Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [90]
The children’s physical safety is also of importance to Ms. McAllister. For example, at Halloween, she took the children trick or treating and she restricted them to eating only packaged candy; they were not allowed to eat “candy corn, . . . cookies, oranges, and apples.” Also, as is noted later in the chapter, she instructs the younger children to steer clear of adults in the housing project who “have problems” and scolds teenaged Lori for spending time with the “wrong kind” of people. She extends a similarly protective stance toward the field-workers. She remarks to me casually:
I told the drug dealer, “That [field-worker] is doing a study of my son. I want you to not mess with him or I’m going to come down.”8
Ms. McAllister is proud of her high school diploma, and she conveys to the children her expectation that they will pass each grade. Alexis reports:
She says if you didn’t pass you’ll be on punishment for the whole summer. And my eyes go wide opened, like this (demonstrates). I’d be scared when I give her my report card. And she says—’cause I didn’t see it yet—and she said, “You didn’t pass.” And I was scared. I said, “Let me see!” And I looked at my report card, and I said, “I passed.”
Alexis also emphasizes her mother’s qualities:
My family is not nasty. Because my mom, I mean, this guy that threw a bottle in the street and it was rolling and the car almost got a flat tire. So my mom told me to push the glass over on the curb. And he said—the guy said, “Look at her, she’s cleaning up. She’s cleaning up the glass.” Cuz my mom is clean like that.
Similarly, Harold appears proud that his mother has the key to the sprinkler cap for the fire hydrant. Overall, Ms. McAllister is seen by family members and neighbors as a capable mother and a good citizen.
THE LANGUAGE OF DAILY LIFE:
KEEPING THINGS SHORT AND SIMPLE
Life in the McAllister household, as in the other poor and working-class families we observed, does not revolve around extended verbal discussions. The amount of talking in these homes varies, but overall, it is considerably less than in the middle-class homes.9 Sentences tend to be shorter, words simpler, and negotiations infrequent, and word play of the kind we observed with the Tallingers and Williamses is almost nonexistent.10 This does not mean that poor and working-class families consider conversation unimportant. McAllister family members talk about relatives and friends, tell jokes, and make comments about what is on television—but they do so intermittently. Short remarks punctuate comfortable silences. Sometimes speech is bypassed altogether in favor of body language—nods, smiles, and eye contact. Ms. McAllister typically is brief and direct in her own remarks, and she does not try to draw her children out or seek their opinions. In most settings, the children are free to speak, but they are not usually specifically encouraged to do so. The overall effect is that language serves as a practical conduit of daily life, not as a tool for cultivating reasoning skills or a resource to plumb for ways to express feelings or ideas.11
Around the house, the children frequently discuss money among themselves. They look at newspaper ads and comment on the prices of various things. They talk about who gave them money (for example, as when a neighbor gave Runako five dollars for escorting her to the bank’s ATM). The serious financial hardships the McAllisters contend with make all family members sensitive to the exact price of items, as well as where to find a bargain:
Jane hands Harold and Alexis each a bag of caramel corn, which they open soon afterward. She scolds, “Why you opening those things?” They don’t answer. Somehow the price of the caramel corn comes up. Jane says she got them on sale at a gas station up the hill—two bags for a dollar, when usually they cost fifty-nine cents each.12
Interspersed with this sort of intermittent talk are adult-issued directives.