Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [95]
LAVINA: Shut up, Runako.
LAVINA (turning again to Alexis): What was your problem? Evidently you had a problem; you were dancing around and going all gymnastics or something in class. Huh?
(Alexis does not look up or answer.)
LAVINA: Didn’t we have a talk about this before?
(Alexis does not answer.)
LAVINA: You know, Alexis, behavior is very important. If you can’t behave in school, in elementary school, how are you going to behave when you get older and, and have a job. Hum?
(Alexis does not answer.)
LAVINA (speaks to Runako and then turns back to Alexis): I’ve been talking to you for two months. . . . You always give me the same old excuse. Why you acting out?
(The room is silent. Lavina is staring at Alexis. Alexis is staring at the chair.)
LAVINA (repeating herself): I’m really, really getting tired of it. Why you acting out like this?
(Alexis remains silent. Runako goes in and out of the kitchen, adds sugar to the Kool-Aid. . . . )
LAVINA: There’s only a few [days] left in the school year. Please don’t let me hear, alright?
(Alexis nods.)
LAVINA: I really don’t want to have to beat you up on the ass. That’s like a last resort.
In a scolding, as in other interactions between adults and children, the adult talks. The child listens. Children do not, as in middle-class families, test the limits of adults by probing, arguing, and questioning adults. One unintended consequence of this approach is that poor and working-class children typically do not develop the same range of verbal skills their middle-class counterparts acquire. They have little opportunity to practice negotiating with adults and little call to learn to summarize and present their own ideas, opinions, and excuses. The habit of not questioning adults also means that children in these homes are less likely to learn new vocabulary.
Physical discipline
When Lavina backs up her directive with a threat to “beat” Alexis, she is using a strategy common among adults in the poor and working-class families we observed. Ms. McAllister takes a similar tack, especially if a child’s misbehavior provokes her anger. Even sixteen-year-old Lori is not immune:
Jane is angry. (Jane walks up to Lori and stands directly in front of Lori’s face. Jane is mad and loud.) “I better not see you in none of them niggas’ car down the hill, or I’m a slide (punch) you right upside your head, and I mean it.”
Ms. McAllister, like her sister Lavina, views the administration of physical punishment as helpful and appropriate to any child under her care. She does not hesitate to discipline her nephews when it seems appropriate, as in this instance at the reunion picnic:
Guion is sitting on a bench, crying. Although I am standing right next to him I cannot hear him (because of the music), but I see tears streaming down his cheek. As Jane walks past, she leans over (to) where Runako is sitting and punches Runako with her balled up fist in the chest and yells at him (I can hear that) “Don’t beat on Guion!”
Indeed, physical punishment is so commonly administered by the adults in the family that the children hold animated discussions over which adult is the strictest. One night at dinner time, the children are seated at the table and Ms. McAllister is walking around the living room. A discussion that begins focused on a picture of an aunt dressed in bell bottoms and clogs evolves into a comparison of strategies of physical punishment:
Jane says she don’t like clogs because Mom-mom used to “beam” her on the forehead and it would leave a mark. Guion asks who is [harsher], Mom-mom or Pop-pop. This leads to an animated discussion of the grandparents’ various strategies for beating kids. Guion and Runako and Harold and Alexis all compare notes and argue back and forth. Jane mostly listens. (She never disagrees with children or defends adults.) The kids talk about marks being left on the forehead and other parts of the body.
As this discussion of discipline across generations suggests, physical punishment is a common feature of the children’s lives. Ms. McAllister also