Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [45]
Tyrec’s parents live apart. Together fifteen years, and married for nine, they separated four years ago. Tyrec Senior lives in an apartment in the central city, about fifteen minutes away from his wife and children’s house. Ms. Taylor does not like the area where he lives; she calls it a “ghetto.” While virtually all Black, Mr. Taylor’s working-class neighborhood has many thriving stores, small gardens, inhabited old houses, and families. Generally, the area is seen as more desirable than numerous poor Black neighborhoods in the city. Tyrec Senior, a thin, wiry man with a serious, intense air, talks to the children on the telephone most days of the week and usually sees them once a week. He once had a substance abuse problem; he is proud of the fact that it is no longer an issue. He dropped out of school when he was young, and reading seems difficult for him. He has opinions on many issues, including the state of the world, which he offers freely to anyone who will listen. When the children protest that they cannot do something, he insists that they can. He also weighs in on decisions related to the children; for example, citing safety issues, he objected to Tyrec playing football (his opinion was overridden). He is currently unemployed; in the past, he has worked in social services, including in counseling for drug-related issues.
Ms. Taylor is a high school graduate; she works as a secretary. She is responsible for managing the company’s fleet of cars, and she answers the phone when the regular operator takes her lunch break. She is a woman of medium height with springy, corkscrew curls that cascade around her face. She smiles often and often seems harried. Although she is only slightly overweight, she worries about her figure. When I remark that she is wearing a “cute outfit,” she responds, “Oh, thanks, but I’m too fat. I can’t fit into anything cute.” The field-worker described Ms. Taylor this way:
At about 6:45 Celeste walks in. She is a slightly overweight woman with . . . a cute face. She smiles often. Later, in the dining room, where we sit at the dining room table, she often looks into a wall mirror hung near the table as she is talking (occasionally touching her hair). There are remnants of red lipstick on her lips, her nails are painted (bright) red, and she wears large earrings hidden by her hair and a thick silver bracelet. She comes in with a whoosh; she seems harried but glad to be home.
When her car is running, Ms. Taylor drives to work; when it is not (which is often), she takes the bus. Her job does include health insurance, but the annual salary for her position (approximately $20,000) is hard to stretch far enough to cover all the family’s needs. Paying the monthly rent of $650, going out for fast food (often weekly), and having dinner in a restaurant such as “Sizzler” (once a month) leaves little for expenses such as fixing the car. The family usually takes a one-week vacation at the beach, but Ms. Taylor plans for this in advance and does overtime to cover the costs (which she does not normally do). In the Taylor family, there are frequent conversations about money. The children’s lives are constrained by the shortage of funds. Mr. Taylor buys clothes for Tyrec and his sister, Anisha (in the last year, for example, he bought four pairs of sneakers, at $70 each, for them), but he does not pay child support. Although Tyrec would like many video games, his mother says, “I can’t afford them.” He only gets them as “big gifts” for a birthday, usually from a grandmother. On the other hand, Ms. Taylor is willing to absorb the $50 football registration fee and the cost of spikes and a protective cup and strap for Tyrec. She feels that on balance “it didn’t cost a lot of money” for her son to be involved in this organized activity. She is struck, instead, by the fact that “it cost more of your time than anything.”
Tyrec’s sister, Anisha, is thirteen. While Ms. Taylor is away at work, Anisha frequently “mothers” her younger brother,