Unequal Childhoods

by Annette Lareau

  CHAPTER 2

  Social Structure

  and Daily Life

  The life of an individual cannot be adequately understood

  without references to the institutions within which his

  biography is enacted.

  C. Wright Mills

  The families described in this book created their lives within a specific social context. They did not build the roads they rode on, hire the teachers who taught in the schools their children attended, decree which parks would be well maintained, decide how rapidly the city would clear snow from the streets, establish the values of the homes on their street, or compose the racial, ethnic, or social class balance of their schools or neighborhoods. Nor did they determine the availability of high-paying jobs in the area, set the education and skills required to fill those jobs, pace the growth of the national economy, or guide the position of the United States in the world economy. Yet these elements impinged on the lives of these families, albeit on some more directly than on others. One way to conceive of this context is to say that individuals carry out their lives within a social structure.

  There are many definitions of social structure, but they generally stress regular patterns of interaction, often in forms of social organization. The key building blocks are groups (or, in one common definition, “collections of people who interact on the basis of shared expectations regarding one another’s behavior”).1 Individuals have a variety of socially defined positions, or statuses, within the group(s) to which they belong. The actions of individuals are guided by norms (rules or guidelines for specific situations). Over time, some of these rule systems—encoded in bureaucracies, legal proceedings, and bureaucratic regulations—coalesce into institutions.2 Marriage, the family, the army, corporations, political parties, and racial segregation are all examples of institutions. In The Sociological Imagination, Mills stresses the importance of institutions: “Much of human life consists of playing . . . roles within specific institutions. To understand the biography of an individual, we must understand the significance and meaning of the roles he has played and does play; to understand these roles we must understand the institutions of which they are a part.”3 Individuals’ chances of interacting with any given kind of institution are not random: Families from elite backgrounds tend to participate in institutions serving the elite, and families in poverty tend to be involved with institutions serving the poor. Some institutional settings—zoos, parades, certain stores, and, sometimes, public transportation—are “great equalizers,” drawing families of all kinds. This kind of mingling of rich and poor is relatively unusual, however.

  In short, children grow up within a broad, highly stratified social system. In this chapter, I sketch key aspects of this social structural context for the children and families who participated in the study. I focus on the two target schools, Lower Richmond in the city and Swan in the suburbs, describing each institution and its surrounding community. I also discuss some of the ways social scientists and others explain the persistence of inequality in our society.

  LOWER RICHMOND SCHOOL AND SURROUNDING COMMUNITY

  Lower Richmond School serves children from kindergarten through fifth grade. Located on a narrow street in a large northeastern city, the school looks forbidding: it is three stories tall and is surrounded by a high, gray chain-link fence. The building is old, with a dirty beige exterior and few windows. There are patches of paint splotched on the walls here and there to cover up the graffiti that appears regularly. To the side and back of the school are an asphalt playground and a small basketball court; in front, there are trees and a patch of grass, but the children may not play in this area during school hours. Kindergartners have a separate playground, also all asphalt, but the walls surrounding the play area display cheerful murals painted by the children. Just inside the entrance to the school, a security guard sits at a desk. Overall, Lower Richmond is “a very nice place,” according to one teacher. She noted that, unlike other facilities in the district, where beer bottles and broken glass litter the school yard, “It’s safe [here]. It’s a pretty place when you walk in. There’s some grass and trees, and there’s a parking lot and the building is clean.”

  The residential neighborhoods surrounding Lower Richmond are racially segregated. Many of the students come by bus from a poor Black housing project about ten minutes away. The school itself is located in a mainly white working-class residential neighborhood dominated by small, inexpensive homes. (See Table C2, Appendix C for descriptive social and demographic data.) There are also apartment complexes, including some that rent to low-income families who qualify for government assistance (“Section 8”). These complexes are racially integrated. Lower Richmond enrolls about one-half Black students and one-half white students. Less than 5 percent of the students are Asian or Hispanic. Most of the educational staff members, including the principal, are white; but there are Black educators too, including the third-grade teacher whose classroom I observed, the school counselor, the reading resource teacher, and the music teacher. Most of the support staff members, such as the secretary, security guard, janitor, and bus driver, are African American. A majority of the student body qualifies for free lunches.

  Only a few blocks from the school is a small shopping district with gas stations, a pizza shop, an ice cream shop (open only in warmer months), a 7–11 convenience store, and a hardware store. Unlike in some urban neighborhoods, in this area, commercial and residential rental properties are fully occupied; abandoned buildings are not a problem here. It is a solid, working-class neighborhood, with narrow streets, older two-story red brick buildings in good repair, and enough business customers and employees that parking is scarce. There are sufficient trees and flowers growing here and there to break the monotony of the concrete pavement and buildings and to mark changes in the seasons. Buildings are densely packed. Large stores are uncommon: Supermarkets are few and far between, and discount stores, such as Target and Wal-Mart, are not part of the neighborhood. Residents must drive to the suburbs to gain access to cheaply priced goods.

  Traffic in the area around Lower Richmond is hectic. City buses roar up and down the street a few times per hour, and cars speed through intersections. Horn blasts are frequent. The high density of housing and the lack of garages bring neighbors into more contact with one another than might occur otherwise. Many auto-related activities, from washing or repairing cars to digging them free of snow, take place in the street. As in most urban centers nationwide, crime is a concern here, particularly graffiti, burglary, and petty theft. Armed robberies (on the street or in local stores) are relatively uncommon, but they happen often enough to undermine residents’ sense of safety and security.

  Lower Richmond School has been well regarded by parents, children, and educators for many years. Ms. Bernstein, a fourth-grade teacher, calls Lower Richmond a “cream puff” compared to other city schools. Institutionally, Lower Richmond provides students with a variety of valuable resources: There are a computer laboratory and a computer teacher, as well as specialty teachers for art, music, and gym. The school has a library and a science program specially funded to provide an emphasis on technology. School-sponsored extracurricular activities include a choir and a band; both perform at school, district, and local community events.4 Lower Richmond also puts on a popular spring fair.

  Still, the school has its share of problems, ranging from a shortage of teaching supplies, such as paper and art materials, to a shortage of teachers, to an unwieldy administrative structure that can shortchange students’ education. Although teaching in city schools is widely viewed as more challenging than teaching in suburban schools, salaries (as well as expenditures per pupil) are less than in the suburbs. Qualified teachers are not always available. Some students at Lower Richmond experience this teacher shortage at a very personal level: one third-grade class, for example, had a series of different substitutes for their entire school year. District rules do not require classroom rosters to be finalized
until several weeks into the school year. As late as mid-October, a child may be reassigned to a new teacher (the district sometimes reconstitutes classrooms in order to meet staffing and budgetary concerns). Other aspects of the district-imposed bureaucracy create difficulties as well. As a teacher explained, a seemingly simple request could require a cumbersome, time-consuming response:

  The grandmother called and said that [an after-school program] needed information. And I’m not allowed to give out any written information on a student unless you have the written consent of the parents and something on letterhead [from the requesting organization]. And then the counselor and the principal has to sign it.5

  Parents (and educators) often are bewildered and frustrated by district guidelines in academic matters, too. A referral to full-time special education, for example, requires two pre-referrals (each involving efforts to improve the situation without recourse to full-time intervention) before a child can be formally considered for special education. Since each stage takes at least 60 days, and the school year is only 180 days, an entire academic year can elapse without a decision having been made. As I show later in the book, this kind of bureaucratic infrastructure sometimes results in children “slipping through the cracks” as major learning problems go untreated.

  During the years of the study, local political figures openly criticized the district for doing a poor job educating children. At Lower Richmond, one of the district’s more accomplished schools, about one-half of each class reads below grade level and about one-third of the fourth-grade cohort is at least two years below grade level. The district is under pressure to raise test scores, but the budget is very limited, and shortfalls occur annually. Unlike in the suburbs, inner-city schools do not have wealthy parent associations capable of supplementing individual site budgets. At Lower Richmond, few parents participate in the Parent-Teacher Association; meetings often have only three or four attendees (usually the officers). Social relations among the teachers are another potential cause for concern. Real tensions underlie a generally cordial atmosphere. Some of the Black teachers feel that white teachers treat certain Black children unfairly, as a Black third-grade teacher charged angrily:

  There are some faculty members—some of the children aren’t treated equally. Some Black children with certain reputations did certain things and . . . [got] kicked out to another school. Some white children would do serious things and they would get detention, call parents, or suspensions.

  Although white administrators and teachers generally did not agree, other Black educators at the school echoed these concerns.

  Relations among the children at Lower Richmond also are strained sometimes. Serious threats to safety are unusual.6 But physical fights between children are common on the playground throughout the week. Teachers estimate that at least one-half of the children have serious life problems, often involving a parent who is absent or incapacitated. The school counselor works regularly with Child Protective Services to address the needs of students she feels are being neglected (e.g., those who come to school in winter without coats) or abused. In a single classroom, it is common to have several children who have “serious issues.” In Mr. Tier’s fourth grade, among the white students, there is Lisa, whose mother left her and who now “lives with her father, who likes to drink to excess”; Thomas, whose mother disappeared one day and, although she eventually returned, still has no contact with her son; and Shaun, whose father “does cocaine, . . . is paranoid, and was arrested twice this year.” Among the Black students in the class, there is Tanisha, who lacks even the most basic school supplies (such as a school bag) teachers prefer students to have. Another student, Toya, is disruptive. She “gets in fights all the time . . . but her mother . . . [instead of reprimanding her daughter, spends her time] explaining to me why it’s not Toya’s problem.” Julius is from a home where “there is a whole history of drug abuse and violence.” Teachers at Lower Richmond note that in addition to being emotionally upsetting, their students’ life problems are academically disruptive. Uniformly, the teachers want their students to arrive at school each day “well groomed” and “prepared to learn.” They also want parents to be involved in their children’s education, to “sign homework, help with projects” and “be positive,” in the words of one fourth-grade teacher.

  These expectations are met by some. There are both Black and white children whose parents are steadily employed, as well as those whose parents are energetically striving to move up in the world. In Mr. Tier’s class, there are three such Black children—Isaiah, whose mother is absent but whose father is devoted to him; Morrell, whose mother has “gone back to college to become an elementary school teacher,” and Danielle, whose mother works at “Joe’s Steaks.” There are comparable white children, including those with parents Mr. Tier describes as “upwardly mobile types.”

  In sum, Lower Richmond is a school with many positive aspects, particularly in comparison to other schools in the district. Still, it shares with other urban schools core limitations, such as teacher shortages, lower teacher salaries, limited supplies, and a cumbersome bureaucracy. Parents are not a major force in the school, either financially or politically. Students are drawn from racially segregated neighborhoods where historical patterns of land use and market forces limit the availability of large stores. Homes are small and built close to one another, traffic is hectic, and crime is a common concern. Thus, when compared to a suburban school like Swan (described below), Lower Richmond ranks a very distant second on many criteria.

  SWAN SCHOOL AND SURROUNDING COMMUNITY

  Like Lower Richmond, Swan School serves children from kindergarten through fifth grade. It is located in one of the townships in the suburbs that ring the large northeastern city in which Lower Richmond School is located. Swan, like many other suburban schools, is a sprawling facility. It consists exclusively of one-story buildings that are spread out over the school grounds. The buildings have windows lining one entire wall of each classroom. Although all the windows open, in the fall and spring the classrooms can be sweltering (there is no air conditioning). Outside is an expanse of grass on a gently sloping hill, large enough for multiple games to occur at the same time. Unlike at Lower Richmond, the school playground has an elaborate swing set and bars, with a red-hued mulch of shredded wood under the bars to protect children if they fall. There is no fence around Swan; the entire facility looks open and inviting.

  The school is located in a quiet residential neighborhood of one-story, single-family, middle-class homes. Each is fronted by a large swath of green grass. The houses sell for twice the amount of houses in the Lower Richmond area (See Table C2 for detailed data).7 Land seems plentiful and lots are larger than in the city; parking near the school is ample, except on nights when there is a scheduled event and parents swarm to the school. The school grounds and the surrounding neighborhoods are extensively landscaped. There are so many trees, flowering shrubs, and flowers that when the seasons shift, the presence of nature is almost overwhelming. In fall, burnt-orange-colored leaves carpet the ground; in spring, a sea of yellow daffodils appears, while overhead, white and pink dogwoods pop into bloom.

  There are no stores within walking distance of Swan or the surrounding neighborhood. The local shopping district lies along a major road; the stores are huge and set back from the street, behind large parking lots. Shoppers may choose among many different retailers, including several discount stores. The selection of products is wider and more attractively priced than in the city. Because the stores are so large, families frequently drive between stores located only a few blocks from one another. Children also need to be driven to their various activities and usually need a ride in order to visit friends (some, however, are permitted to ride their bikes to friends’ houses). Despite the reliance on cars in this suburb, traffic congestion usually is not a problem, and drivers tend to drive more sedately than is common in the city. The roads are in strikingly better condition than those in Lower Richmond’s
vicinity. There are fewer potholes on suburban streets and snow removal is prompt, often within twenty-four hours of a snowstorm. Thus, in January, when the parking lot at Lower Richmond School was dangerously icy for several days running, the lot at Swan School was completely clear of snow and ice.

  During interviews, some adults mentioned how “dangerous” they considered the city and noted that they avoided it. Despite parents’ anxiety about crime and their concern for the safety of their children, it is common for family members to leave valuable objects such as bikes, baseball mitts, or bats lying in their yards unattended. Burglary and petty theft occur rarely in the neighborhoods near Swan, and armed robberies on residential streets are almost unheard of. Generally, there is less concern about crime than in urban areas.