Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [179]
Some problems middle-class parents could not fix. For example, Ms. Marshall could only commiserate with her daughter when she got a low grade in an important premed course. The course grade was impossible to change. Similarly, despite daily reminders from her mother, Melanie simply stopped attending her community college courses. She did not formally withdraw, so she failed the semester. In these situations, parents had to let their children find their own way. Thus, being middle-class did not prevent young adults from facing important challenges. Still, when the youth ran into significant problems, their parents often were ready, willing, and able to intervene with officials in institutions, and these interventions often helped.
Working-Class and Poor Families: Accomplishment of Natural Growth Continues For working-class and poor youth, whose parents appeared to continue the pattern of accomplishment of natural growth, educational careers were handled at school, by teachers and counselors, and the students themselves.44 Educational decision-making was not a family affair. For example, Harold started high school in a college-prep program:
[L]ike ninth grade, I was in the magnet charter, that was like the top charter—in the school they do all college-bound work. So I was cool. The magnet was in just like math and science.
He expected to continue in this college-prep program, although he had received a D in English his freshman year and had been late to school a few times. On the first day of his sophomore year, however, the teacher told Harold that he was no longer in that program:
So they kind of kicked me out [of] that charter and put me into another charter. The other charter, the work was easier, so I started, you know how you just start chillin’ more, so if I could have stayed in [the] magnet, I would have been cool. The work was harder, but that was like on my pace. It gave me a challenge.
Harold would have preferred to stay in the other program; had he been middle-class, he might have. Other researchers have shown middle-class parents successfully intervening to secure their children’s position in high-ranking courses, even when the children do not qualify.45 In Harold’s case, however, there was no such intervention. His parents thought the school would make decisions that were in their son’s best interests.
Moreover, even when the youth requested their parents’ help, successful outcomes were not a certainty. For example, Harold was an avid and talented athlete. He loved basketball, but he had the build of a football player. At his high school, the same teacher coached the football and basketball teams. Worried about damaging his knees, Harold refused to try out for the football team. When, despite being a formidable player, he was not selected for the basketball team, Harold was devastated. He was convinced that the decision reflected the coach’s anger with him for not playing football. After talking to the coach and appealing to the school’s principal proved unsuccessful, Harold wanted to transfer to a different high school, where he could play on a basketball team. He had played with some of the players from that school in a city league: “I knew like a couple of players on their basketball team. . . . I’ve never been a problem child; . . . my grades were average or above average.”
From his perspective, transferring to another public high school seemed a viable option.46 Because there was considerable paperwork involved, he needed his father’s assistance. But Harold’s father’s approach to child rearing precluded this type of involvement. Mr. McAllister