Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [51]
By that time I was really tired. I mean, it had become a lot. When school started it went from four nights to two so that was a break right there. But that by the time it got cold—I mean they gave us a half hour because it started at 6:30, so you just—you come home and you eat and you run right out. After practice, we did homework.
Despite the difficulty involved, Tyrec’s mother continued to show up to watch him play. She felt that it was important to be there for him.
I had to give him support that I was behind him; that’s why I went. And I didn’t want him to feel like I didn’t care . . . I missed a few. I didn’t feel bad about it, either, because I went to more than I missed. I usually was there.
Ms. Taylor believed that her son’s involvement in football had been positive. She noted that Tyrec “loved it,” and she stressed the way the sport helped develop her son’s masculinity, especially his athletic skills.
Tyrec is all boy. His motor skills . . . He’s very coordinated like that, so he can do anything like that . . . very well. He knew that he could do it, and I think he wanted to prove it to himself that he could do it. I think he just liked it. He had all the kids around here playing football every day (laughter) . . . right out here on the street.
When asked what she liked about Tyrec’s involvement in football, she said that she thought the experience had given her son “a little bit of independence, and it showed that he had some [independence].” When pressed to explain what she meant by independence, Tyrec’s mother elaborated:
That he’s brave enough to go and meet people and, you know—and be on a team and blend in with the team. I was glad that he could do that. I think I would have had a hard time as a child. I wasn’t that good at blending in.
Unlike middle-class parents, however, Ms. Taylor didn’t see Tyrec’s football experience as crucial to his overall development. “I don’t know how it’s helped him,” was her reply to the question “Are there any ways that you think it has helped him in other aspects of his life . . . Even in little ways?” Ms. Taylor’s first and most decisive point was that she could not think of any way that it helped him. When asked, “Were there any spillover effects that you didn’t expect—in some other areas of his life?” she generated this answer:
Well, just the responsibility part, knowing that this is what I have to do and this is what I’m gonna do. They give him a routine of his very own: I have to do this and then I have to do my homework and then I have to eat, you know. So I thought that was good.
When the season ended, so too did Tyrec’s participation.5 He did not play on the team as a fifth-grader. Although Ms. Taylor seemed genuinely pleased that her son had enjoyed being on the football team, she saw no reason for him to repeat the experience. She loved Tyrec, cared for him, and wanted him to be happy. Since simply stepping out the front door and joining his neighborhood friends for informal play obviously gave Tyrec much pleasure, his mother felt that was preferable to having him involved in an activity that required extensive involvement on her part. For her, as with other working-class and poor mothers, being a good mother did not include an obligation to cultivate her children’s various interests, particularly if doing so would require radically rearranging her own life.
LEARNING SKILLS FOR LIFE
Tyrec plays over and over with a relatively stable group of boys. Because the group functions without adult monitoring, he learns how to construct and sustain friendships on his own and how to organize and negotiate. By contrast, Garrett’s playmates change frequently, forming and dispersing with each new season and each new organized activity. The only constant is the presence of adults in each setting, ensuring that the players all know the rules, if not one another’s names.
Much of the informal play Tyrec and his friends engage in takes place outdoors, at times and in places mainly of their own choosing. The boys often play games they have devised