Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [172]
I had a friend who I grew up [with] here that lived here and then moved up there. He’s a whole different person now that he moved up there. He’s going to college, he dressed different, he’s nicer than the people who live around here.
Billy was convinced that it was the move to a school in a middle-class neighborhood that had made the difference:
If he lived down here, he wouldn’t really have made it through high school. Because I went to high school with him, at Lower Richmond. And he was going nowhere. He was in the lunchroom with me every day. And as soon as he moved, he changed.
Witnessing this transformation firsthand made an impression on Billy. When I asked him if there was anything he wished had been different in his childhood, he said, “I wish I lived in a different neighborhood. Up there [where his friend now lived] somewhere.” He then added:
They seem like better people than us a little bit. I think they have it a lot more easier. They have it a lot more easier in terms of life.
Billy’s comments show his awareness of middle-class pathways, and of the difference between his life and the lives of middle-class young adults. Working-class and poor young adults appeared to have absorbed some of the “hidden injuries of class,” including feelings of a lack of dignity and respect associated with their social position.33 (Note that Billy has internalized the idea that middle-class people are “better people than us.”) Put differently, while there is ample evidence that the rules of institutions are not neutral and that they create important advantages for some groups and not others, the ways in which cultural practices comply with institutional rules is often obscured. The ideology of individual accomplishment leads middle-class young adults to see their actions as tied to their own accomplishments. (As Alexander Williams put it, “I know that I worked really hard.”) Although they were vaguely aware of their resource-rich family backgrounds, the middle-class young adults in this study did not attribute any of their success to the pure luck of having been born into an advantaged class. Instead, they focused on their own hard work and individual achievement.34 They could not see the social class privileges that were facilitating their success, every step of the way. Not surprisingly, they mistakenly thought that what was hidden did not exist.
SECTION 4. HOW CLASS CONTINUED TO MATTER:
NEGOTIATING WITH INSTITUTIONS—SUPERFICIALLY
SIMILAR, DEEPLY DIVERGENT
At a superficial level there were similarities in the approaches the middle-class, working-class, and poor parents took as they tried to help their children. Like all parents, the working-class and poor parents wanted their children to be successful in life, which now often requires getting a college education. These parents saw themselves as being helpful and as providing their children with assistance and intervention, including in school affairs. They were affronted by any suggestion that they typically do not “fight for their children” with respect to education. Like the middle-class parents, they were concerned with their children’s progress and success in school.
At a deeper level, however, there was a class divergence in informal information about how institutions, including schools, function. For instance, what parents knew about the schedule and timing of institutional deadlines, what skills they had for achieving the goal of a given intervention, and what resources they could draw on to make sure their children’s interests were best served were all shaped by class position.35 These and other important class differences in how families negotiate with institutions have not been sufficiently examined in the social science literature.
Middle-class parents, especially the mothers, appeared to embrace the idea that it was their responsibility to carefully manage every step of their children’s transition to college.