of housing.25
Greater emphasis on the use of reasoning in the home, particularly as a form of discipline, as well as interventions in institutions, can also be seen as a form of rationalization, particularly the well-documented trend of “scientific motherhood.” Still, any analysis of the rise of concerted cultivation must also, I believe, grapple with the changing position of the United States in the world economy, and the accompanying decline in highly paid manufacturing jobs and increase in less desirable service-sector jobs. This restructuring makes it very likely that when today’s children are adults, their standard of living will be lower than that of their parents. It means that there will be fewer “good jobs” and more “bad jobs,” and that the competition for them will be intense. Moreover, since children must be successful in school to gain access to desirable positions, many middle-class parents are anxious to make sure their children perform well academically. Institutional gatekeepers, such as college admissions officers, applaud extracurricular activities. Thus, many parents see children’s activities as more than interesting and enjoyable pastimes. They also provide potential advantages for children in the sorting process.
All of these factors may contribute to the rise of a new standard of child rearing in the middle class. As Hays shows, this new standard is legitimated in a variety of ways.26 Professionals actively support advancement of children’s creative and leisure talents, cognitive growth, and school performance through the active involvement of their parents as cultivators. The older logic of child rearing, the accomplishment of natural growth, receives less institutional support. If this analysis is correct, if there has been a shift in the cultural repertoires of child rearing, and if that change has been legitimated, why is there a class difference in child-rearing strategies? Why doesn’t everyone raise their children the same way?
THE ROLE OF RESOURCES
Parents’ economic resources helped create the class differences in child rearing discussed in this book. Children’s activities were expensive. A $25 enrollment fee, which middle-class parents dismissed as “insignificant,” “modest,” or “negligible,” was a formidable expense for all poor families and many in the working class. The enrollment fee was just the tip of the iceberg. Many activities also required special clothing. Stacey Marshall needed gymnastic leotards as well as a training warm-up suit. She had special bags to carry her equipment to and from the gym, and a balance beam at home. Participating in tournaments required paying special fees. Children’s hectic schedules increased the number of meals eaten out, as the families raced from one event to the next. Tournaments out of the local area resulted in special fees as well as hotel bills and restaurant bills. There were special end-of-season events, banquets, and gifts for the coaches. There were assorted hidden costs, such as car maintenance and gas. In 1994, the Tallingers estimated the cost (including all of the factors listed above, except car repair) of Garrett’s activities at $4,000 annually; nor was that figure unusual.27 Thus, in addition to disposable income for the cost of lessons and activities, families usually needed other advantages, such as reliable private transportation and flexibility in work schedules to be able to get children to events. These resources were disproportionately concentrated in middle-class families.