Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [79]
DISCIPLINE THROUGH LANGUAGE
Middle-class children, we found, often use their verbal skills to argue with their parents. Rather than following parents’ directives silently, as children in the working-class and poor homes generally do, middle-class children tend to bargain, using reasoning to secure small advantages. For instance, after a baseball game, the Williams family heads directly to a school performance in which Alex has a solo part. As they travel in the car, the family discusses foods that actors are cautioned against eating before a performance. Alex agrees to wait to eat his sandwich until after the play. When his mother tells him to stop snacking on potato chips, he secures an agreement to be permitted to eat a little more:
Alex gets out a bag of potato chips. Mr. Williams says, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” Alex takes a bite of one, then begins to twist-tie the bag closed, but changes his mind and opens the bag again. He eats about five more, then comments, “You’re right. I can’t eat only one.” Ms. Williams says, “Okay, Alexander. That’s enough. Put them away.” Alex: “Just one more?” Ms. Williams: “Okay, one more.” He eats one more chip, then closes the bag.
Alex frequently attempts to systematically refute his parents when he disagrees with something they say. Sometimes, he has the last word:
Alexander commented, looking out the window at a somewhat poor city neighborhood, that it used to be safer in the old days. His mother made a joke about the dangers of dinosaurs. Alexander, annoyed, said that dinosaurs and humans didn’t live at the same time and pressed the point that it used to be safer. His mother made ambivalent sounds, and so Alex pressed the point more, insisting, “It was too safer in the old days, before they invented guns!” His mother conceded the point.
Middle-class children employ various tactics when they resist doing what their parents ask of them. Alexander’s way of complying with a request his mother makes after he has finished opening his birthday presents in front of his friends is one example:
He opens the last present. He goes across the room and stands next to his mother. His mother prompts him, “What do you say?” Alex hollers to everyone in a very loud voice, “Thank you!” A tone of alienation and boredom (as in, “My-mother-is-making-me-do-this”) is slightly detectable in his voice.
Occasionally, Alexander thwarts his parents by simply absenting himself:
His mother wraps both arms around his neck and chest and whispers in his ear, “Tell everyone thanks for coming to your birthday party.” She releases him. But even though children and parents are starting to leave, Alexander goes upstairs.
A [Black] mother whispers in her son’s ear and, with her hand physically resting on his shoulder, she steers him over to Ms. Williams. He says, looking her in the eye, in a flat but serious voice, “Thank you.” The mother, behind him, is saying, “Thank you,” too. Ms. Williams says, “Why, thank you for coming.” She says, “Let me get Alexander.” She goes into the hall and yells up the stairs in a loud voice, “ALEXANDER!” He does not arrive. She yells again, “ALEXANDER! COME SAY GOOD-BYE. PEOPLE ARE LEAVING.” Still no Alexander coming down the stairs. She yells again, “ALEXANDER!” In the meantime, two sets of parents have left.
The birthday party involved six boys (two Black, one Asian, and three white) and one