Being pregnant seemed to stabilize Katie. She reduced her drug use, cut back on “partying,” and made two efforts to return to high school (but ultimately dropped out). Motherhood has proved difficult, though. Katie describes herself as “not a good mother.” “I love [Nirani], but I’m not good with kids.” She thinks Jenna is a very good mother who “has more patience than me. . . . She prays to God and all that.” Katie explains that “Things irk me so bad—like to the point where it’ll make me want to hurt her [Nirani].” She says that an incident in which her anger spun dangerously out of control prompted her to ask Jenna to “take care of [Nirani] for a little bit.” This decision makes Katie feel “horrible,” but she reasons, “growing up with me right now is going to be a lot worse than how she could feel.” Katie’s goals are to earn a GED, get a good job, and have her own apartment: “I want everything to be right before I take [Nirani].”
Harold McAllister (African American, poor) and I meet in the apartment he shares with his brother, his brother’s girlfriend, and their three kids. Dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, Harold looks older than the others, perhaps because of his closely trimmed beard. He works the 4 P.M. to-midnight shift at a suburban chain restaurant (taking four buses, and two hours, to get there). Harold knows how to drive, but he does not have a driver’s license. “I got to get [around] to that real soon,” he says. He started at the restaurant five years ago, as a busboy. Now he is a waiter.
Harold began high school in a “school within a school” college prep program. He liked it but was removed after one year and reassigned to his school’s general education program. He is not sure why. He guesses it was because he had been late a few times and had gotten a D in English. Harold recalls his grades as “B’s and C’s” in the general education track. On the athletic front, high school was disastrous. Although during middle school Harold’s basketball prowess had earned him a ranking of seventh citywide, he was not selected for his high school team. He insists this was because the basketball coach (who also coached football) wanted him to play football. (Harold is built like a football player—he is broad shouldered, stands 5 feet 11 inches, and weighs 240 pounds.) He was devastated by the coach’s decision. He explains that he took the busboy job “to get [his] mind off basketball.” By his junior year, he was working full-time. Harold got home late, but because his mother always woke him in time for school, he always went. But when he began staying with his father (in order, Harold says, to avoid having to “deal with all those females”—his mother, his sisters, and their kids), who did not wake him up, he got to school less and less often. He dropped out six weeks before graduation. He hopes to go back to school someday.
Unlike many African American men who are high school dropouts, Harold has never been “locked up.”20 He had one close call. He was in a fast-food restaurant with a friend who had some marijuana. The police arrived. The officers were convinced Harold was involved in drug possession and sales. A bystander called his mom. She ran to the restaurant, and Harold was released to her. Reflecting on his old neighborhood, he says, “It is really bad down there; seventy percent of my friends are dead or in jail. It is crazy.” Harold feels that Blacks are treated differently from whites, particularly by the police. He recounts a racial profiling incident from his own life. Then he tells me, resignedly, that he does not “dwell on” this kind of experience.
Looking to the future, Harold says that by age twenty-five, he hopes to be married and expects to have children. He dreams of his own business, possibly a corner grocery store. He wants to earn enough money to be able to retire at thirty-five.
SECTION 3. RECURRING THEMES AND PERSISTENT PATTERNS OF DIFFERENCE IN DAILY LIFE
As the portraits make clear, all the young adults followed life paths that were fully embedded in a larger social context; no one grew into adulthood in isolation. The findings that emerged in the follow-up study regarding class differences in everyday life are highly consistent with those of other studies. Many of the patterns I found in the youths’ life paths are echoed in national data.21 As Table D1 in Appendix D shows, the young adults from middle-class families were more likely to graduate from high school, apply to four-year colleges, gain admission, and enroll. This scenario fits three of the middle-class youths; the fourth (Melanie) accomplished each step but decided not to enroll in the four-year school. (Her community college effort also fizzled.) The parents and kids in the working-class and poor families had college aspirations, but these goals were generally not realized. Siblings tended to follow similar paths (see Table D2). Although parents’ situations changed over the decade since the original research (see Table D3), none of the families experienced a dramatic shift in life circumstances. Still, differences between the working-class and poor families were more noticeable by the time the youth had become adolescents. When the kids were in elementary school, economic differences between these families were apparent in the presence (or absence) of food shortages, transportation options, and neighborhood amenities. But, in terms of the specific aspects of the children’s daily lives that were the focus of the original study, it was difficult to discern key differences. By adolescence, there were cleavages in the youths’ high school experiences. Working-class families were better able to avoid unattractive schools than were poor families. Wendy’s grandfather, for example, paid her tuition at a Catholic school. Also, the youth from the poor families entered the labor market earlier and in a more sustained fashion than did the working-class youth.
Below, I review the most important patterns of difference found across all three social classes, grouped by specific areas of the kids’ lives: high schools; networks, work, and resources; organized activities; neighborhoods and violence; and awareness of their own and others’ social class position.
High Schools
Most of the youth stayed in the same general geographic area as they grew into young adulthood. The differences between the schools they attended continued and, in some instances, appeared to increase.
The neighborhood school for most of the working-class and poor kids was Lower Richmond High School, a large, older, urban public high school that at the time had metal detectors, issues with drugs, fights, and poor attendance. About one-half of the student body came from low-income families. In the follow-up interviews, all of the families whose children were slated to attend Lower Richmond deemed it inferior or, as one parent put it, a “bad school.” Its status as a neighborhood school further diminished Lower Richmond High’s appeal because in this district, going to a neighborhood school was uniformly seen as less desirable than attending a magnet high school, the latter having a reputation for academic quality. Other factors added to Lower Richmond’s image as a last resort. Oversight appeared to be lax. Many students reported that instead of attending classes, they routinely remained in the cafeteria for the entire day. The district reported the graduation rate based on the proportion of students who began their senior year and graduated in June (70 percent).22 (This rate was lower for white males than for African American males.) This figure, of course, did not include the students who dropped out or left to get a GED before their senior year. Some estimate that the overall four-year graduation rate was around 55 percent at that time. Lower Richmond offered a much more basic and slow-moving level of curriculum than that found in the suburban high schools the middle-class adolescents attended. Only about one-quarter of students were found to be advanced or proficient on the state reading and math curriculum. There were no AP (advanced placement) courses, and SAT preparation was not offered in the district. Districtwide SAT scores averaged a combined total of 756 [1134]. There was one guidance counselor per 430 students.23 Although teaching at Lower Richmond and other city schools was widely seen as more challenging than at suburban high schools, average faculty salaries were about 10 percent lower than in suburban districts such as Swan. Per pupil expenditure was about 70 percent of expenditures at Swan and other nearby suburban school districts. In the course of my follow-up research, I learned that the school offered a program to help students with college applications. None of the families mentioned this service during the follow-up interviews.