Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [38]
The Tallinger children, like many of their middle-class peers, frankly state their preferences regarding siblings. References to “hating” a family member are common and elicit no special reaction, either from other children or adults. For example, one evening when Spencer and Sam are out in the front yard playing softball with their teenage baby-sitter Frankie (and a field-worker),
Spencer asks Sam who he hated the most. Sam said Garrett. Spencer told Sam to pretend he was hitting [with the bat] Garrett’s head. Frankie said, “Sam, you told me that you hated Spencer the most.” Spencer repeats, “Pretend it’s Garrett’s head.”
The open displays of hostility between siblings that we observed in the middle-class families we visited had no real equivalent in the working-class and poor homes. Siblings in those families clearly annoyed one another, but we never heard the frank, even casual, references to hatred that were common in middle-class homes. Likewise, the middle-class pattern of noisy sibling conflicts resolved by adult intervention was not common in working-class and poor families. In the latter, sibling conflict was both less vociferous and less likely to occur in a setting in which an adult was present.
THE RELATIVE UNIMPORTANCE OF RELATIVES
The Tallinger family’s social life is organized mainly around the children’s activities and the parents’ jobs, rather than around contact with extended family. Such attenuated kinship ties contrast dramatically with the patterns we observed in working-class and poor families, where extremely strong social ties with immediate and extended family members are common. In the working-class and poor families, parents speak daily with their brothers and sisters and their parents. Cousins play together several times a week. The Tallingers see Ms. Tallinger’s mother, who lives a few minutes away, at least once a week, but visits with Mr. Tallinger’s mother, who lives about an hour and a quarter’s drive away, occur only on major holidays (Mr. Tallinger sees his mother more frequently—about once a month, when his work brings him into her area).
Neither Garrett nor Spencer is pressured to forgo an organized activity in order to spend time with relatives, even those they see only a few times a year. When conflicts arise, the children are allowed, as Ms. Tallinger explains, “to choose” where to spend their time. Thus, when the Tallingers host an outdoor college graduation party for Mr. Tallinger’s only nephew, a party that includes all of Mr. Tallinger’s family (i.e., his mother, sisters, nieces, and nephews), Garrett does not plan to attend.
Louise explains, “He is going to go to baseball for a half hour, and then he is going with the Heaths to his soccer game, and then they are going to drive him to his Intercounty soccer game.” . . . Don, with a deep sigh of frustration, says, “We aren’t going to any of the games.” Field-worker: “How did you choose between baseball and soccer?” Don says, “Soccer is more of a priority. Isn’t that right, Garrett?” Garrett, standing in the middle of the kitchen, nods in agreement.
For Garrett, playing soccer is “more of a priority” than spending time with relatives, but the Tallingers do care about kinship ties. Ms. Tallinger and her mother talk on the phone at least three times a week, Nana (Ms. Tallinger’s mother) frequently attends the children’s school events, and she has a key to the Tallingers’ house. Mr. Tallinger, as noted, visits his mother regularly, and his extended family gets together for all major holidays. Garrett has a male cousin his age who lives only twenty minutes away. According to Ms. Tallinger, Garrett and this cousin have a “wonderful” time when they are together—but they meet only on major holidays. For the Tallingers, time spent with extended family is not unimportant; it’s just less important than sports.
MONEY: EVER PRESENT AND NEVER MENTIONED
In addition to spending large amounts of family time on sports, the Tallingers spend large amounts of money. Garrett’s