Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [137]
I felt he was being given the wrong message . . . that this was acceptable behavior. And I said that to her. That’s really giving him the wrong message . . . I tried to explain that even though I could appreciate the fact that she wanted him to stand up for himself, that this kind of behavior—fighting—is against school rules. There are people here, if he is having a problem, who will help him. By the same token, Billy has to take responsibility for how he triggers aggressive behaviors in other children.
Ms. Franklin, while noting that Ms. Yanelli “was not unique in her attitude” felt that to “give a child permission to fight” gives him “carte blanche . . . anytime any minor thing happens.” The counselor also objected to the traditional division of labor, wherein Mr. Yanelli was not involved in child care for Billy (a very common pattern in earlier decades). She found the family to be deficient in this arena as well: “I certainly don’t think that it [his father’s lack of involvement] helps Billy at all. First of all, I think parents need to work together in terms of raising children. I think again it gives Billy the wrong message.”
These differences in parents’ relationships to school—in other words, in the degree of continuity or distance between the culture of child rearing at home and the standards encoded in the school—appeared to surface regularly in family life. As with Wendy Driver’s parents, working-class parents such as the Yanellis experienced a sense of distance and distrust, of exclusion and risk, with schools. While both appeared relaxed, chatty, and friendly with other service providers, including the person from whom Ms. Yanelli got her money orders and lottery tickets on Saturday morning, restaurant personnel, and receptionists, they both appeared to be distrustful of the school. Indeed, Ms. Yanelli “hated it” and often felt bullied.
I found a note in his school bag this morning and it said, I’m going to kill you because you didn’t give me what I wanted and, uh, you’re dead and mother-f-er and your mother is this and your father is that and your grandmom is this. So, I started shaking. I couldn’t even wait until 9:00. I just said, oh, my God, I don’t believe this. Now, Billy is always getting in trouble for doing things but when it comes to the other kids doing it to him, it’s a different story. And I was all ready to go over there prepared for the counselor and to say, yea, I’m tryin’ because I am and I got so upset I went over there and said, like, what about these other kids and what they do and they said the reason they do what they do to Billy is because Billy makes them do it. So they had an answer for everything.
Compared to Ms. Marshall, or even Ms. Handlon, who felt relatively effectual in school interactions, Ms. Yanelli found herself completely powerless and frustrated:
INTERVIEWER: So how did you feel about that answer?
MS. YANELLI: I hate the school. I hate it. I tried to get him into Catholic. I have a girlfriend who has a little boy who has the same problems and she put him in Catholic School and his whole life turned around. But, Big Bill isn’t Catholic and they said they didn’t have any room for him so it’s like, every day of my life I’m struggling to get this kid straightened out. It’s my life. It’s every day. I’m at work and I’m thinking, what’s going on? Uh, what can I do tomorrow to make things better? It’s just a constant thing.
Ms. Yanelli keenly felt her lower social status, as she expressed after a parent-teacher conference with Mr. Tier, Billy’s fourth-grade teacher:
I wanted to ask why he pulls Billy’s hair. Why does he pick up Billy’s book and throw it across the classroom and say, “You’re too slow.” . . . I didn’t get to talk about the things that I wanted to talk about . . . I’m not very professional. I can’t use the words I want to use. Just because they are professional doesn’t (voice drops) mean that they are so smart.3
Mr. Yanelli shared her frustration, expressing