Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9 (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth)

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Katherine Brown Rosier

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COMMENT ON FINE, ESPELAND, ROJIECK’S “YOUNG CITIZENS: THE POSITION OF CHILDREN IN COMMUNITARIAN THEORY” Amitai Etzioni

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GENDER, RACE, CLASS, AND THE TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Kimberly A. Mahaffy

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NEIGHBORHOODS AND INEQUALITY: THE POSSIBILITIES FOR SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD Sally Bould

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RACE/ETHNICITY, GENDER, AND ADOLESCENTS’ OCCUPATIONAL ASPIRATIONS: AN EXAMINATION OF FAMILY CONTEXT Sampson Lee Blair, Marilou C. Legazpi Blair and Anna B. Madamba

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CHILD HEALTH, SOCIAL POLICY AND THE NEW CHIP PROGRAM Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld and Kathleen M. Mathieson

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CHILDREN AND HOUSEWORK: SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONS Yun-Suk Lee, Barbara Schneider and Linda J. Waite

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CHILD LABOR AND HOUSEHOLD SURVIVAL STRATEGIES IN WEST AFRICA Loretta E. Bass

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JUST PLAY? A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYZING CHILDREN’S TIME USE Tiffani Chin and Meredith Phillips

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IN GIRLS, OUT GIRLS, AND ALWAYS BLACK: AFRICAN-AMERICAN GIRLS’ FRIENDSHIPS Kimberly A. Scott

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COUNTERFEIT CLASSROOMS: SCHOOL LIFE OF INNER-CITY CHILDREN Sarah H. Matthews

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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INTRODUCTION Katherine Brown Rosier I am pleased to introduce myself as the Guest Editor of this volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, and future co-editor with David A. Kinney. David and I are both Indiana University alums, and we share important interests and intellectual affiliations. Trained and mentored by Bill Corsaro, Donna Eder, and Shel Stryker, we both self-identify as social psychologists, symbolic interactionists, and ethnographic researchers of children and youth. We work closely with one another and with students in a new and increasingly popular “Youth Studies” Minor that David developed and implemented within the Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Department at Central Michigan University. I joined David here in 2001, in part to support this exciting initiative. We look forward to our various collaborations, including the production of this research annual, and hope both new and seasoned researchers will continue to place their faith in our stewardship of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth. As the chapters in the current volume demonstrate, the field is excitingly diverse, and we are committed to maintaining that diversity by publishing the empirical work of researchers with all types of substantive interests, theoretical backgrounds, and methodological designs. One trend in the submissions we receive concerns us, and it is indicative of an important concern for all of us who study children and youth. That is, we receive fewer submissions addressing specifically children’s lives and experiences than we would like (say, elementary school-aged or younger); we believe this reflects the greater difficulty researchers encounter securing permission from human subjects review boards to do research with younger children. We encourage our readers to get involved with the boards

Sociological Studies of Children and Youth Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9, 1–7 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09001-9

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at your own institutions, advocating more realistic rules and procedures that are less biased against research on children. In this volume we have achieved, nonetheless, a good mix. Four chapters concern adolescents exclusively, two chapters are specifically about children, and three concern both children and adolescents. First, three chapters explore transition to adulthood issues. Chapter 1 presents a critical review of the literature, Chapter 2 considers the role of neighborhood social capital, and Chapter 3 examines high school students’ family contexts and occupational aspirations. A lone policy piece follows in Chapter 4, examining the new “Children’s Health Insurance Program,” begun as part of recent “welfare reform.” Chapters 5, 6, and 7 all concern children and adolescents’ time use; household labor (Chapter 5) and free time use (Chapter 7) in the U.S., and labor market participation in Senegal (Chapter 6). The final two chapters present ethnographic analyses of young children’s peer cultures (Chapter 8) and adolescents’ classroom experiences (Chapter 9) in segregated inner-city schools. First, however, the contributions to this volume begin with a brief comment on a chapter that appeared in the previous edition (i.e. Volume 8, 2001). The volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth that preceded this one concluded with a call for deliberate development and articulation of the position of children and childhood in Communitarian theory. Fine, Espeland and Rojok argued that theorists of that ilk had neglected the central role children must play in the construction of a moral order that balances individual freedoms with collective responsibilities. Communitarian theory was constructively taken to task for its failure to fully conceptualize the interactive processes, institutional supports/constraints, and social policies that would facilitate children’s development of “communitarian values” and responsible citizenship. Central to these authors’ critique were calls for careful consideration of both the true adult motives that lie behind laws and policies restricting children’s rights and activities, and the community and family contexts and practices that encourage the healthy emotional development of children during the early childhood years. Of course, the moral treatment of children is seen as essential for the construction of a “good society.” Placed at the close of Volume 8, David hoped the chapter would provoke response from the Communitarian community. After publication, we sent a copy of Fine, Espeland, and Rojok’s work to Amitai Etzioni himself, along with an invitation to respond. This volume begins with Etzioni’s contribution, which praises Fine et al.’s chapter, and elaborates somewhat the Communitarian position on children, especially regarding censorship issues. While we are grateful for the opportunity to include this brief piece by the leader of the Communiatian movement, we hope others among this group will consider developing

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additional, more extensive responses to the challenge presented by our 2001 authors. Etzioni’s comments are followed by Chapter 1, “Gender, Race, Class, and the Transition to Adulthood: A Critical Review of the Literature.” In this wide-ranging and innovative review, Kimberly Mahaffy examines the reproduction of gender, race, and class inequalities during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. She argues that traditional studies have failed to adequately address how race, class, and gender combine to influence the transition outcomes of adolescents and young adults. Mahaffy’s review stresses that social structure and policy privilege certain groups of young people, contributing heavily to the unequal economic and family formation outcomes these groups experience. She further examines how methodological and disciplinary divisions have acted to inhibit critical examination of the interdependent effects of race/class/gender on the transition to adulthood. She concludes by calling for methodologies and theoretical perspectives that further develop our understanding of how race, class, gender, and social context work together to differentially privilege or constrain youths’ outcomes. The Mahaffy chapter is the first of two included in this volume that primarily review the literature in their respective fields (also Lee, Schneider & Waite, Chapter 5). As a general rule, this volume seeks to publish original empirical work, but we welcome reviews that subject the literature to innovative and important questions that have been heretofore largely neglected, and that link well with empirical chapters. While most clearly linked with Bould’s “Neighborhoods and Inequality: The Possibilities for Successful Transition to Adulthood” (Chapter 2), Mahaffy’s review also helps to frame other chapters that follow, including those by Blaire, Blaire and Madamba (Chapter 3); Lee, Schneider and Waite (Chapter 5); Scott (Chapter 8); and Mathews (Chapter 9). All these chapters include and address issues of children and youths’ differential experiences and opportunities by race, class, and/or gender. In “Neighborhoods and Inequality: The Possibilities for Successful Transition to Adulthood,” Sally Bould examines neighborhood social capital, and how this shapes the responses of neighbors to adolescents’ misbehavior. This chapter utilizes data collected over seven years by students in Bould’s “Sociology of the Family” classes. The students interviewed neighbors in the suburban communities where they spent their teenage years, questioning them about what they and other neighbors would do in the event that neighborhood youth were causing trouble. In her analysis, Bould draws on these interview data to characterize low and high social capital suburban neighborhoods, and the patterns of neighbors’ responses in these two contexts. Critical differences are found in the likelihood parents would be contacted and/or police would be called.

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Bould stresses that the type and amount of social capital found in typical white, middleclass suburbs effectively both constrains youths’ behavior, and also protects them from police contact and subsequent police records when they do engage in minor illegal activity. It seems clear that middle-class white kids benefit from more than just the better schools and other facilities found in middle-class neighborhoods; they benefit too from the routine responses of neighbors to teenagers’ transgressions. Bould’s concluding remarks, then, turn to the implications of these findings for kids and their families who do not reside in suburban neighborhoods with high social capital. Bould’s focus on the neighborhood context of the transition to adulthood is nicely complemented by the examination of family contexts of adolescents’ occupational aspirations that follows in Chapter 3. Here, in “Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Adolescents’ Occupational Aspirations: An Examination of Family Context,” Sampson Lee Blair, Marilou Legazpi Blair, and Anna Madamba present a sophisticated – but highly readable – analysis of third-wave NELS data. The chapter asks and answers questions about how, for example, family structure, income, and parents’ education and occupation differentially impact the post-high school plans of young women and men of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. The authors report that parental and household characteristics go a long way toward explaining the aspirations of Whites and Asians of both genders, but these models are considerably less successful when applied to Black and Hispanic youths, especially males. Suggesting that peer, neighborhood, and school influences may be considerably more important for shaping the post-high school plans of these latter youths, Blair, Blair and Madamba complete just the type of analysis that Mahaffy advocates in Chapter 1. And they suggest, too, that the neighborhood social capital (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) examined by Bould in Chapter 2 may be especially important for the outcomes of Black and Hispanic boys. Blair, Blair and Madamba’s chapter ends our focus on adolescent transitions; Chapter 4, by Jennie Kronenfeld and Kathleen Mathieson, represents the only explicitly policy piece included here, offering an analysis of “Child Health, Social Policy, and the New CHIP Program.” The chapter begins by carefully situating CHIP (“Children’s Health Insurance Program”) within the historical social policy context. For many years, the federally funded and controlled “Medicaid” program was the primary vehicle for providing medical coverage for low-income children. In 1997, however, as part of the Balanced Budget Act, the introduction of CHIP effectively turned over to the states the particulars of providing these children with health care. The authors examine changes in children’s medical coverage and access to health care services both before and after CHIP. They also provide a detailed description of how CHIP has been put into practice in a variety of states, with great variation in children’s coverage resulting. Kronenfeld and Mathieson

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discuss the overall early success or failure of the policy change, and provide in this chapter a valuable overview of a complex social program that remains inadequate for ensuring the medical coverage of the nation’s most vulnerable population; poor children. Children are most commonly thought of as the recipients of benefits bestowed on them by their parents and other adults, and this is the focus of Kronenfeld and Mathieson’s chapter. But children are, of course, also active contributors to family life and to society in general. Nowhere is this more clear than in the consideration of children’s household labor. As mothers have increasingly focused their labor efforts outside the home, their time spent on household tasks has decreased, and research has documented that fathers’ contributions have increased only slightly. Children’s labor in these families often fills the gap between what must be done and what employed mothers are able to accomplish. In Chapter 5, Yun-Suk Lee, Barbara Schneider and Linda J. Waite review the recent literature on children’s household contributions, examining time spent by boys and girls of different ages, and differences in children’s labor by mothers’ occupation, marital status, and hours worked. More importantly, they take up questions concerning the costs and benefits of this labor for children themselves. They argue that the type of work, and the context in which it is completed, are crucial for determining its effect on children’s cognitive and emotional development. As noted above, we believe that review articles can make important contributions to this research annual, especially when they subject the literature to important questions that have to date received inadequate attention. The question of the impact of children’s household labor on children rather than on their households is just such a question. Like the authors, we hope this chapter inspires further clarifying work in this area, with greater attention paid to children’s experience and the costs and benefits they incur. Loretta Bass’s “Child Labor and Household Survival Strategies in West Africa” is this volume’s only chapter with an international focus, and it provides a curious contrast to Lee, Schneider and Waite’s analysis of American children’s household labor contributions. Bass spent two years observing and participating in open-air urban markets in Senegal. She draws on field notes and informal interviews with children and their families to develop a typology of child labor strategies employed by Senegalese households. Eight intimate case studies of young male and female workers – apprentices, market sellers, and religious beggars – illustrate the types, and Bass examines the differential preparation for adult careers that each type provides. The chapter concludes with policy recommendations that stress the need for economic reform and support for families to eliminate the need for child labor, rather than further laws and resolutions forbidding its practice. David Kinney and I hope this research annual will increasingly feature international research

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on children and childhood, and plans for an entire volume of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth devoted to children in the developing world are currently taking shape. Continuing a general theme of how children spend their time, Chapter 7 presents “A Framework for Analyzing Children’s Time Use.” Here, Tiffani Chin and Meredith Phillips shift the focus from children’s labor to children’s free time activities. Noting that previous research has failed to find clear connections between children’s activities and developmental outcomes, the authors argue that deficiencies in the theoretical frameworks employed may begin to account for this lack of success. In particular, the practice of grouping activities “by type rather than quality” is especially problematic. Chin and Phillips draw on their ethnographic study of urban children’s time use during the summer between fourth and fifth grade to develop an alternative classificatory scheme. They argue that attending to the “intensity” of activities, the involvement of other children and adults, and the relative novelty of the setting, better captures the qualitative differences among various routine activities. Depending on variation across these dimensions, activities generally considered “passive” (e.g. watching television) may be much more complex and potentially stimulating than other more “active” pastimes (e.g. bike riding). The authors urge researchers to employ the scheme they develop here, in hopes of increasing the likelihood that relationships between children’s time use and their well-being will be detected and better understood. The final two chapters in the volume both draw on ethnographic data gathered in urban school locations. In “In-Girls, Out-Girls, and Always Black” (Chapter 8), Kimberly Scott presents a detailed ethnographic portrait of early elementaryaged Black girls’ friendship patterns, in two diverse settings. In both contexts, friendships and free-time play revolved around “The Club,” a hierarchically organized, rule-based activity group. The structure and exclusiveness of the clubs differed in the mixed-race versus all-black schools, however, and Scott’s analysis outlines these differences and their implications for Black girls’ identity development and well-being. Her findings suggest that all-black schools may be best able to meet Black girls’ psycho-social development needs. But as Chapter 9 (“Counterfeit Classrooms: School Life of Inner-City Children”) reminds us with startling clarity, students in low-income, largely minority schools are at high risk for substandard classroom instruction. This final chapter by Sarah Matthews employs dramaturgical imagery to present the farce that passes for teaching and learning in an inner-city high school math class. Describing the classroom as a “pretense awareness context,” Matthews details how both teacher and students create an elaborate sham, their performances aimed at creating the appearance of academic effort and progress.

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Appearances notwithstanding, however, the routine activities here are devoid of genuine educational content. Attempts by some students to challenge the farce and move to an open awareness context are unsuccessful, and the actors settle into a daily exchange of vacuous gestures and understood complicity. Mathews concludes by arguing that school reform initiatives presuppose contexts where the goals of educators are indeed educational, no matter how poorly realized. Such initiatives are sadly inappropriate in contexts such as these, where the goal appears to be the construction of a convincing pretense of educational activity. For teens who experience such classroom contexts, successful transition to adulthood is also often hampered by their families’ lack of resources, and by the low levels of social capital that frequently exist in the neighborhoods where they live (see Chapter 2). These (and other) kids’ lack of opportunity should be cause for great alarm and outrage, but national priorities are clearly elsewhere. The general area of “Sociology of Children and Youth” is both exciting and inescapably depressing. At every turn, we see the promise of equal opportunity for a good and satisfying life denied to groups of children by virtue of their social class, race and ethnicity, and gender. We see societal apathy toward these inequalities and toward many other problems in children’s lives. We see attitudes toward (“other people’s”) children and youth becoming increasingly negative, as adults cause more and more problems in the communities they must occupy and will soon inherit. Social policy is piecemeal, inadequate and, at times, mean-spirited. Nonetheless, children and youth remain creative, complex, and competent co-creators of society, and it is both my pleasure, and trial, to play a role in disseminating knowledge about children’s experiences, struggles, and contributions. In closing, I offer many thanks to our esteemed review board for their on-going support of this volume, as well as to other anonymous reviewers who lent their expertise to the review of submitted manuscripts. Especially heartfelt thanks goes to all the contributing authors, whose fine work has made the volume possible, and whose generous patience with my editorial debut is very much appreciated indeed.

COMMENT ON FINE, ESPELAND, AND ROJIEK’S “YOUNG CITIZENS: THE POSITION OF CHILDREN IN COMMUNITARIAN THEORY” Amitai Etzioni Fine, Espeland and Rojiek’s (2001) basic assumptions are all solid. Communitarian thinking has been gaining ground since 1990 both within academia and the society at large. Communitarian thinking has centered on the role of values and institutions in building and sustaining societies that are not merely civil, but also good. And the authors correctly summarized my main theoretical book on communitarian thinking, The New Golden Rule, as showing that a good society is based on a carefully crafted balance between autonomy and moral order. They overstated a bit the neglect of children in communitarian writing. Others and myself have been deeply involved in the debate as to what kind of family is needed for children to grow up properly, the role of character education in school (vs. the teaching of academics), and the responsibilities the community has for its children – as a common good. We also studied the effects of violent and vile material in the media and on the Web and what might be done about it, which requires a rather different approach than when one deals with adults. Nevertheless, the major criticism stands. Communitarians have not developed a clear and encompassing theory on how children differ from adults with regard to the core issue at hand – how they gradually gain autonomy and the implications of such development for the moral order. Here is an attempt to begin the development of such an approach, quite close to the valuable suggestions included in Fine, Espeland and Rojiek chapter. Sociological Studies of Children and Youth Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9, 9–14 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09002-0

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Liberals, as Fine, Espeland and Rojiek remind us, tend to view children as mini-adults rather than a distinct category of persons. Obviously, suggestions that special measures should be introduced to protect children but not adults can be justified only if children are substantially different from adults in ways that are relevant to the exposure of minors to all elements of our culture. The answer to this question is not as self-evident as it might seem; the ways minors have been characterized and categorized have changed significantly over the ages and vary from one culture to another. In the Middle Ages, children were often treated as if they were but small adults. For instance, when children misbehaved, they were considered to have acted out of ill will rather than from having not yet acquired societal mores. Punishment meted out did not differentiate between minors and majors. In contrast, in the modern era, especially in democratic societies, children have often been categorized as a distinct kind of people – people who are especially vulnerable, incompetent, dependent, and thus in need of protection. Moreover, in these kinds of societies, children are usually treated as members of a specific societal unit, the family, and parents have been charged with attending to their children and consequently accorded many rights of control over their offspring. These rights “in turn” are protected by public authorities. In recent decades, we have witnessed a retreat from the idea of children as dependents and family members. In the wake of various liberation movements, and a very legitimate rising concern for the human rights of minorities, women, gay and lesbian people, senior citizens, and disabled persons, we have also witnessed a new concern for the rights of children to make autonomous decisions – like adults. This tendency has been further fueled by those who believe the family is being phased out, thus requiring a new positioning of children (e.g. see Skolnick & Skolnick, 1986, pp. 1–4). Although typically these observations have not led to arguments that there are no remaining differences between children and adults, when it comes to First Amendment issues the social construction of children by civil libertarians as well as some liberals has moved them to treat children as mini-adults rather than as substantially different. This is in sharp contrast to the position taken by the same group in opposition to treating children as adults in courts of law and placing juveniles in adult correctional facilities and jails. The treatment of children as mini-adults runs contrary to almost the total body of social science evidence, enormous bodies of law, and values embodied in the major institutions of democratic societies, all of which view children as developmental creatures. That is, children begin life as highly vulnerable and dependent persons, unable to make reasonable choices on their own, and gradually grow to become (as society hopes, and parents and educators labor to achieve) people able to make

Comment on Fine, Espeland, and Rojiek’s Young Citizens

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moral judgments, competent to act on their own, and ready to be autonomous persons (for a list of numerous studies on this topic, see Wald, 1979). Yale Law Professor Joseph Goldstein makes these points as follows: Younger children, generally those under 10–12 years old, do lack the cognitive abilities and judgmental skills necessary to make decisions about major events which could severely affect their lives . . . Younger children are not able to think abstractly, have a limited future time sense, and are limited in their ability to generalize and predict from experience (Wald, 1979, p. 274).

Goldstein adds: To be a child is to be at risk, dependent, and without capacity to decide what is ‘best’ for oneself . . . . To be an adult who is a parent is to be presumed in law to have the capacity, authority, and responsibility to determine and to do what is good for one’s children (Wald, 1979, p. 258).

John O’Neill puts it succinctly: Currently, there are attempts to define children’s rights on the liberal model of individual rights exercised by potentially autonomous agents – despite the reality of children’s dependency (O’Neill, 1994, p. 64; also see Franklin, 1986; Holt, 1974).

Society’s expectations of children, and the rights society accords them, reflect this developmental perspective. Society first requires children to be cared for by their parents and to heed them, as well as to attend school, while society allows children to leave both as they grow older. And society allows young people to consume alcohol, drive, marry, vote, serve in the armed forces, and sign contracts at different ages, but only rarely when they are very young. There seems to be no foundation in social science to assume that when it comes to exposure to information, children are initially less in need of adult protection and guidance than in other aspects of their lives (JAMA, 1997). Given that children grow to be independent individuals, one may ask if every person does not undergo a vulnerable trial period during which they will first be exposed to potentially harmful media images (e.g. cigarette ads, pornography, violence)? Might it be more important for them to be exposed to this material at a younger age, when parents can more effectively provide a moral context for the incoming information? If the ultimate goal of a child’s education is to have him/her make moral choices for him/herself, then shouldn’t children be confronted with both positive and negative images early on and guided to the correct choice, rather than initially robbed of the option to choose and have the “better” choice made for them? Gradually exposing children to the violent and vile side of the adult world is indeed appropriate, but only commensurate with their ability to deal with the material. There is no reason to rush to expose pre-teens, for instance, to sexually

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alluring material in order to teach them to deal with it. Moreover, for parents and educators to be able to help shape children’s responses, they must be aware of specific inputs the children face and be able to arrange them in line with some kind of an educational agenda rather than allow them to be engulfed by violent video games and trash TV and lost in the World Wide Web. Above all, for parents and educators to participate in developing judgment, they must be given the tools that enable them to actively participate in the cultural choices their charges make and the ways they initially deal with them. Why do leading civil libertarians ignore the significant differences between children and adults? One reason might be the tendency of strong advocates to push a thesis to its illogical conclusion. (Just as civil libertarians tend to treat children like adults, hard-core social conservatives often treat adults like children, for instance by seeking to ban access to pornography for people of all ages.) In addition, civil libertarians fear the metaphorical slippery slope. For instance, the ACLU warns that “if this legislation [regarding tobacco ads, like Joe Camel, aimed at children] prevails, Congress could clearly impose similar restrictions on any commercial product” (ACLU Freedom Network, 1998). If children are denied full First Amendment rights in order to improve their characters, could one not favor the same for adults? This particular slippery slope, though, is clearly different from others in that clear markers can be set to prevent slippage. Unlike the difficulty in defining differences between fighting words (which, due to their dangerous effect, may be banned) and others, differences in age are rather easy to determine. Thus, public policies that prevent children from accessing certain materials, and above all policies enabling parents and educators to protect their wards, will not spill over to adults unless a more encompassing policy is deliberately embraced. Indeed, society expects parents and educators to actively participate in selecting the material to which their children are exposed. Civil libertarians should not hinder the development of the needed policies and tools merely for the sake of a paradigm that does not apply to children in the first place. The attempt to extend First Amendment rights to protect children against their parents (rather than the government) is particularly puzzling and troubling. Such an extension is so far-fetched that one may wonder whether it might be inadvertent. One may oppose a voluntary ban on Joe Camel ads because it was offered under pressure from Congress. Likewise, objection to the introduction of filters into public library computers may be justified. However, while the V-chip has been incorporated into TV sets by force of law, it is not activated unless parents so wish. And the refusal of libraries to inform parents of their children’s choices in books has nothing to do with protecting them from Big Brother.

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The notion that children should be treated basically as small adults is difficult to comprehend. The great classical liberal philosophers, who laid the foundations for our conception of individual rights, directly addressed this matter. John Stuart Mill, for instance, stated: “Children below a certain age cannot judge or act for themselves; up to a considerably greater age they are inevitably more or less disqualified from doing so.” Our respect for people’s choices rests on the assumption that their basic ability to render judgements has been formed and is intact. (This is the reason we, for instance, limit the choices of those whose mental capacity is significantly impaired.) Minors gradually develop the capacity to make choices, but they are not born with it. For this reason when their age is tender, we are not charged with violating their right to free assembly when we prevent them from running into the street, or their privacy rights when we examine their homework, even without prior consent. I believe that Fine, Espeland and Rojiek would agree. Parents not only have a right but a duty to help shape the educational environment of their children, help them choose what books to read, music to listen to, TV programs to watch – and which to avoid. Of course, as children grow older such guidance is less necessary, but the debate swirls largely around those who are 12 or younger, who badly need their parents. This counsel may include limiting the kind of porn they are exposed to, violent games they play, or even how many hours a day they may surf on the Internet – or watch TV – in the first place. Even for teenagers, parents need to be involved rather than shut out. Given the high suicide rate among teens, and the tendency for suicides to be emulated, if a kid committed suicide in my son’s school, and my son seems rather depressed and is spending long hours alone in the library, it is my minimal duty to know if he merely reads Dostoevsky or also the books of the Hemlock Society, which informs its readers how to best end their lives with minimal discomfort. In effect, attending to the character development of children, so when they grow they will be equipped with the moral and intellectual faculties needed to make responsible choices, is to a large extent what parenting is all about. Anybody can provide room and board. Love comes naturally. But providing education – laying the foundations for adult choices – is the highest duty of parenting, which no civil libertarians should deny.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In preparing this note I drew on a previously published work, “Suffer the Children,” included in The Monochrome Society (Princeton: Princeton University

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Press, 2001). My longer essay concerning this subject will be published in the Chicago-Kent Law Review in Fall 2003.

REFERENCES ACLU Freedom Network (1998). ACLU joins opposition to tobacco pact; Says speech limits are unconstitutional (March, 24). http://www.aclu.org/news/n032498b.html Fine, G. A., Espeland, W., & Rojiek, D. (2001). Young citizens: The position of children in communitarian theory. Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, 8, 299–318. Franklin, B. (1986). The rights of children. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Holt, J. C. (1974). Escape from childhood. New York: Ballantine Books. JAMA (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on adolescent health. Journal of American Medical Association (September 10). O’Neill, J. (1994). The missing child in liberal theory: Towards a covenant theory of family, community welfare, and the civic state. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Skolnick, A. S., & Skolnick, J. H. (1986). Family in transition: Rethinking marriage, sexuality, child rearing, and family organizations (5th ed.). Boston: Little, Brown. Wald, M. (1979). Children’s rights: A framework for analysis. UC Davis Law Review, 12, 274.

GENDER, RACE, CLASS, AND THE TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Kimberly A. Mahaffy INTRODUCTION Within the past twenty years, the transition to adulthood has become a burgeoning area of research. The status attainment process, an early model for transition to adulthood research, has given way to research focusing on singular outcomes such as completing formal education, leaving home, obtaining employment, forming a union through marriage or cohabitation, and becoming a parent. As young adults continue to delay family formation, some argue that one’s first experience of heterosexual intercourse is also a symbol of adult status (Meier, 2001). Although most scholars agree that these outcomes along with chronological age symbolize being an adult, relatively few empirical studies examine them as inter-dependent transitions. A recent comparison of these indicators by gender, race, and social class is also needed. Contemporary theories of social inequality fail to address the transition to adulthood as a distinct subject matter deserving attention (see England, 1993; Grusky, 1994; Howard & Hollander, 1997; Schwalbe, Godwin, Holden, Schrock, Thompson & Wolkomir, 2000). Instead, they focus on childhood experiences or socio-economic inequality in later adulthood. In contrast, the life course

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perspective has garnered attention as a developmental theory with great import for this period (Elder, 1998). However, a recent review of the transition to adulthood literature from the life course perspective indicates that a systematic analysis of gender, race, and social class differences is needed (Shanahan, 2000). Further, the developmental perspective in psychology is just beginning to take into consideration the diversity of subgroup experiences (Aber, Gephart, Brooks-Gunn & Connell, 1997; Crockett, 1997; Graber, Brooks-Gunn & Galen, 1998; Sherrod, Haggerty & Featherman, 1993). Since Hogan and Astone’s (1986) review of the transition to adulthood literature, there has been a growing emphasis on the influence of multiple social contexts rather than an exclusive focus on family background (Feldman & Elliott, 1990). With improvements to multi-level modeling, quantitative research has been able to “nest” adolescents within neighborhoods, schools, families, and peer networks to determine and compare their influence (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan & Aber, 1997a; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Feldman & Elliott, 1990; Furstenberg, 2000; Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder & Sameroff, 1999; Mortimer & Finch, 1996; South & Crowder, 1999). At the same time, few ethnographic studies of the transition to adulthood exist. Several exceptions are Luttrell’s (1997) retrospective analysis of white and black working class women’s experiences, Anderson’s (1999) study of inner-city Philadelphia youth, White’s (1999) investigation of black adolescent girls’ experiences living in the shadow of AIDS in New Haven, and MacLeod’s (1995) study of working class, black and white men in Boston. Multi-method, inter-disciplinary approaches like that of Furstenberg et al. (1999) are uncommon. Although studies of the transition to adulthood are growing, few scholars critically examine this process from a gender, race, and class perspective. By this, I mean incorporating a theoretical perspective and a methodology that examines how ideology and social institutions create as well as reproduce gender, race, and class inequality during the transition to adulthood. This perspective reflects the paradigm shift described by Hill Collins (1991) as the matrix of domination. From this perspective, gender, race, and class are defined as inter-dependent forms of oppression. Baca Zinn and Thorton Dill (1996) elaborate this paradigm as multiracial feminism and assert that Class, race, gender, and sexuality are components of social structure and social interaction. Women and men are differently embedded in locations created by these cross-cutting hierarchies. As a result, women and men throughout the social order experience different forms of privilege and subordination, depending on their race, class, gender, and sexuality . . . intersecting forms of domination produce both oppression and opportunity (p. 325).

Weber (2001) presents a similar, more concrete elaboration of this perspective.

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In the social stratification literature, inequality and oppression are distinct concepts. Oppression refers to the process by which one group achieves power, material resources, and opportunities by exploiting other groups to acquire and maintain their dominant position. Inequality means that one group has different experiences from another group, fewer opportunities to achieve status, power, or material resources, and this access depends on the group’s location in the social hierarchy. The difference between the two perspectives is the assumption of oppression-based theories that dominant groups engage in ongoing exploitation to maintain power whereas inequality-based theories place less emphasis on power struggles and more emphasis on differences in hierarchical positions. A gender, race, class perspective from either framework has yet to be integrated in transition to adulthood studies. I alternate between both concepts when describing a gender, race, and class perspective because both frameworks are necessary for future research in this area. Few ethnographic studies of young adult experiences integrate a gender, race, and class perspective. Instead, they typically emphasize gender, race, or class (Luttrell, 1997; MacLeod, 1995; White, 1999). Advances in quantitative data collection and statistical modeling have begun to provide a multi-contextual perspective on the opportunities and constraints created by social structure. In terms of applying a gender, race, and class perspective, however, this analysis falls short because researchers often choose to control for race, sex, and social class as variables and ignore their interaction with social context. Power relations are frequently taken for granted rather than modeled. As a result, we learn very little about how these structures contribute to and reproduce gender, race, and class inequality during the transition to adulthood. The purpose of this review is to establish a new direction for transition to adulthood studies by drawing on a gender, race, and class perspective to frame our understanding of this transitional experience and to call for a multi-method, inter-disciplinary approach. From this perspective, we would go beyond finding that gender, race, and class independently affect the process, timing, and outcomes associated with becoming an adult. The documentation of such differences is important and necessary. Yet, by exploring the inter-dependent systems of oppression, we stand to gain an explanation of the transition to adulthood that is: attentive to the creation and reproduction of gender, race, and class oppression through social institutional and ideological influences, informed by rich understandings cultivated through inter-disciplinary, multi-method work, and relevant to social policy development. Moreover, this theoretical perspective would elaborate how gender, race, and class are embedded in definitions of what it means to be an adult. This perspective would examine how current social policies incorporate gender, race, and class to

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create opportunities for some youth to achieve adulthood while denying others a chance to achieve normative definitions of adult status. Although I focus primarily on gender, race, and class as inter-dependent systems of oppression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, religion, and disability are also dimensions of this system. I devote less discussion to these dimensions because demographic measures of adult status outcomes are infrequently available for these groups. The fact that we have very little population level information about them suggests that their experiences have been obscured, one sign of oppression. In the remaining sections of this review, I cover pertinent demographic data but limit my review to outcomes traditionally associated with becoming an adult: family formation and socio-economic attainment. Topics such as health, violence, social psychological measures of adjustment, and biological changes are not covered. I briefly discuss issues of identity development. I find that there is sufficient empirical evidence to support a gender, race, and class perspective although a more systematic, comprehensive research agenda is required to explain these differences and fill the current gaps in literature. I describe several theories that have been used to study the transition to adulthood: status attainment, gender stratification via human capital development systems, oppositional culture, structural-cultural, cultural capital, and life course. Although none specifically incorporates the gender, race, class perspective to which I referred earlier, I describe them because they provide a starting point for a re-orientation of transition to adulthood studies. I discuss other shortcomings of the transition to adulthood literature: methodological and disciplinary divisions. These barriers prevent us from coherently and comprehensively documenting, critiquing, and altering the influence of social institutions on adolescent and young adult lives. To the extent that gender, race, and class inequalities can be remedied through social policy initiatives, I address how social policies might be designed to more effectively meet their goal of improving the life chances of youth.

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE: A FOCUS ON DEMOGRAPHIC PATTERNS In the contemporary United States, adulthood is associated with at least completing high school, securing stable employment, leaving home to establish an independent residence, marrying or cohabiting, and having children (McLaughlin, Melber, Billy, Zimmerle, Winges & Johnson, 1988). These indicators reflect a dominant, cultural belief that being an adult means being economically self-sufficient and establishing a family of one’s own. Age is also important to this definition, but lacking formal rites of passage, the age at which someone becomes an

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adult is subjective. National debates over prosecuting juvenile offenders as adults and adolescent, non-marital childbearing point to the ambiguity of this definition. Notwithstanding, many social scientists are interested in the transition to adulthood because it represents the acquisition of roles that are essential to society such as worker, spouse, and parent. Recent concerns over adolescent risk taking behaviors have rekindled an interest in the transition to adulthood because of the impact of these behaviors on the individual and society (Jessor, 1998). Although much research has been carried out on this developmental period, few studies place gender or race at the center to systematically examine and explain how the process of becoming an adult is different for young women and men or how this process differs by race and ethnicity. Instead, this body of research typically controls for sex and race or proposes conceptual and analytic models that ignore the ways in which gender and race are embedded in our social arrangements.1 In contrast, social class has received more attention in part because the transition to adulthood literature in sociology developed from status and income stratification studies (Haller & Portes, 1973; Sewell, Haller & Portes, 1969; Sewell & Hauser, 1975; Sewell, Hauser & Wolf, 1980). Social class inequality continues to dominate transition to adulthood studies from the United Kingdom although race and gender inequalities are also explored (Furlong & Cartmel, 1998; Wyn & White, 1997). Nevertheless, the current fragmentation of the literature, now divided into specialties like educational attainment, residential independence, and family formation makes systematic comparisons by gender, race, and class difficult. The following sub-sections provide an overview of the demographic characteristics of youth in the United States and young adult outcomes by sex, race, and class. This is not an exhaustive list of differences in transition to adulthood outcomes. I provide this summary to establish the relevance of a gender, race, class perspective and encourage researchers to elaborate the inter-dependence of these transitions.

Demographic Characteristics of Adolescents and Young Adults in the United States Thirty-nine million young adults aged 15–24 lived in the United States as of the 2000 census (U.S. Census, 2000). I use this age group to represent youth who are making the transition from adolescence to adulthood. They currently comprise 14% of the total population and no change in their representation is expected by 2100 (U.S. Census, 1999a). According to population projections for 2000, 66% of 15–24 years olds are white, non-Hispanic, 15% are Hispanic, 14% are black,

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non-Hispanic, 4% are Asian/Pacific Islander, non-Hispanic, and 1% are AmericanIndian/Alaska Native, non-Hispanic (U.S. Census, 1999b). Similar projections for 2000 indicate that 49% of youth ages 15–24 are female (U.S. Census, 1999a).2 By 2100, a substantial shift in the racial/ethnic distribution of young adults is expected whereas no change is expected in the sex distribution (U.S. Census, 1999a, b). At the beginning of the 22nd century, an equal share of youth ages 15–24 will be either Hispanic or white, non-Hispanic (37%). Similarly, an equal share of young adults in this age group will be black, non-Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander, non-Hispanic (13%), and the remaining 1% will be American Indian/ Alaska Native, non-Hispanic. These numbers do not sum to 100 because of rounding.

Trends in Achieving Adult Status: The Import of a Gender, Race, Class Perspective Sex, race, and ethnic differences in adult status outcomes are more readily documented by U.S. census reports than social class differences although some reports use the categories above and below poverty line to classify youth outcomes (see Statistics, 2000). However, “at or above the poverty line” masks the variation in this category. In contrast to “official reports,” scholars frequently demarcate social class differences empirically through composite measures of parental education, family income, or income/needs ratios. This method has been criticized because it ignores the power and relational dimensions of social class (Wyn & White, 1997). Short of relational measures, I mention social class differences as researchers report them. Table 1 provides a summary of sex, race/ethnic, and social class differences in the outcomes associated with adult status. Most of the findings refer to “baseline” differences prior to controlling for other factors that might account for these differences. The evidence suggests that sex, race, and social class as independent categories do not have a constant, pervasive effect on the outcomes measured. Rather, they jointly influence the achievement of adult status. For example, Hispanic males have the highest status drop-out rate of all sex/race/ethnic groups (U.S. Census, 2002). However, they also have the highest employment rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002a, b) and their earnings exceed those of Hispanic women at every educational attainment level (U.S. Census, 2002, p. 140). A race, class, gender perspective would examine the extent to which social structure and culture create different opportunities for Hispanic (Latino) males and females to achieve adult status, and this perspective would investigate whether social class shapes the opportunities of Hispanic males and females differently.

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Table 1. Sex, Race/Ethnic, Class, and Adult Status Outcomes. Outcome Educational attainment High school completion

Post-secondary degrees conferred

Income Attainment Earnings

Labor Force Participation Employment-population ratios for young adults ages 20–24, 2001 Residential Independence

Union formation Percent of adults ages 18 and older who are married, 2000

Sex, Race/Ethnic, and Class Differences

36.4% of Hispanic males, 31.1% of Hispanic females, 16.3% of black males, 15.7% of black females, 13.9% of white males, and 11.8% of white females were not enrolled in school and had not completed high school as of 1999 (U.S. Census, 2002, 162). Youth who live in poverty are less likely to finish high school net of other factors (Haveman, Wolfe & Wilson 1997). Hispanic adolescent mothers are less likely to complete high school than black and white adolescent mothers (Bae et al., 2000). White females have the highest high school completion rate (95.2%) relative to white males, black youth, and Hispanic youth (Wirt et al., 2001, p. 150). White, non-Hispanic graduates earned 73.7% of Associate’s, 77.5% of Bachelor’s, 79.9% of Master’s degrees, 76.3% of first professional degrees, and 82.0% of Doctor’s degrees awarded to U.S. citizens in 1999–2000 (Snyder, 2002). Females earned 60% of Associate’s, 57% Bachelor’s, 58% Master’s, 45% of first professional, and 44% of Doctor’s degrees in 1999–2000 (Snyder, 2002). Females have lower earnings than males regardless of their educational level or race (Bae et al., 2000; Clery, Lee & Knapp, 1998; U.S. Census, 2002, p. 140). Young adults from high-income families are more likely to have earnings in the top quartile vs. young adults from the lowest income families net of other factors (Clery, Lee & Knapp, 1998). 79.9% of Hispanic males, 77.5% of white males, 69.8% of white females, 59.5% of black females, 58.9% of Hispanic females, and 57.6% of black males are employed (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002a, b). 56% of males vs. 43% of females ages 18–24 lived at home in 2000 (Fields & Casper, 2001). Black, Hispanic, and Asian youth leave home at a later age than white youth (Goldscheider & Goldscheider, 1999). Males from high SES families are more likely to live independently, but family SES has no effect for females net of other factors (Mahaffy, 1999). 63.5% of white males, 60.7% of Hispanic females, 60.2% white females; 59.6% of Hispanic males, 46.7% of black of males, 38.3% of black females (U.S. Census, 2002, p. 47).

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Table 1. (Continued ) Outcome Timing of marriage

Cohabitation (1995)

Parenthood Birth rate for females ages 15–19, 2000

Timing of entrance into parenthood

Sexual Activity Percent of high school students who ever had heterosexual intercourse, 1999

Sex, Race/Ethnic, and Class Differences Median age at first marriage was 26.8 years for males and 25.1 years for females in 2000 (Fields & Casper, 2001). Females from high SES families in 1980 were less likely to marry four years post high school than females from lower SES families and less likely to do so than females of similar social standing in 1960 (Buchmann, 1989). Males from low SES families in 1980 were less likely to marry four years post-high school than males of similar social standing in 1960 (Buchmann, 1989). 42.6% of white non-Hispanic, 40.1% of black, non-Hispanic, 36.7% of Hispanic, and 31.7% of other non-Hispanic females ages 15–44 have ever cohabited (U.S. Census, 2001, p. 53). 94.4 for Hispanic females, 81.9 for black, non-Hispanic females, 67.8 for American Indian females, 32.5 for white, non-Hispanic females, 21.6 for Asian/Pacific Islander females (Martin, Hamilton, Ventura, Menacker & Park, 2002, p. 4). Mean age at first birth was 29.8 for males and 24.6 years for females in 2000 (Martin et al., 2002). Females from high SES families in 1980 were less likely to become mothers four years post high school than females from lower SES families and less likely to do so than females of similar social standing in 1960 (Buchmann, 1989). Males from lower SES families in 1980 were less likely to become fathers four years post-high school than males of similar social standing in 1960 (Buchmann, 1989). 75.7% of black, non-Hispanic males, 66.9% of black, non-Hispanic females, 62.9% of Hispanic males, 45.5% of Hispanic females, 45.4% of white, non-Hispanic males, 44.8% of white, non-Hispanic females (Kann, Kincher, Williams, Ross, Lowry, Grunbaum & Kolbe, 1999, p. 75).

The lower socio-economic achievements and early family formation of Hispanic females shown in Table 1 supports the assertion that these young women are socialized to place men at the center of their lives and to value motherhood above all other social roles and achievements (Fine, Roberts & Weis, 2000; Moraga, 1994). This literature does not explain Hispanic males’ adult status outcomes nor does it indicate how social class influences these outcomes. To the extent that comparisons can be made with other racial/ethnic groups, a gender, race, class perspective would examine similarities and differences in

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transition to adulthood experiences. However, comparing Hispanic achievements to those of other race/ethnic groups needs to be done cautiously because the category Hispanic includes members of all racial groups in some research and is a distinct classification in other studies. Further, Hispanic is a broad term that encompasses racial/ethnic groups with very different immigration experiences and histories of oppression (Fernandez, Paulsen & Hirano-Nakanishi, 1989; Velez, 1989; White & Glick, 2000; Wojtkiewicz & Donato, 1995). While some might claim that such variations render comparisons impossible, I argue that greater attentiveness to within group differences can lead to more useful comparisons and an opportunity to investigate the similar as well as different paths that youth travel to achieve adult status. Considerable attention has been paid to girls’ academic achievements because of their history of lower achievements relative to boys (AAUW, 1991, 1998; Bae, Choy, Geddes, Sable & Snyder, 2000; Phillips, 1998). Table 1 indicates that women earn less than men at all educational levels regardless of race/ethnicity (Bae et al., 2000; U.S. Census, 2002, p. 140; Clery, Lee & Knapp, 1998). The gender gap in earnings persists even as young women exceed men in terms of educational achievements except at the highest degree levels and as women of all marital statuses, including those with children, increase their labor force participation (U.S. Census, 2002). Other measures of adult status suggest that gender inequality is more nuanced than previously theorized (Acker, 1992). In terms of labor force participation, black females have higher rates of employment than Hispanic females and black males; however, their employment rates are lower than those of white youth and Hispanic males. A gender, race, class perspective would be useful to describe and explain these differences in the transition to adulthood. According to Table 1, social class also affects young women’s achievements. Earlier studies find that women from more affluent families are less likely to marry and become mothers four years post-high school than women from less affluent families and affluent women are less likely to enter these family roles than similarly privileged women from an earlier generation (Buchmann, 1989, p. 162). Moreover, adolescent mothers from high socio-economic status (SES) families are more likely to finish high school than adolescent mothers from middle and lower SES families (Bae et al., 2000). The contemporary socialization processes of white, middle and upper classes females are less likely to be examined critically. Social class differences in the transition to adulthood for black and Latino youth have also been the focus of less research. The experiences of Asian/Pacific Islander and Native American young women (and men) are often excluded from demographic analysis because their population sizes are smaller. These are many of the shortcomings of current research.

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How do we explain the relatively lower educational achievements of males, their residential dependence, later marriage and childbearing, and higher earnings as shown in Table 1? A gender, race, and class perspective would elaborate how young men are both privileged and constrained by social structure and culture. A decline in the real value of men’s wages and the higher rates of joblessness among black males suggest that some men experience difficulty achieving adult status (Farley, 1996). Given the inter-dependence of gender relations, the importance of critically analyzing their experiences cannot be overstated (Hall, 2000). Last, the sex, race, and ethnic differences among high school students who have ever had sexual intercourse as noted in Table 1 may reflect economic and cultural factors that make it easier for white females to maintain their virginity (Lichtenstein, 2000). In sum, the demographic data described in this section indicate that a gender, race, and class perspective would provide a useful explanation of the differences in adult status outcomes. How are these differences in the transition to adulthood explained at present? The next section reviews several theories that contribute to our understanding of these differences, but none provides a comprehensive explanation using a gender, race, and class analytical framework.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD “. . . [A]t every phase of developmental theorizing we must consider the critical issues of diversity in developmental pathways, contexts, processes, and outcomes” (Aber, Gephart, Brooks-Gunn & Connell, 1997, p. 51). In sociology, the transition to adulthood became the focus of research with the creation of the Wisconsin (social psychological) model of status attainment (Hogan & Astone, 1986). This perspective emphasizes the influence of family socio-economic background, intellectual ability, significant others’ influence, and socio-economic aspirations in adolescence on socio-economic outcomes in adulthood (Sewell & Hauser, 1975, 1980). The Wisconsin model and related research made an important contribution to the study of social mobility by concluding that family background is not the only determinant of socio-economic achievement. Instead, an adolescent’s educational and occupational aspirations as well as academic performance are also significant predictors of these outcomes (Alexander, Eckland & Griffin, 1975; Campbell, 1983; Featherman & Hauser, 1978; Jencks, Crouse & Mueser, 1983; Otto & Haller, 1979; Sewell, Haller & Ohlendorf, 1970; Sewell, Hauser & Wolf, 1980; Wilson & Portes, 1975).

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On the whole, the model has been better at explaining white men’s achievements than white women’s (Kerckhoff, 1995; Sewell, Hauser & Wolf, 1980). A recent test of the model using the National Longitudinal Study of the Class of 1972 indicates that the status attainment process is the same for women and men even when family formation is taken into account (Inoue, 1999). However, this model has several limitations. Although status attainment research purports to explain structural inequalities, the primary use of individual characteristics minimizes the importance of differential access to resources, opportunities, and rewards (Horan, 1978; Kerckhoff, 1976, 1995). This model does not explain the gender (or race) gap in earnings (England, 1992). Lastly, not enough attention has been given to the actual contexts and pathways through which subgroup differences in socio-economic aspirations and intellectual abilities develop and influence educational and occupational achievements (Mortimer, 1996). More recent conceptualizations of the transition to adulthood do not put gender, race, or social class at the center (e.g. Elder, 1998; Evans & Poole, 1991; Hurrelmann & Engel, 1989; Poole, 1989). This is not to say that research based on the life course and other developmental theories has not found gender, race, or social class differences. Rather, the conceptual framework that informs this work does not begin by asking how gender, race, and class inequalities are created during the transition to adulthood or whether the social identities change (or remain the same) from adolescence to adulthood in ways that would affect the transitional process. Alternative theoretical perspectives that emphasize gender, race, and class are discussed below. The majority of these theories focuses on social inequality in adulthood, but are relevant to this developmental period. I end this section with a discussion of the life course perspective because it has received so much attention in terms of its applicability to the transition to adulthood.

Gender Oriented Gender theories of socialization and social inequality encompass an array of perspectives: economic, structural, developmental, intra-psychic, biological, and cultural. Feminist scholarship, which investigates and explains the pervasiveness of gender inequality, informs each of these perspectives (e.g. Chodorow, 1978; Eagly, 1987; England, 1993; Folbre, 1983; Gilligan, 1982; Goldin, 1990; Riley, 1999; Risman, 1998; Rossi, 1984; West & Zimmerman, 1987). A strength of this vast body of literature is its emphasis on explaining gender inequality across a variety of analytical levels: interactional processes (micro), groups and proximal contexts (meso), as well as ideological, historical, and societal (macro). While explanations across these levels are numerous, the process of becoming

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an adult has been neglected. Developmental perspectives that are attentive to gender differences focus primarily on gender identity development (Archer, 1989; Chodorow, 1989; Erikson, 1968; Peterson, 1987). Feminist research on and with adolescents exists, but it primarily explores micro-level interactions situated within a particular school or community (Eder, Evans & Parker, 1995; Griffin, 1993; Martin, 1996; Nava, 1992; Orenstein, 1994; Taylor, Gilligan & Sullivan, 1995). A more complete analysis of gender inequality exists for mid-adulthood. As such, research on the division of household labor (Bittman, England, Folbre & Matheson, 2000; Brines, 1993; Cunningham, 2001; Shelton & John, 1996), earnings, promotions, and authority (Clery, Lee & Knapp, 1998; England, Farkas, Kilbourne & Dou, 1988; Reskin & Padavic, 1994; Seibert, Fossett & Baunach, 1997), as well as educational experiences (AAUW, 1998; Jacobs, 1996) cumulatively indicate that gender is deeply embedded in social arrangements. How might the gender differences in adult status outcomes noted here and in the previous section develop from childhood to early adolescence and young adulthood? I discuss Brinton’s (1988) theory of gender stratification as one explanation. Brinton (1988) posits a human capital development system that “not only explains the conditions under which women and men acquire different amounts of human capital, but the conditions under which their human capital is evaluated differently” (p. 308). Human capital refers to the education, knowledge, and skills that an individual possesses. This system comprises two dimensions: (1) the social-institutional context of human capital development and evaluation, reflected by the structure of the educational system and the labor market, and (2) the structure of exchanges and investments, especially intergenerational ones, within the family as the supplier of labor (Brinton, 1988, p. 305). The educational system and labor market are important because they determine whether the timing of decisions about human capital investments is diffuse or condensed across the life cycle (Brinton, 1988, p. 305). In condensed timing societies like Japan, decisions about human capital investments are made at specific, crucial points in the child’s life cycle and these choices foreclose other opportunities. The United States represents a diffuse timing society because its educational system and labor market are less rigid. Participants may enter, exit, and return to these social institutions with fewer negative consequences relative to the institutional arrangements in Japan. Japan’s tightly linked school-to-work transition, strong norms regarding women’s family responsibilities, and limited financial support for the elderly contribute to parental decision making. Japan is an exemplary case study of gender stratification (Brinton, 1988). According to Brinton (1988), Japanese parents are more likely to invest their resources in a son’s education because he will obtain a greater return on the

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investment as his career matures. Parents provide sons with extra tutoring to prepare them for school entrance exams and enroll them in the best schools to increase the chances that a “good” company will hire them. When companies hire based on a school’s reputation and referral rather than a competitive system that rewards individual achievement, enrolling in the “right” school becomes a near guarantee of occupational success. On-the-job training in Japan has been the dominant mode of skill formation and usually occurs in early adulthood (Brinton, 1988). Consequently, investments made by the company increase the employee’s human capital. While sons are groomed for future success, Brinton argues that women receive fewer investments from parents and employers because they are expected to leave the work force once they give birth to a child. Strong norms governing women’s age at marriage and childbearing also conflict with the timing of company training thereby reducing women’s ability to advance in the internal labor market. Even if women return to work, their earnings hardly match men’s. In sum, cultural norms regarding women’s and men’s responsibilities influence parental, school, and employer investments to create very different stratification processes for women and men. The strength of Brinton’s theory is its integration of gender ideology, norms, social policies, and multiple social institutions to explain the gender stratification process from childhood to adulthood. Yet, the child appears complicit throughout the life course. What forms of social control enforce compliance to these gender norms on a daily basis? How does active resistance to these expectations influence social structure? How can gender inequality be reduced in societies with a condensed timing of decision making? These dimensions of gender stratification and social change require elaboration.

Race/Ethnicity Oriented Race and ethnic differences in adult socio-economic achievements and family formation have been documented thoroughly (e.g. Browne, 1998; Cardoza, 1991; Cassirer, 1996; Corcoran & Duncan, 1979; Forste & Tienda, 1996; Kao & Tienda, 1995; Kaufman, 1986; Klepinger, Lundberg & Plotnick, 1995; Krein & Beller, 1988; Kuo & Hauser, 1995; McLennan & Averett, 2001; Reskin & Padavic, 1994; Stier & Tienda, 1997; Wojtkiewicz & Donato, 1995). I focus on two theories that are relevant to the transition to adulthood: the oppositional culture explanation (Ogbu, 1987) and a structural – cultural theory based on job loss in urban areas (Anderson, 1991; Wilson, 1996). In this context, the experiences of immigrant children are briefly mentioned. A more thorough discussion is found in Zhou (1997).

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To explain differences in minority group academic achievement, Ogbu (1987) proposes a theory of oppositional culture. He argues that these differences are related to the “nature of the history, subordination, and exploitation of the minorities, and the nature of the minorities’ own instrumental and expressive responses to their treatment, which enter into the process of their schooling” (p. 317). Ogbu (1987) also claims that society and schools contribute to these differences. By creating barriers to job opportunities and denying equal rewards for their education and experience, American society discourages minorities from investing in education. In addition, denying minorities equal access to good education reduces their ability compete with better educated students and further limits their opportunities. In the school setting, teachers have lower expectations for minority children (Ogbu, 1987). The cultural differences between dominant group teachers and minority group families cause school personnel to misunderstand and disrespect the students’ cultures in ways that interfere with education. Another dimension of this process is the dominant group’s belief in the collective inferiority of minorities. This belief is expressed through the scapegoating of minorities during a weak economy, residential segregation, and the association of undesirable traits with minority group members (Ogbu, 1987, p. 320). In response to the dominant culture’s treatment, some minority groups rebel and create their own oppositional culture. This oppositional culture eschews everything associated with the dominant culture including education. Ogbu defines this as cultural inversion. Minorities who are most likely to create an oppositional culture are involuntary minorities who were subjugated through slavery, conquest, or colonization. Immigrant minorities groups who come to the United States voluntarily are least likely to develop an oppositional culture and are more likely to perceive their culture as merely different from the dominant culture. Although both groups experience discrimination, they respond to it differently. Immigrant minorities do not believe that discrimination is permanent or institutionalized and attempt to accommodate (Ogbu, 1987, p. 325). In contrast, involuntary minorities perceive discrimination as systemic and distrust social institutions that affirm the dominant culture’s norms and ideologies. Members of involuntary minority groups who willingly participate in the dominant culture’s activities and institutions are accused of “acting white” and being disloyal to the minority group. Ogbu’s theory was developed primarily to explain the differences in educational achievement among minority groups. Contemporary research using nationally representative samples of youth including high school drop-outs does not support Ogbu’s theory (Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey, 1998; Green, Dugoni & Ingels, 1995; Mahaffy, 1999; Morgan, 1996). They find that recent cohorts of black youth report higher educational expectations than white youth although these expectations do not lead to greater

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educational attainment. Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey (1998) argue that more attention needs to be given to the material conditions that prevent black youth from achieving their plans. In contrast, Waters (1996) finds that race, ethnicity, and gender affect the social identities that adolescents embrace and have consequences for socio-economic achievements. Young black men are more likely than young black women to eschew academic success because masculinity and an oppositional black identity are inextricably linked whereas the definition of femininity for young black women is not as closely tied to an oppositional black identity (Waters, 1996). Others also find that black females have higher educational expectations than black males (Morgan, 1996). Wilson (1987, 1996) articulates a structural – cultural theory that provides an alternate explanation for the aspirations, achievements, and family formation patterns of urban black youth and adults by focusing on the material conditions of inner-cities. Wilson suggests that the lack of job opportunities for these residents has a negative effect on the transitions to education and gainful employment for black adolescents. The decline in low-skill employment has been detrimental to black men in particular, and the percentage of unemployed black men has increased since the 1970s (Wilson, 1996, p. 26). In addition, the loss of manufacturing jobs that often provide higher wages has contributed to the decline in men’s income. On the other hand, an increase in service sector work has meant that black women who have traditionally been employed in this segment of the labor market are more likely to be employed relative to black men although a growing number of black men have turned to this work (Wilson, 1996). As a result of the suburbanization of job opportunities, the flight of working and middle class families, the dwindling number of neighborhood social institutions (banks, churches, medical establishments, stores), and concentrated poverty, inner-city black residents have few role models with legitimate employment. Thus, they develop ghetto-related behaviors and attitudes that often contribute to their economic marginalization (Wilson, 1996, p. 52). Youth from neighborhoods that lack social integration and have low levels of social control, like these inner-city neighborhoods with high jobless rates, are at risk because of the lack of informal social controls . . . they are also disadvantaged because the social interactions among neighbors tends to be confined to those whose skills, styles, orientations, and habits are not as conducive to promoting positive social outcomes (academic successes, pro-social behaviors, etc.) as are those in more stable neighborhoods (Wilson, 1996, p. 63).

Moreover, black men have a more difficult time obtaining employment than black women because of persistent, negative stereotypes held by employers (Wilson,

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1987, 1996). Additional empirical work further elaborates the connection between concentrated poverty, job loss, and family formation among inner-city black residents (Anderson, 1991; Kelly, 1994; Wilson, 1996). When these young women and men believe that continuing their education has no effect on their ability to get a good job, they turn to early parenthood as a means of achieving adult status (Anderson, 1991; Kelly, 1994). Growing up in a community plagued by persistent joblessness reduces young black men’s commitment to marriage and makes them less desirable as husbands thereby prompting young black women to “make it” on their own as single parents (Kelly, 1994; Wilson, 1996). Although inner-city black youth verbally reinforce mainstream values, structural constraints limit their ability to achieve them (Wilson, 1996). Of course, not all inner-city black youth are school drop-outs and teen parents. Wilson (1996) and Anderson (1991) suggest that youth with positive role models, close parental supervision, fewer ties to street culture, and aspirations of higher education and/or work are more likely to resist the pressure to bear children as teens and leave school. In addition, young black women may have higher educational expectations than young black men because they perceive greater occupational opportunities. This hypothesis remains to be tested. The oppositional culture and structural-cultural theories explain race and ethnic differences in adult status outcomes. Both theories stress the importance of structural constraints as factors influencing young adult development, and suggest that these conditions contribute to subcultures that do not endorse the dominant culture’s norms and values. However, significant declines in births to black adolescent girls, declining births to white adolescent girls, and declining but still higher birth rates of Hispanic adolescent girls require explaining (Martin, Hamilton, Ventura, Menacker & Park, 2002). Have the economic opportunities for inner-city black women improved enough to account for this change? How do gender, race, ethnicity, structural opportunities, community, and culture interact to influence teen births? Fernandez Kelly (1994) argues that social and cultural capital have an important effect on whether inner-city young women from Baltimore bear children as teens. Moreover, the acquisition and loss of social and cultural capital depends on time, social and physical locations, social networks based on norms of exclusion and inclusion, and the positions of individuals within hierarchies of domination (p. 98). Similarly, Denner, Kirby, Coyle and Brindis (2001) conclude that cultural norms, strong ties to the homogeneous community, traditional values about family and gender roles, and intergenerational support appear to reduce teen childbearing rates in high poverty, Latino communities in California. Traditionally, these concepts have been associated with studies of social class and are elaborated next.

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Social Class Oriented The inter-generational transmission of socio-economic status came under close scrutiny with Blau and Duncan’s (1967) study of social mobility. Blau and Duncan (1967) found that father’s education and occupation has direct and indirect effects on son’s socio-economic achievements. The Wisconsin (social psychological) model of status attainment developed by Sewell and colleagues includes adolescent’s educational and occupational aspirations, significant others’ encouragement to attend college, mental ability, and academic performance as well as family socio-economic status. The purpose of adding measures of intelligence, academic performance, and social psychological factors is to determine the mediating processes of these factors on family socio-economic status and sons’ achievements (Haller & Portes, 1973). Both models confirm that child’s educational and occupational achievements are dependent on family socio-economic status. However, research conducted with the Wisconsin model also notes that family socio-economic status operates indirectly on child’s achievements by influencing significant others’ expectations which in turn shape adolescents’ aspirations. Academic performance also has a positive effect on significant others’ expectations of the young adult as well as a positive effect on educational attainment (Sewell & Hauser, 1975). Further, educational and occupational aspirations have a direct influence on their respective outcomes. In short, children from high socio-economic status families are more likely to report that significant others (parents, peers, teachers) expect them to attend college and they are more likely to aspire to college and high status jobs than youth from lower status families. These aspirations contribute to differences in educational and occupational attainment. As noted earlier, there have been numerous criticisms of this model (England, 1992; Horan, 1978; Kerckhoff, 1976; Mortimer, 1996). More recent studies of socio-economic inequality and the transition to adulthood have drawn on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social reproduction to explain class inequality (Buchmann, 1989; MacLeod, 1995). This theory seeks to overcome the dichotomies of objectivism (associated with structural perspectives) and subjectivism (associated with phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology) by focusing on the dialectic relationship between the dynamic actor and the social structures of which “practice” is the outcome (Bourdieu, 1977). The concept of habitus becomes the link between social structure and actor by providing the actor with a set of skills, tastes, knowledge, and worldviews associated with her/his social position. However, habitus does not determine the actions of the individual, but provides the actor with a framework from which to proceed.

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A second fundamental concept is field, which is a “network of relations among objective positions within it” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, in Ritzer, 2000). Field serves as a forum for the competition between social positions, the marshalling of various forms of capital (social, cultural, symbolic, and economic), and the structuring of power relations (Ritzer, 2000). There is a sense of an active, ongoing, struggle between members of various social positions, especially class positions, to achieve their interests and dominate the social hierarchy. This struggle for dominance is manifest in transition to adulthood studies through an analysis of the ways in which schools and family perpetuate class inequality (Buchmann, 1989; MacLeod, 1995). As applied to the United States, the educational system is infused with the cultural capital (tastes, dispositions, skills, and knowledge) of the dominant class and rewards conformity to these forms of cultural capital through educational credentials (MacLeod, 1995). In addition, families expose children to the forms of cultural capital associated with their social position. These forms of capital become part of their habitus. The dominant class’s cultural capital is also necessary for occupational success. Because youth from lower classes do not have the linguistic patterns, knowledge, dispositions, or tastes associated with the dominant class, expressions of their cultural capital are devalued and unrewarded by the educational and occupational structures that reflect the dominant class. Subsequently, these youth are “channeled” to other forms of education (vocational or business) and lower status occupations. Some argue that Bourdieu’s theory focuses exclusively on class inequality and ignores the ways in which social relations, dispositions, and capital are gendered (McCall, 1992). Empirical studies indicate that gender shapes dispositions to a greater extent than social class (Looker & Magee, 2000). Other research suggests that race has an important effect on these dispositions as well (Luttrell, 1997). A more complete theory of the transition to adulthood would depict gender, race, and class as inter-dependent systems of oppression. Life Course Perspective The life course perspective has gained much attention in part because of its usefulness for studying the transition to adulthood (Shanahan, 2000). The life course refers to the social processes extending over the individual life span or over significant portions of it, especially [with regard to] the family life cycle, educational and training histories, and employment and occupational careers. The life course is shaped by, among other things, cultural beliefs about the individual biography, institutionalized sequences of roles and positions, legal age restrictions, and the decisions of individual actors (quoted in Settersten & Mayer, 1997, p. 20).

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As a theory of the transition to adulthood, life course has tremendous potential. Attentiveness to the historical and social contexts in which decision making and role transitions occur is one principle associated with this theory (Elder, 1998). The life course perspective would explain 20th century, women’s socioeconomic achievements and delayed family formation by noting that these came about because of the availability of effective, legal contraceptive methods, the implementation of social policies that prohibited discrimination against women in terms of education and work, changes in gender role attitudes, and the decline in real income which required wives to work in order to supplement husband’s income. The impact of social change and life events also depends on its timing in the life course (Elder, 1999). For instance, early marriage among the Depression era cohort tended to produce socio-economic hardship and reduce educational attainment (Elder, 1998). In addition, Berkeley children (especially boys) who were younger when the Depression occurred experienced substantial adverse psychological effects relative to the older, Oakland cohort (Elder, 1999). Another principle of life course theory is the idea of linked lives (Settersten, 1999). Under conditions of severe economic loss during the Depression, the power within the family transferred to the mother, weakened the father’s role, and encouraged dependence on others outside the family (Elder, 1999). A final principle of life course theory is human agency. Individuals construct their own life course within the context of historical and social constraints and opportunities. Families who experienced economic deprivation during the Depression adapted by sending adolescent sons to work and transferring domestic responsibilities to adolescent daughters (Elder, 1999). Both experiences hastened the entry into adulthood for these children. A strength of the theory is its recognition that lives develop within social and historical contexts. Like Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social reproduction, life course theory addresses the constraints of structure and the potency of human agency. However, the attentiveness to social and historical change often demotes explanations of whether and how women’s and men’s life courses develop differently. To be sure, Elder (1999) documents gender differences in Depression era life course experiences. Yet, why and how these differences develop are not given as much attention. For instance, the greater psychological adjustment problems of the Oakland boys relative to Oakland girls can be understood from a feminist psychoanalytic perspective (Chodorow, 1978). More needs to be known about how racial/ethnic inequality is embedded in the transition to adulthood (Shanahan, 2000). An analysis of historical and social contexts, the timing of events and social roles, the inter-dependence of lives, as well as human agency are important contributions of life course theory. However, the theory requires

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additional elaboration to explain gender, race, and class inequality during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Most of the theories described above have not been developed to address the transition to adulthood specifically, but they help explain gender, race, and class differences in adult status outcomes. Yet, questions remain. How are gender, race, and class inequalities constructed and reproduced during the process of becoming an adult? How have historical and social changes contributed to or reduced these inequalities? How do gender, race, and class shape the definition of what it means to be an adult? For instance, if being an adult means being economically self-sufficient and this definition derives from the dominant culture, then particular groups that have had difficulty obtaining economic self-sufficiency are more likely to be labeled “dependent” and “children” – groups such as women, racial-ethnic minorities, and the poor. What are the implications of this in terms of theorizing about the transition to adulthood? If being an adult were defined in terms of one’s ability to be inter-dependent, then what are the implications? Although stratification theories are diverse in scope, the transition to adulthood has received insufficient attention. Instead, I have described several theories of inequality that are relevant to the transition to adulthood, but these theories do not address the inter-dependence of gender, race, class, and the process of becoming an adult.

CRITICAL REVIEW OF TRADITIONAL THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS In this section, I claim that methodological and disciplinary divisions have hindered our ability to critically investigate inter-connected systems of stratification during the transition to adulthood. Further, the focus on contextual analysis is often at the expense of explaining how gender, race, and class oppression is created in the transition to adulthood.

Gender, Race, Class and the Influence of Social Context Conceptual models of the transition to adulthood recognize that young adult outcomes are achieved within the contexts of family, community, school, and work (Connell, Aber & Walker, 1995). Empirical studies typically examine these sources of influence as independent of one another. As such, there is a body of research that focuses on the influence of family context (Aquilino, 1997; Astone & McLanahan, 1991; Hauser & Sewell, 1986; Pimentel, 1996), school context (AAUW, 1998;

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Alexander, McDill, Fennessey & D’Amico, 1979; Ehrenberg & Brewer, 1994; Marsh, 1991; Mayer, 1991), neighborhoods (Connell & Halpern-Felsher, 1997; Crane, 1991), and peers (Evans, Oates & Schwab, 1992; Hallinan & Williams, 1990). Other studies juxtapose parents and peers as competing forces in adolescents’ lives (Biddle, Bank & Marlin, 1980; Davies & Kandel, 1981; Wilks, 1986). Alternatively, a flourishing body of literature recognizes that youth are shaped simultaneously by these contexts and aims to examine the influence of each (Aber, Gephart, Brooks-Gunn & Connell, 1997; Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov & Sealand, 1993; Connell, Aber & Walker, 1995; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Ku, Sonenstein & Pleck, 1993; Phelan, Davidson & Cao, 1991; Upchurch, 2001). Advances in multilevel modeling, especially hierarchical linear modeling, have contributed to these efforts (Pong, 1997; Ribar, 1994; South & Crowder, 1999; Sucoff & Upchurch, 1998). For instance, hierarchical linear modeling permits the researcher to “nest” the influence of family background on young adult outcomes within neighborhoods to determine whether the influence of family background varies by the neighborhood characteristics. The same technique can be used with schools, larger geographic units, or individual-level outcomes that are measured over time (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). Nevertheless, the emphasis of this research is to describe and explain the influence of social context rather than elaborate how social context, gender, race, and class interact to affect the process of becoming an adult (Connell, Ashenden, Kessler & Dowsett, 1982; Mahaffy, 1999 are exceptions). The theories cited earlier indicate that resources and opportunities are distributed differently based on gender, social class, and race. Along these lines, South and Crowder (1999) demonstrate that neighborhood disadvantage has a different effect on black and white women’s premarital childbearing and marriage rates. “[Yet], neither neighborhood quality nor individual and family SES [socio-economic status] can fully explain the pronounced racial differences in premarital childbearing or marriage timing” (South & Crowder, 1999, p. 128). As this body of literature on contextual effects expands, theories that explain gender, race, and class inequality must be taken into account.

Persistent Methodological and Disciplinary Divisions Most of the studies mentioned throughout this review have relied on quantitative methods. This is due in part to the availability of data sets that have been collected from nationally representative samples of youth such as the High School and Beyond (1980) sophomore and senior cohort studies, National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, Monitoring the Future study, National Longitudinal

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Study of Adolescent Health, and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, to name a few. These data sets provide a multitude of measures pertinent to the transition to adulthood. However, this type of research has been criticized for its “variable” approach to gender studies in particular (Hall, 2000; Scott, 1988; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Although some argue that these studies provide little more than “difference in means” explanations (Thorne, 1993), quantitative work that examines interactions between gender, race, class, and contextual factors is able to investigate whether and how the transition to adulthood varies by these social statuses (Mahaffy, 1999). For example, research on adolescents’ plans for the future finds sex differences in family formation expectations, but no differences in expected socio-economic achievements (Greene & Wheatley, 1992; Mahaffy & Ward, 2000, 2002). These studies suggest that anti-discrimination policies which address the domains of education and work may have closed the gender gap in educational and occupational expectations, but “pro-family” policies appear to have done little to change expectations of a gendered division of household labor. Historical research linking social policies, economic changes, and adolescents’ plans would provide a more complete analysis of gender and adolescents’ plans. Quantitative research on the transition to adulthood typically examines the influence of social context and childhood or adolescent experiences on young adult outcomes. Less is known about the everyday experiences of youth as they age. How do adolescents construct their social identities and how do they actively shape (and resist) their environment as they become adults? How is the meaning of adulthood shaped by gender, race, and class? Qualitative approaches are well suited to address such questions, but they are often limited to brief periods of an adolescent’s life (e.g. Connell, 1997; Eder, Evans & Parker, 1995; Martin, 1996; Taylor, Gilligan & Sullivan, 1995). To analyze longer periods, retrospective reports are used, but they are subject to selective recall of events (Luttrell, 1997). Few researchers observe their participants through adolescence and young adulthood (MacLeod, 1995; Phelan, Davidson & Cao, 1991 are exceptions). Research using qualitative methods could enhance our understanding of the everyday experiences and structural constraints that contribute to gender, race, and class inequality. These methods can be combined with the longitudinal, survey studies already underway. Previous studies indicate that combining methodological approaches is a fruitful way to examine the influence of neighborhoods on youth development (Furstenberg et al., 1999; Wilson, 1996). Wilson and colleagues’ (1996) study of inner-city Chicago residents and employers as well as Furstenberg and colleagues’ (1999) study of families in Philadelphia reflect promising inter-disciplinary strategies for future research on the transition to adulthood. Wilson’s (1996) and Furstenberg et al.’s (1999) studies are examples of collaborative, inter-disciplinary

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efforts yet these collaborations are uncommon among scholars interested in the transition to adulthood. Although edited, inter-disciplinary collections are growing (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan & Aber, 1997a, b; Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Feldman & Elliott, 1990), they tend to privilege one method over another (Leadbeater & Way, 1996 is an exception). A comprehensive, inter-disciplinary study of the transition to adulthood that is grounded in a gender, race, and class perspective has yet to be conducted. The Society for the Study of Human Development (SSHD), currently supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, may forge new alliances in this respect, but that remains to be seen.

CONCLUSION We can expect substantial changes in the racial-ethnic composition of young adults by the 22nd century. At that time, white, non-Hispanic young adults will no longer comprise the majority and nearly half of the young adult population will be female. Whether young adults will be able to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the 22nd century is uncertain, but there is little reason to believe that the growing income inequality will reverse any time soon (Shapiro, Greenstein & Primus, 2001). Moreover, current racial and gender disparities in earnings put women and racial ethnic minorities at risk for tenuous economic circumstances. These conditions may also delay marriage and residential independence. To the extent that educational attainment has an effect on economic self-sufficiency, the disengagement of some Latino groups warrants further investigation and remedy. The inequality indicated in these trends calls for a change in the way that we theorize, conduct research, and develop social policies related to the transition to adulthood. Future research needs to address the question: How do structural constraints, gender, race, and class jointly influence the process of becoming an adult? Answering this question requires more than variable analysis or explorations of subjective meaning. We also need to critique the dominant definitions of adulthood to illumine how gender, race, and class are embedded and explore the implications. If adulthood means economic self-sufficiency, residential independence from family of origin, and heterosexual marriage, then numerous groups are excluded from this definition and may attempt to achieve adulthood through alternative means. For example, many poor, inner-city black youth who attend schools with few resources and live in areas with limited economic opportunities achieve adult status through early parenthood because motherhood and children are still valued in U.S. society and these are the only legitimate means within reach (Anderson, 1991; Kelly, 1994). In response, social policies have been created to reduce the

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number of youth who become disengaged from school and bear children early and out-of-wedlock (e.g. truancy fines, child exclusion laws, stay at home and in-school policies) while failing to address the greater problem of economic, racial, and gender oppression. Devising social policies that eliminate these forms of oppression among youth is a formidable task. Targeted programs and policies based on findings of inequality in outcomes could potentially do the most good. The summer youth employment program created by the Job Training Partnership Act aims to provide economically disadvantaged youth academic enrichment and employment opportunities through federally subsidized wages. Yet, support for this program fluctuates depending on economic and political climates. Moreover, the elimination of targeted policies and programs (e.g. affirmative action, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, public funding for family planning clinics) has become a popular political agenda. However, we would be na¨ıve to think that all youth need the same kinds of support as they become adults. I recommend that we consider the relational nature of social policy development. We might ask, if this particular initiative is implemented, which young adults acquire power, privilege, and resources? Whose experiences are excluded from these policy initiatives and to what end? Who are the stakeholders and power brokers? On whose behalf do they work? Empirical research developed through collaborative efforts that bridge methodological and disciplinary boundaries has the potential for being more comprehensive, creating a larger power base from which to shape social policy, and maintaining a critical perspective on the extant power relations that influence youth policy development. Although I have limited my discussion of the transition to adulthood to gender, race, and class inequality, the current stratification literature also recognizes that (dis)ability, sexual orientation, and national origin shape the experiences of young adults (Zinn, Hondagneu-Sotelo & Messner, 1997; Weber, 2001). Greater attention needs to be given to the experiences of these youth as they finish school, enter the workforce, and form families. How do structural constraints influence their transitions? How do they subjectively experience the achievement of these outcomes? Studies of youth with disabilities indicate that they make the transition to adulthood successfully (Gortmaker, Perrin, Weitzman, Homer & Sobol, 1993; Malloy, Cheney & Cormier, 1998). Yet, the experiences of gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth suggest that schools and families often provide negligible support (Friend, 1993). How do their educational, work, and family transitions vary? What aspects of social context foster their development? To what extent do these experiences depend on other systems of oppression such as gender, race, and class? There is clearly a need for additional research on the transition to adulthood as evidenced by this and other reviews (Furstenberg, 2000; Shanahan, 2000). This

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body of literature could be enhanced through a theoretical and empirical agenda that recognizes gender, race, and class as inter-dependent stratification systems as well as identifies strategies to eliminate oppression. What we gain from adopting this perspective is a more complete understanding of the experiences of youth and the development of social policies that improve the life chances and opportunities for all youth.

NOTES 1. I make a distinction between sex and gender. Sex is the socially agreed upon classification of biological differences whereas gender refers to our identities as “women” and “men” as well as the ways in which differences between women and men are created and embedded in our social arrangements (Hall, 2000; West & Zimmerman, 1987). When I refer to the indicator male/female in quantitative analysis, I use sex. When speaking of cumulative, pervasive differences between adolescent males and females (regardless of method), I use gender to denote that gender is embedded in social arrangements and the paths to outcomes associated with adult status are different for males and females. 2. Population projections are used for 2000 because the 2000 Census data for these statistics were not publicly available at the time of this writing. Percentages reported in this section were calculated by the author from the population projections in five-year age groups.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Katherine Rosier and the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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NEIGHBORHOODS AND INEQUALITY: THE POSSIBILITIES FOR SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD Sally Bould INTRODUCTION The transition to adulthood involves risk. In the 90s, sociologists have focused on the question of understanding and managing this risk. Much of this research has tried to go beyond family characteristics and examine the possible role of community or neighborhood. Furstenberg (2000) concludes, however, that the research “on adolescent behaviors has not shown a strong impact of the quality of neighborhoods, independent of the demographic characteristics of the resident families” (p. 902). The exploratory research reported in this paper on suburban neighborhoods, however, suggests that the neighborhood may have effects that have not yet been fully examined. Two problems with the previous research are highlighted. First is the problem of the definition of neighborhood in contrast to community, a continuing problem in neighborhood research. The second is that this research has largely focused on urban neighborhoods; the success of adolescents in suburban neighborhood contexts has not been highlighted. The result is that the focus of these studies has been more on poverty; this paper, however, will focus on inequality in contrasting the situation of adolescents in white suburban neighborhoods to that found in the inner city. Research in the 90s has examined the neighborhood in terms of whether or not it impacts outcomes for adolescents such as school achievement, delinquency and

Sociological Studies of Children and Youth Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9, 49–66 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09004-4

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sexual activity (Furstenberg et al., 1999; Sampson, 1998; Upchurch et al., 1999). Taylor (1996) has found that neighborhood stability and educational level have an indirect impact on “residents’ responses to crime and related problems” (p. 71). But the emphasis in these studies is on urban neighborhoods or census tracts, not suburban neighborhoods. Furthermore the research question in many of these studies focuses on how adolescents and their parents cope in poor neighborhoods (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997; Furstenberg et al., 1999; Jencks & Mayer, 1990). They do not provide adequate comparisons with middle class neighborhoods in the suburbs. This dimension of neighborhood context needs to be understood in terms of inequality, not just poverty. If the problem of poor neighborhoods is examined within a context of inequality then what becomes clear is that it is not simply the low crime rate or the presence of good schools that matter. The middle class suburban neighborhood provides additional advantages for teenagers. In terms of overall equality of opportunity, the neighborhood needs to be viewed as a factor. And in order to understand this inequality, it is important to look at the entire range of neighborhoods, not just urban neighborhoods. Furthermore it is critical to examine the role of race in the inequality spectrum. This paper will focus on the overwhelming advantages of a majority of the study’s 291 white suburban middle and upper income neighborhoods in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states. These teenagers and their parents can rely on the social capital of the neighborhood, whereas the teenagers and their parents in the inner cities cannot. The advantage of middle and upper income white families has often been conceptualized as their ability to use paid careworkers to assist in the tasks of bringing up children (Glenn, 1992), in addition to their choice of suburban neighborhoods with low crime and good schools. More attention, however, needs to be focused on the microenvironment or “place” (Adler & Adler, 1998; Anderson, 1999, 1990; Furstenberg et al., 1999; Kurz, 2001). What the research presented below suggests is that there is a type of supervision that cannot be purchased in the labor market1 and that it is middle and upper income white families who have broad access to this supervision of their teenagers in the suburban housing market. This supervision is provided by the neighborhood when the child or youth leaves the confines of the home. It is not possible to hire someone to shadow a teenager, or even an eleven-year-old as the child goes down the block or across the street. As Furstenberg et al. note: Early adolescence is a particularly salient time to investigate neighborhood effects on family management practices . . . Parents must provide increasing opportunities for their early adolescent children to practice making responsible decisions about their own behaviors while at the same time protecting them from dangers and temptations that could mortgage their futures (1999, pp. 90–91).

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This study finds that parents in a majority of the suburban neighborhoods in the sample could, in fact, rely on their neighbors to provide a caring and watchful environment for teenagers. The family did not have to operate as a “self-sufficient” entity; it could rely on the neighborhood social capital. This form of social capital is built on pre-adolesent neighborhood friendships (cf. Adler & Adler, 1998) and on the investment of the neighborhood women and their gendered carework (Bould, 2003; Cancian & Oliker, 2000).

THE SAMPLE The 291 neighborhoods in this sample are the neighborhoods where a student interviewer had lived. These student interviewers were recruited and trained in the author’s classes on the sociology of the family. The student had to have lived in the neighborhood for at least five years; in the typical case the student lived in the neighborhood for ten years. Only suburban neighborhoods from the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States were included (see Appendix A for a fuller description of the sample). Each student interviewed one adult member from each of three families in their neighborhood, one from their own family (a parent) and one adult from each of two additional neighborhood families. The neighborhood was defined by the student rather than pre-determined, a method which is linked to social functioning (cf. Lynn, 2000). Of the 291 suburban neighborhoods analyzed here, the typical neighborhood was all white; a few neighborhoods contained one black family. Ethnically the neighborhoods were mixed or without ethnic ties and religious affiliation was usually a mixture of Protestant and Catholic and sometimes included Jewish families. These were primarily nuclear family household neighborhoods with only a small minority of single parents. Typically, no one other than spouses and their children resided in any of the households involved in the survey. Extended kin generally did not live in the neighborhood. Social class ranged from working class and lower middle class neighborhoods to upper middle class suburbs where the fathers were all professionals or executives who commuted into New York City. All of the neighborhoods had sufficient resources “to make possible constructive social exchanges in support of family life at the neighborhood level” (Cochran, 1990a, p. 294). Another important characteristic of these neighborhoods was that the majority of residents were long-term and the student’s families typically had lived in the neighborhood for at least ten years. The use of undergraduate students as interviewers in their own neighborhoods permitted, over the years of the study, the inclusion of a large number of neighborhoods in the suburban region from which the university draws most of its student

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population. It also had the advantage that the student had been a participant in that neighborhood. This introduced a positive bias, but also allowed students to report on incidents in the past. In contrast to the objective definitions of “neighborhood,” the students used a subjective definition of their neighborhood. They had to interview three families in their neighborhood. The individuals interviewed almost always lived within a two-block radius of each other. This provided a very micro definition of “neighborhood,” but was effective in determining the possible face-to face interaction necessary for a study of neighborhood social capital in terms of the informal relationships between neighbors. Each neighborhood was given a case number (1–291) and the three respondents in each neighborhood were identified as A, B, and C when there is a direct quote from one of the interview schedules.

SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL CAPITAL According to research on social capital, one form resides in the social relationships outside the household: the relationships with neighbors (Boisjoly, Duncan & Hofferth, 1995; Coleman, 1987, 1988; Scanzoni, 2000). The critical advantage, which a majority of these white suburban neighborhoods provided, is in supervising teenage behavior. This dimension of neighborhood social capital involves what Etizoni (1989) terms “close loving supervision” by neighbors as well as parents. The process involves social integration of minors into the adult community and the establishment of an adult community to oversee this integration. When teenagers misbehave, the process invokes informal mechanisms of social control. Since it is the behavior of teenagers which is most likely to require supervision outside the parent-child family household (Furstenberg et al., 1999; Kurz, 2000), a critical question is what would the neighbors do if there were problems involving the neighborhood teenagers. Although there may not be full agreement on child-rearing practices in these neighborhoods, it is likely that agreement can be reached on what is expected in terms of public behavior of teenagers. In the examination of the 291 neighborhoods, those with a high level of social capital provided not only help in an emergency and with small tasks, but also the supervision of teenagers. In order to be classified as a neighborhood with a high level of social capital, none of the three interviewees could indicate that they would call the police if there were problems with the neighborhood teenagers. In addition, at least two of the three interviewees from the neighborhood had to indicate that they would contact the teenager’s parents directly or the teenagers themselves. A typical answer is, “Call the kid’s parents. I think the parents would stop the trouble.” This response assumes some form of social integration in that: (1) the teenager and the family are known to the neighbor; (2) the neighbor feels

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comfortable in contacting the parent directly; and (3) there is a general confidence that the parent could handle the problem. In addition, all of the respondents had to indicate that any neighborhood problems would be solved collectively. (See Appendix B for the questions.) The social capital that the neighborhood can provide in restraining teenage behavior is unique. Propinquitous social support and help with supervision of teenagers can only come from neighbors. Neighbors are in an excellent position to respond to “unpredictable events” as well as situations with “too many contingencies” (Litwak, 1985, p. 10). This form of social capital has long been recognized as an important supportive structure for families, and a critical resource for parents of teenagers. “Mothers are responsible for managing and overseeing multiple aspects of their teenagers’ lives, a task which is particularly difficult because their teenage children are becoming more independent . . .” (Kurz, 2001). This type of help cannot be purchased in the labor market. Previously, much of this assistance came from kin living in the neighborhood (Gibson, 1972; Litwak, 1965). In contrast, this study of suburban families of the 80s and 90s indicates that neighbors may have replaced kin in this respect; only a few families in this study mentioned nearby kin as a source of help. This is not that unexpected since the move to a suburb often puts the family at a distance from kin. In examining the full range of inequality, it is necessary to examine the formal as well as informal social capital available to the neighborhood. In the United States this formal social capital consists of the emergency response system of calling 911. In terms of help with an emergency, almost all of the white suburban neighborhoods had access to a neighbor. Many reported incidents of a medical emergency in which a neighbor was called to help. It was rare that a neighbor would not be called on. In one such rare neighborhood, the student explained the problem thus: “If they did call a neighbor . . . the caller would have to give her name two or three times and explain where she lived before the neighbor she called understood who she was.” Therefore, in these few cases, the call would be made directly to 911 for emergency help. It is this access to formal public services, which can provide life-saving assistance. The suburban families could all count on a prompt response from a call to 911 for a medical emergency. Typically the suburban respondent indicated that they would both call a neighbor and call 911 and expect help with the problem. This is a critical resource for teens who are most likely to engage in risky behaviors. Even without an actual emergency, parental anxiety about a teenager’s safety can be reduced. Unfortunately, in many of the inner city black neighborhoods, parents lack effective access to formal help through the emergency reporting system of 911. Thus, inequality in access to basic emergency medical services divides the predominantly white suburbs from the black inner city. The inner city mother cannot count on publicly available and

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publicly paid for emergency medical services. The consequence for her teenager is potential disability or death due to delayed medical services (Anderson, 1999).

Suburban Neighborhoods with Low Social Capital In her study of the “Hamptons,” Baumgartner describes a suburb with limited social capital and “without social integration.” In this white middle class suburb the residents practiced “moral minimalism.” On a day-by-day basis life is filled with efforts to deny, minimize, contain and avoid conflict. People shun confrontations and show great distaste for the pursuit of grievances or the censure of wrongdoing. In fact, only when they can be assured that someone else will bear the full burden of moral authority, allowing them to remain completely anonymous and uninvolved, do suburbanites approve the exercise of social control. This syndrome of conflict aversion and moral restraint has as hallmarks a great deal of tolerance and frequent resort to avoidance when tensions arise (Baumgartner, 1988, p. 127).

What this means is that there would be an anonymous call to the police. In the suburban neighborhoods with minimum social capital, the parent(s) would have to provide all supervision themselves and could never have confidence that if they “heard nothing,” nothing was going on. And, when they did hear something it would be from the police when the problem had escalated to the extent that someone had called the authorities. Approximately one third of the suburban neighborhoods in this study fit this pattern. Respondents in these neighborhoods, however, felt comfortable notifying the authorities, and they fully expected the problem to be resolved. Examples of respondent’s statements include: People would call the police and ask them to intervene. Usually the police respond quickly and there is no problem (#221B). There would be notification, local newspapers or telephone calls. The resolution would be in the hands of the police (#93A) Yes, Call the police. I would think the parents would do some disciplining (#236B). Depending on the situation, we’d do different things, but we’d probably call the police (#226B). Yes, neighbors are known for calling cops to break up parties. Resolution, cops come and disperse unlawful assembly (#23A). Yes, they would call the police. Confront the parents? Maybe? (#83C) In the case of teenage parties, a few neighbors might call the police, but if it was quiet probably they’d ignore it (#14B).

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In these neighborhoods people do not feel comfortable getting involved. This is reflected by many of the respondents as indicated by the following: If it doesn’t involve them they don’t open their doors. Only problem with teenagers drunk in the park next door. Police were called to clear them away (#22C). It would depend on how bad the trouble was. Probably, though, we would call the police since most of us aren’t close enough to confront the family without feeling strange. If the police were called, the trouble would probably stop since we would nip it in the bud (#232A).

Suburban Neighborhoods with High Social Capital The importance of non-kin neighbors in suburban areas, as analyzed by a review of responses on the interview schedules, indicates that the majority of neighborhoods had a level of social capital such that at least two of the three neighbors would contact the parents of the teenagers if there were a problem. These student reports suggest that the neighborhood social capital found in a majority of these middle class suburban neighborhoods have been critical in the family experiences of a majority of students who resided for at least five years in their suburban neighborhood. Adults in the neighborhood could provide help with supervision, which can be critical for the teenager’s future. In a study by Cochran and Bo (reported in Cochran, 1990b, p. 25) sixteen-year-old Norwegian boys were found to do better in school and have fewer behavior problems if they had larger numbers of non-kin adults in the network. Similarly, Aneshensel and Sucoff (1996) find that adolescents who know others in their neighborhood have better mental health. Over half of the suburban neighborhoods in this study provided help in the supervision of teenagers in addition to emergency help and assistance with small tasks. These neighborhoods had developed a context of social integration in which problems with teenagers are handled quickly and informally within the neighborhood. These sorts of neighborhoods provide substantive social integration (Durkheim, 1964) and the adults have a sense of “shared social duties” (Scuilli & Bould, 1992). The process involves social integration of minors into the adult community and the establishment of a system of informal social control by neighborhood adults. The nuclear family household can rely on nearby adults to assist in supervision of teenagers and can feel confident that their teens would be supervised and they would be alerted to any problems before the neighbors called the school or police. There is less emphasis on privacy and more active involvement in other families’ “business.” Furthermore there is a high sense of being able to resolve serious neighborhood problems collectively. A majority (58%) of the suburban neighborhoods in this study fit this pattern.

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Examples of respondent’s accounts in these neighborhoods reflect this high level of social capital: If there were problems with teenagers though, parents would deal directly with parents. This is possible because the parents know each other (#31A). I think it would be discussed with the parents of the teenagers. It would probably be resolved that way! (#21C). The neighbors would notify the parents of the individuals. The parents of the teenager would solve the problem (#106B). First they would talk to parents. Usually the parents have taken control. Together a group of six, once, went to the parents of a teenager because he was threatening younger children. It never occurred again (#19A). Yes, would complain, not call police. Resolution, thoughtful neighborhood (#24B) And another respondent from this neighborhood indicated “no ratting” (#24C).

In some of these neighborhoods, however, the respondents did not rule out calling the police, but this measure was taken only after the parents were notified. Parents would always know about the trouble with their teenagers before the police came knocking at their door. Comments from respondents in three of the high social capital neighborhoods follow: Yes, the neighbors would do something about it. The civic association might send notes to all the houses telling them to be on the lookout for trouble. If it continues they would probably confront the parents before going to the authorities. The authorities would probably only be called if the problem was very serious (i.e. drugs, etc.) (#234C). First they would try to talk to the teenager and if that didn’t work they would go and see the parents. Hopefully, this would resolve the problem, if not, contact local authorities (#233B). I think several of the fathers would talk to the teenagers’ parents first, then if that didn’t work they would go to the police (#30A).

Keeping a watchful eye on neighborhood teens does not invade the privacy of the home, but provides supervision when parents are out of sight or off to work. This type of care does not help mothers who are concerned with too much alone time, or not tending to homework (Kurz, 2000), but it does mean that the parent is likely to hear of some misbehavior before it develops to the point that the police are called in. The teenager knows furthermore that he or she is not anonymous in the local streets.

Urban Neighborhoods with Negative Social Capital The advantages provided by these predominantly white middle and upper middle-income suburban neighborhoods present a sharp contrast to the situation

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of the teenagers and parents in the black “hyperghetto” (Massey & Denton, 1993). Not only is there limited informal social capital, but also limited or no access to public emergency services. A call to 911 is unlikely to bring timely medical attention or police assistance. In these neighborhoods the parents must be entirely self-sufficient in order to protect their children. They must create a “family as fortress” style of parenting (Furstenberg et al., 1993). Furthermore, these neighborhoods can be classified as having negative social capital not only because of the absence of what is available to parents in other neighborhoods, but also because of the presence of a “code of the streets” (Anderson, 1999). In the vacuum created by the lack of law enforcement and control by parents, public behavior is controlled by the “code,” which provides harsh penalties for those who violate the code. And it puts all residents at risk of stray bullets. It makes public places, even the front yard, dangerous for the residents (Anderson, 1999; Furstenberg et al., 1999).

Calling the Police In poor urban neighborhoods, often the police are not an accessible resource. Furstenberg et al. (1999) describe one mother’s frustration in her black inner city neighborhood: . . . one summer, when the neighborhood was overrun with gangs of teens who were fighting with one another and committing acts of vandalism, Trisha Collins’s mother, Joanne, and her neighbors tried repeatedly to get the police to take care of the situation. When this didn’t work, Joanne resorted to an active but very individualized management strategy, insisting that her daughter come home before dark and that her son come in the house whenever the gangs were roaming around. Thus, although Joanne had tried to use neighborhood resources to help monitor her children’s behavior, she resorted to a much more restrictive pattern when these attempts failed (1999, p. 80).

Furthermore, in the hyperghetto, not only do the police not maintain order, but the vacuum left by the absence of authority is filled by an “urban brinkmanship” emphasizing physical force. Anderson describes this pattern in The Code of the Streets: Rob cannot call the cops to handle the drug dealers on his corner. The police arrive and quickly leave, whereas he must live there for the long haul. He thus becomes invested in the local people’s law and in its corresponding street justice, a response to the dysfunctional wider system (1999, p. 314).

In suburban neighborhoods with minimal social capital, calling the police is viewed as an effective strategy and there is confidence that the police would take care of the problem. Calling the police, however, has potentially serious impacts for the

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teenager. In a minority of the suburban neighborhoods parents are left alone to face the daunting task of supervising teens through the myriad of temptations during these vulnerable years. Authority figures, such as teachers and police, are no longer likely to be members of the neighborhood community. Authorities who come from the outside are less able to negotiate boundaries; they are more or less required to formalize the implementation of social control, reporting incidents of disorderly conduct, for example. With the bureaucratization of authority and the formalization of rules, social control becomes imbedded in rigid bureaucratic structures. Today’s suburban neighborhoods which do not have social integration can only resolve the control over teenager’s behavior by “calling the police” when the situation reaches an extreme point. And the police most often represent an impersonal bureaucracy. This type of neighborhood is less able to provide mechanisms of social control than the majority of neighborhoods since people are willing to help but unwilling to interfere. Family privacy is highly regarded and problems are often resolved by calling the police. There was an incident in an upper-middle class suburban Philadelphia town. While the parents were away, the high school age son gave a party for his friends. The party was too noisy and the neighbors called the police. When the police came the teens fled, leaving behind many disposable cameras. In the cameras were pictures taken at the party. The parents, in whose house the party took place, were able to identify the families and brought suits on a charge of “breaking and entering.” The matter, originally handled by the police, was settled through the legal system. In this example the economic resources of the upper middle class parents came into play. Within a year all charges were “dropped” except for one individual and the presumption is that the remaining individual had access to a good lawyer. This incident contrasts starkly to how the situation of a noisy teenage party was handled in one of the neighborhoods with a high level of social capital. The student describes her neighborhood (#64) as follows: When people leave their children home alone, most of them feel their children will behave because they can count on other neighbors to watch the house. When I was in high school, my friends and I had a few big parties and we always got caught by other peoples’ moms, never the police.

In another case the student reported that as a teenager she “felt very pestered by my neighbors . . . if I had anyone in the house (boys), my parents were the first to know. I hated it then” (#85). Knowing that one’s behavior would be reported to one’s parents probably reduced risk taking by teenagers in some of these neighborhoods with high social capital.

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The Role of Stability The sample of neighborhoods in this study is biased in that a selection factor was the stability of the student’s residence in the neighborhood in order to complete the project. Evidence indicates that residential stability is positively associated with neighborhood social ties and neighborhood involvement for urban neighborhoods (Taylor, 1996) and for both urban and suburban neighborhoods (Ross, Reynolds & Geis, 2000). But Ross et al. find that it is only in affluent neighborhoods that stability is linked to a reduction of distress. “Neighborhood stability is associated with psychological well-being only in economically advantaged neighborhoods” (2000, p. 594). Nevertheless, among the suburban neighborhoods studied here, there were working class suburban neighborhoods which provided social integration similar to that of the upper middle class neighborhoods. Furstenberg and his colleagues even found an urban white working class neighborhood which provided a social integration similar to the type of supervision which was provided in the old parochial neighborhood (cf. Warren & Warren, 1977). “Garrison Heights,” was the white Catholic working class urban neighborhood where: almost all residents of the community are known to one another. Most are linked by kinship, friendship, or at least affiliated through one or another community organization. They can reasonably expect that other adults would act as they might if an adolescent gets out of line. Accordingly, Heighter youth cannot expect anonymity from the streets (Furstenberg et al., 1993, p. 248).

In this neighborhood neighbors, both family neighbors and non-family neighbors, as well as community and religious leaders, provide for supervision of teenagers. Taylor (1996) finds that neighborhood stability is more important than level of neighborhood education in predicting the urban neighborhood’s responses to disorder. The intervening variables were the person’s attachment and involvement with the neighborhood. In his research, the response to disorder was measured as the perception that neighbors would be willing to “stop kids spray painting” and tell teenagers to stop making a loud disturbance at night (1996, pp. 56–57). In this research neighborhood residents were asked an open-ended question as to their response to disorder by teenagers in the neighborhood (see Appendix B).

THE ROLE OF RACE Neighborhood stability, however, is not always positive. For the black hypergetto having “stability” and extensive social ties in the neighborhood does not mitigate the distress caused by these neighborhoods (Ross et al., 2000). Overall the level

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of inequality in access to support in parental care taking responsibilities for teenagers between poor black urban neighborhoods and middle income white suburban neighborhoods is extreme. It is much more than simply access to financial resources, good schools, or organized activities. In poor black urban neighborhoods there is limited or no access to the formal public resources of protection and care. Parents have to use highly restrictive methods of control over teenage children or they must get their teenage children out of the neighborhood for safe activities. These carework tasks further reduce the time available for essential income generating activities. Moreover, the parents cannot even rely on an emergency response system. They know that the police will neither reliably enforce the civil and criminal law, nor will they provide protective services. The vacuum of police protection is filled by a “code of the streets,” a system of “street justice” – a form of neighborhood self-policing which relies on violence and the fear of violence to make teenagers and other residents “behave” according to the code (Anderson, 1999). These communities have been written off by the larger society and parents of teenagers must be entirely “self-sufficient” in providing all of the protection and supervision that their teenagers need. In these neighborhoods “adolescent success” can be as simple as surviving the teenage years; not getting caught in the crossfire. Jencks (1988) has characterized these neighborhoods as “deadly” (see also Anderson, 1999). It is no wonder that their residents are likely to suffer psychological distress (Ross et al., 2000). At the other end of the spectrum, stable suburban white neighborhoods often have an array of support available for teenagers and their parents in negotiating this risky transition. They have access to formal services, both protective and emergency, and they have not only access to neighborhood help in the case of emergencies and small tasks, but also in keeping watch over the teenagers. This neighborhood surveillance can prevent situations from escalating to the point that the police are called and the teenager gets a police record. In their studies of Philadelphia, Furstenberg et al. (1999) find that the worst neighborhoods are African-American. In the suburban neighborhoods in this study, the most caring neighborhoods for children and youth were entirely white (Bould, 2003). Furthermore, the neighborhoods with the greatest support for supervision of children and youth were not necessarily upper middle class. These neighborhoods were accessible by middle-income white families. White poor families and families of unskilled workers, however, are likely to have a much more limited choice in housing; they are likely to be living in neighborhoods where teenage crime and drug use are serious problems (cf. Lareau, 2000, 15ff ). The suburban neighborhoods with high social capital in this study were not parochial in that they welcomed newcomers. They did, however, have a difficult time integrating non-white families into the neighborhood. There was one

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neighborhood with high social capital where the black family was not integrated into the neighborhood after two years of residence. The student’s comment was “on the whole the neighborhood was receptive but the black family tends to keep to themselves.” Black families probably do not feel welcome in these white suburban neighborhoods as reflected by research showing that whites prefer not to have black neighbors (Harris, 1999). In another neighborhood with high social capital, a Chinese family “had a six foot wall built around their property. They may see this as a sense of privacy while most neighbors perceive it as an act of self-isolation from the community.” For white families, there is widespread access to neighborhoods with high social capital. A middle-income white family2 can find an affordable suburban neighborhood, which reduces the risks of the transition to adulthood for their teenagers. In two skilled working-class neighborhoods the respondents reported: “We would speak to their parents in case of problems with the teenagers. I think the parents would resolve the problem” (#106B); “Yes, neighbors would pull together to upkeep their safe community. They would probably contact the parents of the teenagers to make them aware of the problem and try to come up with possible interventions” (#214A). In these neighborhoods the fathers worked as plumbers, repairmen, mechanics and autoworkers. A middle income black family, however, is much more limited in its access to such neighborhoods, both because of limited home equity and a sense of being unwelcome, in addition to “pure discrimination” (Harris, 1999, p. 476). Overall, then, the social class effect appears to be compounded by a race effect. Better off working class white families can move to the suburbs and become integrated into neighborhoods, which provide a watchful eye on children as they move into the teenage years. The option is there, even if it is more restricted with fewer good schools than for upper middle class white families. But black families’ suburban options are highly restricted (Massey & Denton, 1993). Black families are disproportionately found in the worst possible urban neighborhoods. They face extraordinary barriers in raising their children in neighborhoods where the parental task requires a super parent, or more typically a super mom.

The Standard North American Family In the suburban neighborhoods with high social capital families fit the ideological code of the Standard North American Family (Smith, 1999, p. 157ff ):3 It is a conception of the Family as a legally married couple sharing a household. The adult male is in paid employment; his earnings provide the economic basis of the family-household. The

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The division of labor as described by Smith (1999) was precisely the division in the suburban neighborhoods in this research. When the mothers worked, it was typically in traditional women’s jobs or careers; the man was the principal wage earner. It was the women who made the investment in the neighborhood social capital. They made the connections with the neighbors; they put together the social glue by which neighborhood social capital was built. Single mothers had limited access to these neighborhoods because their jobs and careers would not pay the mortgage. A typical scenario was that after a divorce the mother could no longer afford to live in the neighborhood. The housing required at least a white male income. Due to the divorce, the women lost their investment in the social capital of the neighborhoods and they lost access to the human capital of their husband. The housing market of their neighborhood became unaffordable. The effect of losing the neighborhood social capital is no doubt very damaging to the teenager. McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) demonstrate that the negative outcome for teenagers in single mother families is basically due to their low income and the necessity to change residence. In contrast, for those few cases where the husband became widowed, these fathers benefited from their deceased wife’s investment in the neighborhood as the neighborhood mothers became surrogate mothers in keeping an eye on the teenage children and he did not have to move for financial reasons.4

CONCLUSION White middle-income Standard North American Families can choose good neighborhoods. These suburban middle-income neighborhoods can provide not only good schools and a safe environment, but also a caring and supportive context in which to raise children and youth. The majority of these neighborhoods in this study provided high social capital with the possibility of shared responsibility for the supervision of teenagers. With respect to teenage behavior, the problems are first handled within the neighborhood. The nuclear family household can rely on nearby adults to assist in this critical task; they can feel confident that their teens will be supervised and they will be alerted to any problems before the school or police are called. Although this exploratory study does not provide the larger context of the schools or other community institutions, it does raise important questions about the role of the relation between the neighbors and the teenagers with respect to controlling teenage behavior. What are the long-term

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consequences of interactions between teenagers and police in the neighborhood? Can this form of informal neighborhood social capital better protect youth from police records that could damage their future? In terms of understanding any potential neighborhood effect, it is important to include suburban neighborhoods. Suburban residents report a higher degree of satisfaction with their communities than city residents (Baxandall & Ewen, 2000; Palen, 1995). Suburban residents also report greater involvement with neighbors. After reviewing this literature, Palen (1995) concludes, “If decades of suburbanites have been living the shallow lives of quiet desperation portrayed by some novelists and critics it has been kept a secret from most of them” (p. 88).5 Suburban neighborhoods may provide a greater variation in informal neighborhood social capital, controlling for other contexts such as good public schools. The neighborhood is a setting where the intersection of gender, class and race clearly advantages white, two parent middle-income families. The advantaged teenager has two white middle-income parents who have established themselves as part of the neighborhood social capital in a suburban neighborhood with good schools. The white teenager can lose this neighborhood social capital due to divorce, relocation or death of the father. And the black middle class teenager may not have any access to the neighborhood social capital even while living in suburban white neighborhoods. The poor black inner city single mother finds herself in a world where she has to be super self-sufficient in protecting her teenagers (Furstenberg et al., 1999, p. 101). Why is it required that poor black and working class parents be so much more effective than middle class white parents? In a society that prides itself on providing equal opportunity there is a clear need to provide opportunities to all adolescents in all types of families and for black families as well as white families. It is time to examine the structure of neighborhood supports for the integration of teenagers into adult society as another aspect of the inequality in American life.

NOTES 1. Upper class families may, in fact, “hire” someone to shadow their teenagers. One student reported to me that he once dated a girl from an upper class family and a detective both shadowed them on their initial date and investigated his background. 2. The term middle income includes a wide range of incomes and covers better off working class families as well as some professional families. The term is used in this context to indicate affordability. Working class, lower middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods are defined by the occupations of the principal wage earner. 3. Dorothy Smith (1999) has written of the powerful influence of the SNAF (Standard North American Family) discourse – the white middle-class, heterosexual, two-parent family and the way it marginalizes other types of families.

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4. A measure of inequality which has been developed in Sweden is the inequality between married mothers and lone mothers (Hobson & Takahashi, 1997). This inequality is reflected not only in terms of access to financial capital, but also in terms of access to social capital for lone mothers. 5. Nevertheless even Palen (1995) succumbs to the stereotype when it comes to informal social control claiming that suburbs lack strong informal social control mechanisms of small towns (p. 98) and that there is less social cohesion now, in the 80s and 90s, than before ( p. 100).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank Sania Sultan and Carol Gregory for research assistance and the editor for helpful comments.

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Furstenberg, F., Jr. with the assistance of Belzer, A., Davis, C., Levine, J. A., Morrow, K., & Washington, M. (1993). How families manage risk and opportunity in dangerous neighborhoods. In: W. J. Wilson (Ed.), Society and the Public Agenda. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Gibson, G. (1972). Kin family network. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 34(1), 13–23. Glenn, E. N. (1992). From servitude to service work: Historical continuities in the racial division of paid reproductive labor. Signs, 18, 1–43. Harris, D. R. (1999). Property values drop when blacks move in, because: Racial and socioeconomic determinants of neighborhood desirability. American Sociological Review, 64, 461–479. Hobson, B., & Takahashi, M. (1997). The parent-worker model: Lone mothers in Sweden. In: J. Lewis (Ed.), Lone Mothers in European Welfare Regimes (pp. 121–139). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Jencks, C. (1988). Deadly neighborhoods. The New Republic (June 13), 23–32. Jencks, C., & Mayer, S. E. (1990). The social consequences of growing up in a poor neighborhood. In: L. E. Lynn, Jr. & M. G. H. McGeary (Eds), Inner-city Poverty in the United States ( pp. 111–186). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Kurz, D. (2000). Work-family issues of mothers of teenage children. Qualitative Sociology, 23, 435–451. Kurz, D. (2001). Stratification and carework: The case of mothers. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Meetings, Anaheim, CA, August. Lareau, A. (2000). Home advantage. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Litwak, E. (1965). Extended kin relations in an industrial democratic society. In: E. Shanas & G. F. Streib (Eds), Social Structure and the Family: Generational Relations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Litwak, E. (1985). Helping the elderly. New York: Guilford Press. Lynn, J. (2000). Understanding community: Combining standard methods with new directions in research. Paper presented at the 95th annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (August 12–16). Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1993). American apartheid. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McLanahan, S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing up with a single parent. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Palen, J. J. (1995). The suburbs. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ross, C. E., Reynolds, J. R., & Geis, K. J. (2000). Neighborhood stability and well-being. American Sociological Review, 65(4). Sampson, R. J. (1998). What acommunity supplies. In: R. Ferguson & E. T. Dickens (Eds), Urban Problems and Community Development. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Scanzoni, J. (2000). Designing families. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Scuilli, D., & Bould, S. (1992). Neocorporatism, social integration and the limits of comparative political sociology. In: P. Colomy (Ed.), Dynamic Systems and the Problem of Social Integration. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Smith, D. E. (1999). Writing the social: Critique, theory, and investigations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Taylor, R. B. (1996). Neighborhood responses to disorder and local attachments. Sociological Forum, 11, 41–74. Upchurch, D. M., Aneshensel, C. S., Sucoff, C. A., & Levy-Storms, L. (1999). Neighborhood and family contexts of adolescent sexual activity. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 920–933. Warren, D., & Warren, R. (1977). The neighborhood organizer’s handbook. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

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APPENDIX A The 291 suburban neighborhoods analyzed here are the result of class assignments in Sociology of the Family in the years 1989 to 1995. In order to be included the student had to have received a B – or better on the project. The total number of projects with a grade of B – or better for these years was 473. Sixty two percent of these projects (N = 291) were located in the suburban Northeast and Mid Atlantic states where the student had lived for at least five years. The neighborhood projects with a grade of B – or better which were excluded from the analytic sample were either from students who had not lived recently in a neighborhood for at least five years or students from outside the region or from rural, small town or urban neighborhoods. The analytic suburban sample was biased in terms of neighborhood stability. The majority of these students had lived in the neighborhood for more than ten years. Another bias was one of marital stability. Students whose parents had divorced typically had moved around a lot (cf. McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994) or resided in non-suburban settings. The overall sample is biased in terms of stable residence and marital status; indeed, students at the University are most likely to be from families with these characteristics.

APPENDIX B Questions from the open-ended interview schedule are in quotation marks. 1 Measure of action on neighborhood teenagers: “If there were problems with the neighborhood teenagers causing trouble would the neighbors do anything? What might they do? Would there be any resolution to the problem?” 2 Dealing with neighborhood problems: “If a serious problem developed in this neighborhood what most likely would happen? (Probe: Organize neighbors? Get local politicians involved? Contact local community groups? People would move away if they could? People would do nothing?)”

RACE/ETHNICITY, GENDER, AND ADOLESCENTS’ OCCUPATIONAL ASPIRATIONS: AN EXAMINATION OF FAMILY CONTEXT Sampson Lee Blair, Marilou C. Legazpi Blair and Anna B. Madamba INTRODUCTION Adolescents in their late teenage years are commonly faced with the difficulties of making important life decisions, such as whether to marry, whether to have children, and in particular, what type of occupation they wish to pursue. Researchers have often posited that such decisions are best understood as the end product of socialization within the individual’s specific learning environment (see Bronfenbrenner, 1994). Aspirations, particularly occupational goals, do not occur within a vacuum; rather, they will be affected by a variety of factors, such as gender (e.g. Davey, 1993; Mau & Bikos, 2000), race/ethnicity (Arbona & Novy, 1991; Marjoribanks, 1985), and social class (Weinger, 2000). In particular, there exists a need to better recognize and understand the familial context in which these decisions are made (see Marjoribanks, 1997). Researchers have addressed many of the potential predictors of adolescents’ aspirations, yet typically have focused on only one set of factors. This study will attempt to provide a more comprehensive understanding of adolescents’ occupational aspirations by focusing on how they

Sociological Studies of Children and Youth Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9, 67–86 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09005-6

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are affected by the familial context, and how such effects vary by race/ethnicity and gender. In an effort to explain the existing differences in occupational and career aspirations across ethnic groups in the United States, researchers have offered a variety of perspectives. Many researchers have noted the potential influence of ethnic differences in cultural values, particularly those related to the valuation of educational success (see Sue & Okazaki, 1990). In a similar approach, others have proposed that ethnic differences in cultural values and beliefs may affect students’ academic success through achievement-related socialization practices (e.g. parental discipline) (see Mordkowitz & Ginsberg, 1987). Most of these studies, including those which point to the influence of discrimination against minority students within educational systems (e.g. Mickelson, 1990), readily acknowledge the influence of social class as a predictor of academic success (Haveman & Wolfe, 1994). What is lacking, however, is the consideration of how the influence of ethnic differences (e.g. parenting styles, family size) and gender differences (e.g. gendered perceptions of success) on students’ aspirations will vary within the family context. The learning environment within the family is such that, from their earliest memories, children will reflect upon the knowledge (e.g. cultural knowledge) which they have received both directly and indirectly from their parents. It is largely within the family environment that adolescents’ perceptions of success will develop. Further, it is within the family environment that adolescents will gain an understanding of the ‘relative worth’ of their abilities, intelligence, and skills. As they are developing ideas concerning what they want to do with the rest of their lives, adolescents will be affected very substantially by their parents and the larger family environment. Of course, family environments and parental characteristics (e.g. occupational status, marital status) vary significantly across racial/ethnic groups in the United States. In addition, boys and girls are likely to be treated differently within the family. From their first entry into the family as babies, male and female children will be treated in very distinct manners by parents; and of course, such treatment will be mediated by the respective expectations within each racial/ethnic group. Central to this study, then, is the proposition that the potential effects of ethnic-group membership and gender must be regarded as effects which are truly intertwined.

Gender and Aspirations Researchers have posited that the effects of gender on career and occupational aspirations are often mediated by personal and environmental characteristics

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(e.g. Farmer, 1987). The combination of variables such as family income, parental employment, sibling structure, and other family traits will all have substantial influence on the manner in which children and adolescents develop occupational aspirations (e.g. Kalmijn, 1994; Marjoribanks, 1998). Additionally, the more direct influence of parents comes to bear upon adolescents’ occupational aspirations as mothers and fathers try to assist their children through involvement in schoolwork (Paulson, 1994) and as they attempt to instill their own values and beliefs regarding success in their children (e.g. Gottfried, 1991). While there is substantial evidence to demonstrate the magnitude of the influence of parents and the family environment upon the development of occupational aspirations among adolescents, what is often lacking is the recognition that such characteristics may influence daughters and sons in distinct manners. In regard to their respective aspirations, male and female adolescents have been shown to have gender-typed choices (i.e. boys and girls typically prefer different types of occupations). There appears to be a strong tendency among youth to apply gender-role stereotypes to occupations (Sellers et al., 1999), and to use these stereotypes to guide their own choices. Interestingly, though, studies have also shown that boys and girls do not always act in accordance with gender-typed beliefs. While societal attitudes concerning stereotypical occupations for men and women may still be somewhat pervasive, previous research has suggested that girls’ occupational aspirations, in particular, are likely to be in juxtaposition to prevailing stereotypes. Past studies have shown that female adolescents tend to aspire to high-prestige occupations (e.g. lawyer, physician) more so than their male counterparts. Boys, on the other hand, are more likely than girls to aspire to occupations of more moderate prestige (e.g. manager, small business owner) (see Farris et al., 1985; Rojewski & Yang, 1997). Also, girls appear to be more likely than boys to aspire to occupations which are predominantly occupied by the other sex in the paid labor force. Furthermore, this tendency among girls to aspire to male-dominated occupations appears to increase with age (Spare & Dahmen, 1984). Such evidence suggests that girls and boys may be experiencing substantially different influences from their respective family environments. While researchers have demonstrated a strong linkage between parental/family characteristics and adolescents’ occupational aspirations, most studies have focused on sons, and have often overlooked the manner in which daughters’ aspirations take form. Furthermore, there exists a need to examine the interrelated nature of gender and ethnicity-related effects. A discussion of ethnicity-related influences now follows.

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Race/Ethnicity and Family Context Beyond the obvious differences between racial/ethnic groups which result from different levels of SES, it is also important to consider the influence of ethnic groupspecific cultural values. Such values may influence parents’ attitudes toward goals for their children (Luster & Okagaki, 1993), and thereby influence the occupational aspirations of their children. Thus, certain differences in educational performance between specific ethnic groups may result from differences in their respective cultural values. Among ethnic minorities in the U.S., the cultural values of familism (e.g. Hispanics) and group identity (e.g. Asian-Americans) are very prevalent. Of course, such cultural values may be in contrast to the notion of individual development and individual achievement, which is a prominent cultural belief in the U.S. (Luster & Okagaki, 1993). There are numerous aspects of the family environment which may have substantial influence on the educational success of a child, and potentially affect the process by which they develop career goals. Characteristics such as the language used at home, styles of parental discipline, and other family traits may influence children’s aspirations (Harrison et al., 1990). Much of the previous research in this area has focused on the direct behaviors of parents (e.g. disciplinary techniques, quality of parent-child interaction), while overlooking the potential effect of cultural distinctions across families in the United States (Acock & Demo, 1994). Several elements of ethnic groups’ specific cultures (e.g. religion, language, family values) may affect children’s aspirations in several different ways (e.g. valuation of education, gendered attitudes concerning boys’ and girls’ educational attainment). Given the variety of ethnic groups in the United States, it is important to bear in mind how each groups’ specific history (e.g. experience of oppression, level of assimilation into the dominant culture) may impact on children’s academic and career success (Locke, 1992). Although African-Americans have assimilated into American society, their history of slavery and oppression has resulted in a unique set of cultural qualities. While the family structure of African-American families is primarily egalitarian (Blackwell, 1991), African-American families do maintain comparatively stronger ties with extended kin (Locke, 1992). African-American children, and particularly sons, are generally reared to be assertive outside the family, yet acquiescent within the family (Locke, 1992). Parental discipline among African-Americans is sometimes strict, relative to other ethnic groups. However, this type of discipline, accompanied by a strong emphasis on religion within the African-American community, is considered a conditioning mechanism for preparing African-American children for the experience of prejudice and discrimination against them (Locke, 1992; Uno et al., 1998).

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It is important to note, though, that considerable variations in parenting may exist among Black families. Kelley et al. (1992) suggest that younger Black mothers and single Black mothers tend to use more physical discipline with their children. The greater incidence of single-parenting among Black families may be associated with different forms of parenting, as well as with different pragmatic concerns for the household and desires regarding children’s development (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994). Yet the role of Black fathers should not be dismissed; indeed, researchers have also pointed out that they are highly involved in their children’s socialization, at a level equal to or often greater than that of Black mothers (Bowman, 1993). Hence, Black children’s aspirations may be affected by structural differences (e.g. number of parents), but they also share traits with children of other ethnic groups. The cultural traditions of Hispanics is very diverse. Although they generally share a legacy of Spanish tradition in their language, adherence to Catholic theology, machismo, and a valuation of family (Locke, 1992), Hispanic subgroups vary greatly, depending upon their respective origins (e.g. Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans). In general, the family is regarded as the central unit of society, and assistance from outside sources (i.e. non-familial) will typically be used only as a last resort. As well, the power structure tends to be more patriarchal than egalitarian, with fathers being considered the authority within the family. In childrearing, children are expected to comply with parental requests without question, although male children are given more freedom than their female siblings (Ybarra, 1982). Lastly, the ideological structure of Catholicism strongly promotes the adherence to traditional family roles, and endorses particular familial behaviors (e.g. pro-natalist attitudes, discouragement of divorce). The combination of these unique qualities (patriarchal attitudes, familism, traditional family roles) may well influence parents’ goals and treatment of their children in regards to their educational performance and the development of their job goals. Of course, language barriers may well affect Hispanic children’s performance in American schools where English is considered the primary or sole language of instruction. Previous studies have suggested that Hispanic parents may experience difficulty in assessing their children’s level of performance in school because of language barriers (e.g. Stevenson et al., 1990). Such difficulties may eventually affect Hispanic children’s aspirations for future careers or occupations, as their parents may be limited in their knowledge of their children’s abilities and thereby be less effective in encouraging their children to pursue a particular occupational choice. Asian-Americans, like Hispanics, are often envisioned as having a common heritage and culture. However, Asian-Americans do not have a common language or set of surnames to link them together in the cultural regard. There are, though,

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several prominent values pertaining to family structure and behavior which are common across most Asian cultures. There is typically a strong commitment to the group, as opposed to the individual, which is seemingly contrary to the dominant American culture (which emphasizes individual rights and concerns). Also, conformity to cultural norms is strongly encouraged by Asian-American parents (Locke, 1992). The childrearing practices of most Asian-Americans are centered around a strong family system, wherein mothers take on the majority of parental responsibilities (e.g. child care, discipline, socialization). Nonetheless, the typical Asian-American family system is patriarchal. Since Asian-American children are substantially more likely to have two parents in the home (see Blair & Qian, 1998), the influence of parents is likely to be stronger, as compared to children of other ethnic groups. In terms of educational performance, the stronger emphasis on conformity to cultural norms, combined with language differences that may exist between the home and school environments, Asian-American children should have a decidedly different experience than that of other children. Thus, adolescents from minority-group families will be influenced by a variety of different factors as they develop their occupational goals. It is important to bear in mind that White families will vary in many of the aforementioned characteristics (e.g. number of parents, number of siblings, parenting styles) in the same manner as ethnic minority families. Researchers have noted the difficulties associated with attempts to define and discuss “white culture” in the United States (see Perry, 2001, for discussion). Within this study, however, the emphasis is upon ethnicity-based distinctions and, as such, a comparative approach which focuses upon ethnic minorities is in order. While previous research has noted the obvious influence of parental and family context-based characteristics (e.g. family income, parental education), it is also important to consider how these effects vary across racial/ethnic groups and by gender (e.g. Blair & Qian, 1998). Hence, this study will now examine, in a comparative regard, the interwoven nature of race/ethnicity and gender within the development of adolescents’ occupational aspirations.

DATA AND METHODS This study utilizes data from the third wave (1992) of the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS, U.S. Department of Education, 1993). Following the initial wave of the NELS from 1988, the third wave (1992) resulted in a sample of 21,188 twelfth grade students. In the 1988 wave, a parent and teacher of each student was also surveyed, thus providing information concerning the students’ family (e.g. quality of parent-child interaction) and academic performance (e.g.

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grades in specific subject areas). Using a two-stage stratified probability design, students were randomly drawn from 1,057 schools nationwide. Sample weights are utilized in order to compensate for non-responding students (e.g. dropouts, transfers) and to ensure the representativeness of the sample. The original sample of students were surveyed again in 1990 and 1992, as the students were in the tenth and twelfth grades, respectively. This study utilizes the third wave measures of families’ characteristics, and uses those measures in the analysis of students’ occupational aspirations. The initial wave of this survey was intended to examine critical transitions experienced by students as they left elementary school and progressed through high school, and then went on to college or along their respective career paths. The NELS includes data from four separate data files, in which data are taken from students, their parents, a school administrator, and their teachers. The Parent Component was designed to ascertain information about family-oriented factors that potentially influence educational attainment and participation. It also collected information on socioeconomic conditions and the character of the home learning environment. The Student Component collected information on students’ school work, aspirations, social relationships, and basic achievement scores in core subjects (i.e. math, reading, science, and history). For this study, we use information taken from only the student and parental modules. Occupational Aspirations. Given the focus of the NELS study on student achievements, the high school seniors were asked to describe the job or occupation which they planned to have “when you are 30 years old.” Students were shown 16 different occupational categories, with each category containing several examples of jobs within that range. For the purposes of these analyses, the occupational categories were condensed into four basic levels: professions, semi-professions, service/semi-skilled occupations, and homemaker. The profession category contains occupations which generally require a college degree and the use of scientific or theoretical knowledge (e.g. engineer, doctor, dentist, registered nurse). The semi-profession category contains occupations which may require a college degree, but primarily require skills training (e.g. dental technician, contractor, real estate broker, computer programmer). The semi-profession category also contains those occupations which would be considered skilled trades (e.g. electrician), as these typically require long apprenticeships or extensive training. The service/semi-skilled category contains occupations which do not require a college degree, but may require some skills training (e.g. carpenter, machine operator, janitor, mechanic). The homemaker category implies a non-paid status, essentially assuming the duties of child care and household caretaker (i.e. as a spouse/parent). Family Structure. Several items were included to assess differences in the respective family structures of the students. Family Income is taken from parents’

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responses to the questions of what was their gross household income. Responses ranged from 1 (“none”) to 15 ($200,000 or more). The measure of single mother status (1 = yes) is included to better assess the effect of having only one available parent. While there were a significant number of single father families, previous research has consistently shown that the life chances of children from female-headed single parent families tend to be poorer, largely because of single mothers’ lower average socioeconomic status (Watts & Watts, 1992). The various ethnic groups are expected to have different household sizes, primarily because of differences in the number of children under 18 years of age. The language of the household may also indicate the influence of ethnic group membership. Home language was assessed with the question: “Is there any other language, other than English, spoken in your home?” The resulting measure, non-English, was coded as 1 = non-English and 0 = English. Lastly, the influence of family context can be seen in the availability of certain educational resources (included as the scaled item, educational resources). Parents were asked whether their household contained: (1) an encyclopedia; (2) an atlas; (3) a dictionary; (4) a computer; (5) a typewriter; (6) more than 50 books; and (7) a calculator. Each resource was given a value of “1” on a seven-point scale. Parental Characteristics. Within these analyses, parents are regarded as having both direct (parent-child interactions) and indirect (role models) effects upon the occupational aspirations of their children. A variety of measures are included to better ascertain these potential effects by parents. Both mothers and fathers were asked about their respective educational attainment, coded as: (1) did not finish high school; (2) high school graduate or GED; (3) some college experience/trade school; (4) college graduate; (5) M. A. or equivalent; (6) Ph.D., M.D., or equivalent. Mothers and fathers were also asked about their respective occupations. Using the same coding as is used for students’ occupational aspirations, each sex parent was asked whether they were currently employed in either a profession or a type of service/semi-skilled occupation. Students were asked to assess the amount of time spent together doing things with their parents with the question: “How often (do you) spend time talking or doing things with your mother and father?” This question was also specified in the survey as pertaining to time spent together in activities not sponsored by their school. Responses ranged from never/rarely (1) to every day/almost every day (4). Students were also asked: “how often did you discuss the following with either or both of your parents?” Included among the topics were the following topics: “selecting courses or programs at school,” “going to college,” and “specific jobs you might apply for after high school.” Responses to these items were coded from 1 (never) to 3 (often). These items should allow for a better understanding of how parents might directly affect their children’s occupational choices. Students were

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also asked what they believed were the respective educational aspirations of their parents. Specifically, students were asked whether their parents had the expectation of college attendance for them (coded as 1 = yes). Finally, a control measure of students’ grade average is included in the analyses. This measure is a composite score of their performance in four different subjects: English, science, mathematics, and social studies. The resulting grades are recorded on a scale ranging from 1 to 13 (A = 1 to 3.5; B = 3.51 to 6.5; C = 6.51 to 9.5; D = 9.51 to 12.0, F = 12.01 to 13.0). The standardized scales for each of the individual components of the overall grade point average were originally scored on the inverted 13-point scale, and the present analyses maintain these scales in order to ease comparisons with other research using the NELS data.

RESULTS After eliminating cases containing missing data, the eventual sample totaled 14,368 students. Cases were lost due to student transfers (i.e. moving to another school), incomplete or missing responses by parents, and incomplete responses to the school performance items used herein. Additional analyses were done to compare the present sample to those with missing information; no significant differences were found. Table 1 contains the levels of occupational aspirations among the sample of high school seniors. As shown, there are considerable differences evident across both Table 1. Occupational Aspirations among High School Seniors, by Sex and Race/Ethnicity. Asians

Profession Semi-Profession Service/Semi-Skilled Homemaker N

Blacks

Hispanics

Whites

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

0.629 (0.484) 0.232 (0.423) 0.139 (0.346) 0.000 (0.000)

0.755 (0.431) 0.161 (0.368) 0.060 (0.238) 0.024 (0.154)

0.447 (0.498) 0.319 (0.467) 0.225 (0.418) 0.009 (0.009)

0.633 (0.482) 0.181 (0.385) 0.175 (0.380) 0.011 (0.105)

0.457 (0.499) 0.303 (0.460) 0.231 (0.422) 0.009 (0.009)

0.616 (0.487) 0.180 (0.385) 0.183 (0.387) 0.021 (0.144)

0.512 (0.499) 0.259 (0.438) 0.226 (0.418) 0.003 (0.050)

0.704 (0.457) 0.146 (0.353) 0.122 (0.328) 0.028 (0.164)

525

534

658

714

853

893

5077

5114

Note: Standard deviations shown in parentheses; Examples of Professions include doctor and engineer, examples of Semi-Professions include insurance agent and dental technician, examples of Service/Semi-skilled include construction worker and machine operator.

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the racial/ethnic categories and by sex. In regard to aspiring to have a professional job, it is interesting to note that across the racial/ethnic categories, girls appear to have substantially higher aspirations than do boys. Among Asians, for example, 75.5% of girls aspire to a profession, while only 62.9% of Asian boys do likewise. Among Blacks, 63.3% of girls aspire to a profession, while only 44.7% of boys have similar aspirations. Clearly, girls have higher aspirations or goals than do boys in this category. It is also important to note that there are substantial differences by race/ethnicity. Asian students have the highest percentage representation in regards to seeking a profession, followed by Whites, with Blacks and Hispanics reporting the lowest average aspirations for a profession. The differences by race/ethnicity indicate a distinct pattern of aspirations, in conjunction with those shown by sex. The percentage of students seeking a semi-professional job reveals somewhat of a reversal of the patterns shown among students seeking a profession. In terms of semi-professional job aspirations, males have greater plans for seeking these jobs, with Hispanic and Black males espousing the highest aspirations (30.3 and 31.9%, respectively). Here again, the intertwined nature of race/ethnicity and gender presents itself, as substantial differences exist across both types of categories. The percentage of students aspiring a service/semi-skilled occupation was quite lower overall, relative to the first two occupational choices. Boys are again shown to be more likely to aspire/plan for this job category. Among White students, for example, 22.6% of boys plan to be seeking a service/semi-skilled job, while only 12.2% of White girls do likewise. It is interesting to note as well that the gap between boys’ and girls’ responses is greatest among Asian and White students, while among Blacks and Hispanics, the differences in aspirations by sex are smaller. Among Hispanics, for instance, 23.1% of boys aspire to a service/semi-skilled job, while 18.3% of girls have similar aspirations. Finally, students were offered the “job category” of homemaker as one of their potential aspirations. As shown in Table 1, only a very small percentage of students, regardless of race/ethnicity or sex, reported this category as their occupational aspiration. Table 2 presents the parental characteristics and parent-adolescent interaction measures, by sex and race/ethnicity. In terms of parental educational attainment, Asian parents have the highest average level, followed by White parents, then by Black parents, with Hispanic parents having the lowest average level. This differential is congruent with previous studies on the relationship between educational attainment and race/ethnicity (Marjoribanks, 1985; Stevenson et al., 1990). Such differences, though, may affect adolescents’ occupational aspirations in distinct ways. Parents are generally regarded as the most influential role models for their children. The occupational status of parents, then, should have substantial effects upon adolescents’ job plans. In regard to maternal employment, Hispanic mothers

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Table 2. Parental Characteristics and Parent-Adolescent Interaction among High School Seniors, by Sex and Race/Ethnicity. Asians

Mother’s Education Father’s Education Mother-Profession Father-Profession Mother-Service/Sem. Father-Service/Sem. Time spent together Discussions about Courses at school Going to college Jobs after HS Expect college attend Mothers Fathers N

Blacks

Hispanics

Whites

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

3.85 (1.62) 4.16 (1.81) 0.14 (0.35) 0.22 (0.41) 0.42 (0.49) 0.36 (0.48) 2.68 (0.98)

3.80 (1.76) 4.23 (1.83) 0.16 (0.37) 0.25 (0.44) 0.40 (0.49) 0.36 (0.48) 2.91 (1.01)

3.20 (1.62) 3.23 (1.58) 0.13 (0.33) 0.07 (0.25) 0.58 (0.49) 0.55 (0.50) 2.70 (1.00)

3.01 (1.52) 3.19 (1.52) 0.11 (0.32) 0.08 (0.27) 0.59 (0.49) 0.53 (0.50) 2.94 (1.01)

2.80 (1.55) 3.01 (1.67) 0.07 (0.26) 0.07 (0.25) 0.47 (0.50) 0.57 (0.49) 2.68 (0.97)

2.47 (1.52) 2.66 (1.58) 0.06 (0.25) 0.05 (0.23) 0.50 (0.50) 0.61 (0.49) 2.92 (0.98)

3.42 (1.59) 3.70 (1.77) 0.16 (0.36) 0.17 (0.38) 0.49 (0.50) 0.44 (0.50) 2.77 (0.95)

3.34 (1.59) 3.65 (1.73) 0.15 (0.36) 0.17 (0.37) 0.50 (0.50) 0.46 (0.50) 3.05 (0.90)

1.75 (0.58) 2.25 (0.62) 2.78 (2.40)

1.84 (0.62) 2.40 (0.63) 2.37 (1.96)

1.81 (0.56) 2.16 (0.64) 3.31 (2.62)

1.99 (0.63) 2.40 (0.63) 2.96 (2.24)

1.75 (0.58) 2.11 (0.67) 3.46 (2.96)

1.85 (0.65) 2.17 (0.67) 3.08 (2.43)

1.84 (0.58) 2.20 (0.67) 2.60 (2.08)

2.00 (0.60) 2.41 (0.64) 2.47 (1.76)

0.78 (0.41) 0.75 (0.43)

0.80 (0.40) 0.79 (0.41)

0.61 (0.49) 0.48 (0.50)

0.73 (0.45) 0.56 (0.50)

0.66 (0.47) 0.57 (0.49)

0.68 (0.47) 0.59 (0.49)

0.64 (0.48) 0.58 (0.49)

0.70 (0.46) 0.65 (0.48)

525

534

658

714

853

893

5077

5114

Note: Standard deviations shown in parentheses.

were the least likely to be employed in a profession (6 to 7%), while White and Asian mothers were the most likely to have a professional job (between 14 and 16%). Considerably more of all four racial/ethnic categories were employed in service/semi-skilled jobs. Indeed, 49.6% of all mothers were employed in service/semi-skilled positions. Among Blacks, between 58 and 59% of mothers had service/semi-skilled jobs, while between 40 and 42% of Asian mothers did the same. The employment status of fathers also followed existing labor patterns in terms of sex and race/ethnicity. Asian fathers were the most likely to be employed

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in a profession (between 22 and 25%), while Black and Hispanic fathers were the least likely (between 5 and 8% combined). Hispanic fathers were the most likely to be employed in a service/semi-skilled job, while Asian fathers were substantially less likely to have such positions. In regard to parent-adolescent interactions, it appears that parents of all racial/ethnic categories were more likely to spend time with their daughters, as compared to sons. The differences across race/ethnicity were not substantial, yet parents clearly spend more time with daughters. Interestingly, White and Black parents were more likely than their Asian and Hispanic counterparts to spend time discussing courses at school with their children, yet all four sets of parents were likely to spend more time in such discussions with daughters rather than with sons. The same gendered pattern is evident in terms of how much time parents discuss going to college with their children. Asian, White, and Black parents appear to have more of these conversations than do Hispanic parents. The more basic issue of what jobs children might pursue after high school yields a very different set of patterns, however, as parents appear to spend more time discussing jobs with their sons as opposed to their daughters. Additionally, Black and Hispanic parents spend much more time discussing jobs after high school with their children than do Asian or White parents. One explanation for the differences by sex and race/ethnicity in regard to discussing college and jobs is that parents may regard these topics as being in opposition to each other; parents spending more time speaking with their children about college will likely spend less time speaking with those same children about having jobs immediately after high school. In the absence of discussion, adolescents may assume fathers do not expect them to attend college. Students’ reports of mothers’ expectations, on the other hand, may be based more on explicit discussion and less on assumptions. Finally, the extent to which parents expected their children to attend college yielded several interesting patterns. Overall, parents seemed to have higher expectations for their daughters, rather than their sons. Among Black mothers, for example, 73% expected their daughters to attend college, while only 61% expected their sons to do likewise. Asian mothers had the highest expectations for both sons and daughters, as did Asian fathers (relative to the same-sex parents of other racial/ethnic groups). With the exception of Asian parents, fathers in the other three racial/ethnic groups had considerably lower expectations for both sons and daughters to attend college. While it is difficult to fully interpret this differential, it is possible that children of both sexes may feel a stronger bond with their mothers, rather than their fathers, and the discussion of future plans or aspirations may be easier to do with mothers. Table 3 presents family/household characteristics and students’ grades. White and Asian families reported higher average annual incomes than did Black and

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Table 3. Family/Household Characteristics and Student’s Academic Performance among High School Seniors, by Sex and Race/Ethnicity. Asians

Family Income Single mother No. of Children Educ. Resources Non-English lang. Grade average N

Blacks

Hispanics

Whites

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

10.89 (2.43) 0.07 (0.26) 2.37 (1.80) 5.75 (1.42) 0.52 (0.50) 5.82 (2.09)

10.87 (2.71) 0.07 (0.25) 2.51 (1.91) 5.66 (1.29) 0.59 (0.49) 5.27 (1.95)

9.07 (2.74) 0.32 (0.47) 3.37 (2.26) 5.15 (1.64) 0.02 (0.15) 8.68 (1.72)

8.87 (2.83) 0.39 (0.49) 3.61 (2.63) 5.13 (1.46) 0.03 (0.17) 7.72 (1.96)

9.67 (2.40) 0.13 (0.34) 3.17 (2.08) 5.06 (1.66) 0.47 (0.50) 7.89 (1.97)

9.52 (2.51) 0.15 (0.36) 3.29 (2.18) 5.00 (1.52) 0.46 (0.50) 7.44 (1.91)

11.09 (2.09) 0.11 (0.31) 2.25 (1.83) 5.92 (1.19) 0.02 (0.16) 6.87 (2.21)

11.01 (2.14) 0.12 (0.32) 2.32 (1.72) 5.77 (1.17) 0.02 (0.15) 6.15 (2.10)

525

534

658

714

853

893

5077

5114

Note: Standard deviations shown in parentheses; Family Income ranges from 1 (none) to 15 ($200,000 or more); Grade average ranges from 1 (A) to 13 (F).

Hispanic families. White and Asian families reported a family income between $35,000 and $49,999, while Black and Hispanic families’ incomes were between $20,000 and $34,999, on average. Black adolescents were substantially more likely to be in a single-mother family (32% of boys, 39% of girls), while Asian adolescents had the lowest likelihood of being in a single-mother family (approximately 7% for both sexes). These differences are in keeping with current family structure characteristics in the United States. Black and Hispanic families also have a higher average number of children, followed by Asians, then by Whites. These differentials in the number of children may affect occupational aspirations, as more children may make it more difficult for parents to afford college costs for their children. Differences related to income levels can also be seen in regard to the quantity of educational resources which families reported. Not surprisingly, Asian and White high school seniors reported having the most educational resources (e.g. computer, more than 50 books in the home), while Blacks and Hispanics reported having the least. Again, such differences are not reflective of cultural or ethnic-related distinctions, rather, they are primarily a function of socioeconomic status and family income. In any case, it is also worth noting that all racial/ethnic groups reported an average number of educational resources that fell between 5 and 6 on the scale, where the maximum

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possible was seven. Most families, regardless of race/ethnicity, provide a high level of educational resources for their children. As expected, Asian and Hispanic students were more likely to state that they spoke a non-English language at home. Oddly, substantially more Asian girls (59%) than boys (52%) said that they spoke another language in their household. Finally, adolescents’ occupational aspirations are likely to be affected strongly by their academic standing (specifically their grades). Asian students reported better grade averages, relative to students from the other racial/ethnic groups, with an overall average in the mid-B range. Black students reported the lowest grade averages (in the mid- to lower-C range), with Hispanics and Whites falling into the upper-C range. Across the four racial/ethnic groups, girls reported better grade averages, as compared to boys. For example, White girls reported a low-B average, while White boys had a high-C average overall. It is apparent, then, that substantial differences exist in terms of both parental characteristics and family/household characteristics across the four racial/ethnic groups. As well, the familial context appears to be quite distinct for boys and girls. Such differences will likely affect the decision-making processes which lead to occupational aspirations. Since the occupational categories are generally regarded as being hierarchical, with greater prestige being attached to professions (as opposed to other job categories), the final set of analyses will focus on students’ preference for a profession. Table 4 presents the multivariate logistic regression models of students’ aspirations for a professional occupation, by sex and by race/ethnicity. Although the minority groups are smaller in number, the models are nonetheless robust and, as reported using the Nagelkerke measure of R-square, the models do illustrate an ample amount of explained variance in occupational aspirations. Among Asian boys, being in a single mother-headed household appears to increase the likelihood (b = 0.812) of preferring a professional occupation. Oddly, this effect is not significant in the model for Asian girls. For both sexes of Asian students, grade averages are significantly associated with aspiring for a profession, such that higher grades clearly lend themselves to higher occupational aspirations. Among Asian girls, having a mother in a profession is associated with a stronger desire (b = 1.035) to have a professional occupation, while among Asian boys, the same effect is true when fathers are employed in a profession (b = 0.976). Hence, there appears to be a same-sex role model effect in operation within Asian families. However, the effects do not always proceed along same-sex lines. Asian boys are significantly more likely to have professional goals when their mothers have aspirations for them to attend college (b = 0.788). This effect is not significant in the model of Asian girls’ aspirations.

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Table 4. Multivariate Logistic Regression Models of High School Seniors’ Aspirations for a Professional Occupation, by Sex and Race/Ethnicity. Asians Boys

Blacks Girls

Boys

Hispanics Girls

Boys

Girls

Family Income Single mother No. of Children Educ. Resources Non-English lang. Grade average Mothers’ Education Fathers’ Education Mother-Profession Father-Profession Mother-Service/Sem. Father-Service/Sem. Time spent together

0.007 0.812* −0.017 0.084 0.273 −0.383** 0.117 0.010 0.639 0.976** −0.015 0.528* −0.041

0.031 0.024 −0.056 0.399 0.044 0.037 0.036 0.033 −0.311 0.175 −0.263** −0.185** 0.050 0.054 0.133 0.067 0.110 0.421 −0.321 0.276 −0.010 −0.101 −0.186 0.236 −0.059 0.124

−0.005 0.296 0.038 0.127** 0.076 −0.127** −0.006 0.100 0.547 0.294 −0.136 0.079 −0.028

0.052** 0.376** 0.010 0.063* 0.189 −0.225** 0.070** 0.095** 0.074 0.347** 0.083 0.028 −0.001

0.031 0.068 −0.006 0.036 −0.201 −0.192** 0.030 0.085* 0.103 −0.024 0.084 −0.164* −0.042

Discussion about Courses at school Going to college Jobs after HS

−0.196 −0.146 −0.050 −0.205 −0.228 0.445* 0.585** 0.445** 0.529** 0.467** −0.024 −0.043 −0.059 0.034 −0.003

−0.178 0.344** −0.026

−0.013 0.572** −0.040**

−0.055 0.599** 0.003

0.056 0.047 0.499 0.087 −0.050 −0.009 0.124 0.042 −0.072 0.157 −0.200** −0.151** −0.045 0.145* 0.059 0.087 1.035* 0.354 0.455 0.394 0.193 0.054 −0.051 0.103 −0.132 −0.006

Girls

Boys

Whites

Expect college attend Mothers Fathers

0.788* 0.217 0.063 −0.061

0.234 0.137

0.587** 0.158

0.328 0.326

0.407* 0.226

0.492** 0.081

0.363** 0.276**

−2 log likelihood Nagelkerke R-square N

548.7 0.327 525

811.5 0.177 658

830.9 0.191 714

1061.2 0.169 853

1115.4 0.108 893

5892.3 0.269 5077

5461.9 0.194 5114

∗p

522.5 0.189 534

< 0.05. < 0.01.

∗∗ p

Black adolescents, both boys and girls, are significantly affected by their own grade averages. Similar to the pattern shown among Asians, Black students with higher grade averages are more likely to aspire to a professional occupation. Among Black boys, the mother’s educational attainment is also associated (b = 0.145) with greater plans for a professional job. However, none of the other parental status measures yield significant associations. Black girls are more likely to desire a professional occupation when their mothers expect them to attend college (b = 0.587). Among Black adolescents, it would appear that the combination of grade point averages and parental college expectations are the best predictors of professional aspirations within these models. The significant associations with mothers’ educational attainment and college expectations, though, perhaps illustrates how influential mothers are within Black families. This is particularly noteworthy, given that the measure

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of single-mother status did not yield any significant associations with students’ aspirations. Among Hispanics, a greater amount of educational resources in the home is associated with higher professional aspirations among girls (b = 0.127). Both boys’ and girls’ professional aspirations are linked directly to their grade point averages, such that higher grades appear to increase the likelihood of aspiring to have a professional job. Additionally, both Hispanic boys and girls are substantially influenced by the discussions which they have with their parents about going to college. As expected, more discussions about going to college is associated with a higher likelihood of planning for a professional occupation. Among Hispanic girls, as well, mothers’ expectations that they attend college is associated with professional aspirations (b = 0.407). The models of White boys’ and girls’ professional aspirations are more robust than those of the other racial/ethnic groups, yet this is largely due to the greater number of White students. Among White boys, family income is directly linked to professional aspirations (b = 0.052), along with the families’ educational resources (b = 0.063). Similar to the model of Asian boys, the professional aspirations of White boys are significantly affected by having a single mother (b = 0.376). Hence, living in a single mother family increases the likelihood of White boys planning for a professional job. This same effect, however, is not evident in the model of White girls’ professional aspirations. Additionally, the professional aspirations of White boys are associated with both mothers’ and fathers’ educational attainment (b = 0.070 and 0.095, respectively), and are significantly associated with fathers’ professional job status (b = 0.347). This is again similar to the model of Asian boys, insomuch as there is a more direct linkage between fathers’ characteristics and boys’ aspirations. White girls, on the other hand, are more likely to aspire to have a professional job when their fathers have higher educational attainment (b = 0.085), yet are not significantly affected by their mothers’ educational or employment characteristics. Indeed, White girls’ professional aspirations are significantly associated with fathers’ service/semiskilled job status (b = −0.164). Among White and Asian families, it is possible that fathers may occupy a more influential position, and thereby affect children’s aspirations more substantially than mothers in both direct and indirect manners. White mothers are not entirely without influence within the models, as both White boys and girls are significantly affected by mothers’ expectations that they attend college (b = 0.492 among boys, 0.363 among girls). Although it is plausible to posit that White fathers may affect their children’s aspirations primarily through indirect means (i.e. as role models), while White mothers affect their children through more direct means (i.e. via parent-child interaction), additional analyses (beyond the scope of this study) would be necessary to more fully discern that possibility.

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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This study was initiated with the goal of examining the interweave of race/ethnicity and gender within the familial context on the development of adolescents’ occupational aspirations. Previous researchers have noted the effects of variations in family structure (e.g. single parent status) and gender on career goals and aspirations (e.g. Marjoribanks, 1997), yet little attention had been directed toward the consideration of ethnic group-based (i.e. cultural) factors as predictors of students’ job plans. This study demonstrates the ethnicity- and gender-based variations in how parents potentially influence the development of aspirations among adolescents. Based on the findings here, it seems quite apparent that race/ethnicity and gender are truly interwoven effects. Across all of the racial/ethnic groups, girls reported the highest aspirations for having a professional job. In conjunction with the obvious gender differences, there were more salient variations in career goals across the racial/ethnic groups. Much of the differences which were shown seemed to relate to variations within the familial context of each group. The parents of each racial/ethnic group did vary in regard to their educational and occupational characteristics, as well as in terms of the quality of their interactions with their children. What was most interesting, particularly in regard to the aim of this study, was how these differences affected adolescents’ job aspirations. Simply, the results from the regression analyses suggest that the learning environment of adolescents is an incredibly complex one. This study demonstrates the manner in which variations exist in how parents influence their children’s development of goals and aspirations. Within Asian families, it appears (in keeping with the suggestions of previous studies) that the patriarchal nature of their households results in fathers having more influence over children’s aspirations. As the analyses illustrate, though, parental influence can come about in both direct and indirect manners. Parents, particularly Asian and White parents, represent both substantial role models in the lives of their children, as well as being the clear authority figures in their lives (and thereby directly affecting the development of their attitudes). The models of Blacks and Hispanics were comparatively weak within these analyses. It did appear, however, that Black and Hispanic girls were slightly more influenced by family context than were their male counterparts. Further and more definitive analyses are necessary to resolve this conclusion, but the results of this study do suggest that disadvantaged minority girls may be more susceptible to effects resulting from the family context (e.g. family income, parental occupation). One of the seemingly contrary findings of these analyses is that Asian and White boys appeared to be affected more by the family context measures than were their Black and Hispanic counterparts. Here again, the intertwined nature of

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race/ethnicity and gender presents itself. Asian and White boys, in conjunction with Black and Hispanic girls, were shown to be significantly affected by the family context measures. In the comparison across the ethnic groups included in this study, it is also important to consider what is not revealed within the analyses. Overall, the effects of familial characteristics upon the occupational aspirations of adolescents from all of the ethnic groups were actually more similar than dissimilar. It is equally important to note, though, that models were weaker for Black and Hispanic adolescents, as compared to Asian and White adolescents. This distinction suggests that characteristics outside of the realm of the family (e.g. neighborhood crime, quality of schools) may exert greater influence over the development of occupational aspirations of Blacks and Hispanics. Among families of greater average socioeconomic standing, community characteristics may be considerably less disruptive and detracting from the development of higher occupational aspirations. Such community characteristics are difficult to discern, but they clearly require greater attention by future researchers. As well, practitioners (such as guidance counselors) need to recognize the distinctions between family-based and non-family-based characteristics which might affect an adolescents’ aspirations and future goals. In sum, race/ethnicity and gender simply cannot be separated within the analyses of individual behaviors and/or attitudes. The results of this study indicate that while girls have higher career aspirations, there are much deeper effects across racial/ethnic groups to be seen. Given the strong predictive strength of race/ethnicity and gender measures, future research should attempt to consider a broader spectrum of family context measures in the assessment of adolescents’ occupational goals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Katherine Rosier in the completion of this study.

REFERENCES Acock, A. C., & Demo, D. H. (1994). Family diversity and well-being. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Arbona, C., & Novy, D. M. (1991). Career aspirations of black, Mexican American, and white students. Career Development Quarterly, 39, 231–239.

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Blair, S. L., & Qian, Z. (1998). Family and Asian students’ educational performance: A consideration of diversity. Journal of Family Issues, 19(4), 355–374. Bowman, P. J. (1993). The impact of economic marginality among African-American husbands and fathers. In: H. P. McAdoo (Ed.), Family Ethnicity (pp. 120–137). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994). Ecological models of human development. In: T. Husen & T. N. Postlethwaite (Eds), The International Encyclopedia of Education (Vol. 3, pp. 1643–1647). Oxford: Pergamon. Davey, F. H. (1993). Some factors affecting the occupational expectations of female adolescents. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 43, 235–250. Farmer, H. S. (1987). A multivariate model for explaining gender differences in carres and achievement motivation. Educational Researcher, 16, 5–9. Farris, M. C., Boyd, J. C., & Shoffner, S. M. (1985). Longitudinal determinants of occupational plans of low-income rural young adults. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 3, 61–67. Gottfried, A. E. (1991). Maternal employment in the family setting: Developmental and environmental issues. In: J. V. Lerner & N. L. Galambos (Eds), Employed Mothers & Their Children (pp. 63–84). New York: Garland. Harrison, A. O., Wilson, M. N., Pine, C. J., Chan, S. Q., & Buriel, R. (1990). Family ecologies of ethnic minority children. Child Development, 61, 347–362. Haveman, R., & Wolfe, B. (1994). Succeeding generations: On the effects of investments in children. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Kalmijn, M. (1994). Mother’s occupational status and children’s schooling. American Sociological Review, 59, 257–275. Kelley, M. L., Sanchez-Hucies, J., & Walker, R. (1992). Determinants of disciplinary practices in low-income Black mothers. Child Development, 63, 573–582. Locke, D. (1992). Increasing multicultural understanding. Newbury Park, NJ: Sage Publications. Luster, T., & Okagaki, L. (1993). Parenting: An ecological perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates. Marjoribanks, K. (1985). Families, schools, and aspirations: Ethnic group differences. Journal of Experimental Education, 53(3), 141–147. Marjoribanks, K. (1997). Family contexts, immediate settings, and adolescents’ aspirations. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 18, 119–132. Marjoribanks, K. (1998). Family capital, children’s individual attributes, and adolescents’ aspirations: A follow-up analysis. The Journal of Psychology, 132(3), 328–336. Mau, W. C., & Bikos, L. H. (2000). Educational and vocational aspirations of minority and female students. Journal of Counseling and Development, 78(2), 186–194. McLanahan, S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing up with a single parent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mickelson, R. (1990). The attitude-achievement paradox among Black adolescents. Sociology of Education, 63, 44–61. Mordkowitz, E., & Ginsberg, H. (1987). Early academic socialization of successful Asian-American college students. Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, 9, 85–91. Paulson, S. E. (1994). Relations of parenting style and parental involvement with ninth grade students’ achievement. Journal of Early Adolescence, 14, 250–267. Perry, P. (2001). White means never having to say you’re ethnic: White youth and the construction of cultureless identities. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 30(1), 56–91.

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Rojewski, J. W., & Yang, B. (1997). Longitudinal analysis of select influences on adolescents’ occupational aspirations. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 51, 375–410. Sellers, N., Satcher, J., & Comas, R. (1999). Children’s occupational aspirations: Comparisons by gender, gender role identity, and socioeconomic status. Professional School Counseling, 2(4), 314–317. Spare, R. W., & Dahmen, L. A. (1984). Vocational sex-stereotyping in elementary school-children. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 144, 297–298. Stevenson, H. C., Chen, C., & Uttal, D. (1990). Beliefs and achievement: A study of Black, White, and Hispanic children. Child Development, 61, 508–523. Sue, S., & Okazaki, S. (1990). Asian-American educational achievements: A phenomenon in search of an explanation. American Psychologist, 45, 913–920. Uno, D., Florsheim, P., & Uchino, B. N. (1998). Psychosocial mechanisms underlying quality of parenting among Mexican-American & White adolescent mothers. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 27(5), 585–605. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (1993). NATIONAL EDUCATION LONGITUDINAL STUDY, 1988, 1990, 1992 [Computer file]. Chicago: National Opinion Research Center [producer], 1993. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]. Watts, D. S., & Watts, K. M. (1992). The impact of female-headed single parents families on academic achievement. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 17(1/2), 97–114. Weinger, S. (2000). Opportunities for career success: Views of poor and middle-class children. Children and Youth Services Review, 22(1), 13–35. Ybarra, L. (1982). When wives work: The impact on the Chicano family. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 44, 169–177.

CHILD HEALTH, SOCIAL POLICY AND THE NEW CHIP PROGRAM Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld and Kathleen M. Mathieson INTRODUCTION Social policy linked to child poverty, welfare programs and needs of children has been undergoing major change in the United States. In 1996, major welfare reform was passed that eliminated the old cash assistance program of AFDC (Aid to Families of Dependent Children Program) and replaced it with a new block grant program, TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). Advantages of the new TANF program were that it provided more flexibility to States, made the time period for which funds could be received much shorter, and therefore strongly encouraged adult welfare recipients to enter the workforce (Sherman & Sandfort, 1998; Watts, 1997). As part of this change, along with changes enacted earlier from 1984 to 1990, Medicaid eligibility for low-income children was expanded by gradually delinking Medicaid eligibility from welfare eligibility (Kronebusch, 2001). As part of a continued policy goal of expanding access to health care services to children at lower ends of the income spectrum, Congress in 1997 passed the Balanced Budget Act of that year. That act created the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This program provided an opportunity for States to participate in CHIP and thus acquire funding from the federal government to expand their health care coverage to uninsured, lower-income children. This program was particularly aimed at children of the working poor, whose parents were often in the labor force but worked for an employer who did not provide health care insurance. The numbers of these parents were expected to increase

Sociological Studies of Children and Youth Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9, 87–104 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09006-8

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in future years, as the TANF welfare reforms decreased the number of parents on welfare who were receiving cash benefits and increased the number of parents who accepted jobs. Many of these jobs will not provide the full set of benefits that are common in many white-collar and middle income jobs (Seccombe & Amey, 1995). The legislation allowed States to expand their Medicaid programs, create a separate CHIP program, or combine the two options (Shi, Oliver & Huang, 2000). The CHIP program allowed for considerable variation by States, and some States did not begin the program quickly, so detailed data on evaluation of the impact of the program are not yet available. CHIP followed in the tradition in the U.S. of having means-tested welfare-based programs by joint efforts between state governments and the federal level of government. Therefore a critique of CHIP was that there was not one CHIP program, but 50 different CHIP programs. This same critique applied to Medicaid, in which there was not one national Medicaid program in the U.S., but different ones by state. In this paper, we have first reviewed some basic approaches to viewing policy formation in the U.S. We then have provided some information about children and health policy prior to CHIP, followed by the presentation of information about CHIP, including initial planning for CHIP, implementation of CHIP and some of the implications from early results of the program. The paper concludes with recommendations about how to improve CHIP and access to health care services in the U.S. We have argued that this program represents efforts in health policy and health policy development for children that illustrate small, incremental steps in reform. Instead of dealing with a major overhaul of either child health policy or overall health policy, CHIP tried to fix, within the confines of existing health and welfare programs, issues of access to health care for one particular group of children.

INCREMENTAL REFORM AND U.S. HEALTH CARE POLICY Policy analysts in the U.S. have argued for a number of years that change in U.S. policy in many areas, and especially in areas of social and health policy, were characterized by a process of incremental reform (Hacker & Skocpol, 1997; Steinmo & Watts, 1995). This argument stated that the political process in the U.S. was not one of broad, bold movements, but rather was characterized by policy changes occurring in small, incremental steps. This approach argued that rarely in the U.S. did policy become modified in dramatic ways (Lindblom, 1959; Wildavsky, 1964). The incremental model has been developed further by decision theorists. Within sociology, one of its best known applications to health care was developed by Alford (1975), who described three different approaches to reform: market

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reformers, bureaucratic reformers and a structural interest type of reformer. The first two approaches each led to incremental reform. Market reformers, who have tended to be Republicans, wanted an end to government interference in health care delivery and greater market competition. Bureaucratic reformers (largely Democratic) wanted increased administrative regulation of health care to deal with inequities in market competition. Both approaches were limited and represented a type of incremental reform. Alford (1975) argued that these two approaches were more readily accepted by Americans than the structural interest perspective, which did raise more fundamental questions about who benefitted from current arrangements in health care and the social welfare system in the United States. Analysts of health reform efforts in the U.S. have argued that an excellent example of the success of an “incremental” strategy for health care reform was the enactment of the Medicare legislation in 1965 (the same year and debates that also produced the Medicaid legislation). This enactment of Medicare can be viewed as a “moment of victory for advocates of extended public financing” (Hacker & Skocpol, 1997, p. 376). Hacker and Skocpol (1997) point out that the moment did not become an entering wedge for universal health insurance through federal funding or mandates, as was hoped at the time by health reformers, some politicians and many policy analysts. Instead, the times and attitudes changed in important, even if small, ways. Distrust of government grew, slow economic growth moved to the forefront, and the mounting fiscal constraints removed any hope for immediate universal health insurance in the U.S. in the 1970s. The attempted passage of the Health Security Act by President Bill Clinton during 1993 and 1994 could be viewed as a structural interest type reform, which sought to enact comprehensive changes that would have simultaneously controlled medical costs and ensured universal coverage for health insurance (Hacker, 1997; Steinmo & Watts, 1995). Mechanic (2001) has recently argued that the search at that time for comprehensive health care reform failed due to lack of negotiation of acceptable compromises. He argued that the passage of Medicare could be viewed as an example of how imperfect programs were enacted, and then further reforms resulted as the program was improved, rather than trying to enact the perfect program at a specific point in time. The failure to pass the Health Security Act in the early 1990s led to a retreat from a more comprehensive reform agenda and return to minimal incremental reform. Examples of such reform have included the Health Centers Consolidation Act of 1996, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and the Veterans Health Care Eligibility Reform Act of 1997 (Jacobs & Shapiro, 2000; Kronenfeld, 1997). These acts continued community health center funding and provided some health care to the homeless, modified eligibility rules and authorized new facility construction for Veterans Administration facilities, and modified the ability of insurers in specified work

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settings to impose pre-existing restrictions on health insurance coverage. The U.S. thus continued its incremental approach to small, modest reform in areas of health care and health care insurance. Next we turn to consideration of the more specialized areas of child health policy and issues of health care coverage for children and access to health care services for children.

HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE AND ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE PRIOR TO CHIP When we have discussed health policy issues for children, especially access issues, the most important group to cover from a policy standpoint has been poor and near poor children. Most middle class and wealthy parents were able to obtain the health care services they need for their children through their work-based or other private health insurance. While the numbers of Americans who were uninsured have varied some from decade to decade over the last thirty years, by the 1970s the best estimate was that 13% of the U.S. population under sixty-five (the age at which most people become covered by the federal Medicare program) or 25 to 26 million people, were without health insurance (Jecker, 1994). The numbers of uninsured grew in the 1980s, and by 1992, some estimates ranged as high as 37 million Americans without coverage from either private health insurance or government programs. A major explanation for the increase in the uninsured during the 1980s was growth in unemployment. However, as unemployment levels improved, the numbers of uninsured did not return to lower levels. This was probably due in part to broader economic shifts in type of employment, such as movement away from manufacturing jobs that typically provided comprehensive health insurance benefits to service jobs that often provided no health insurance (Kronenfeld, 1997). In a study using data from the early 1990s, about three-quarters of all children ages 0–17 were covered by private health insurance. Another 10% were covered by Medicaid, leaving about 15% with no form of health insurance (Corio, Zill & Bloom, 1994). Ethnicity was important in accounting for variation in health insurance coverage. The rate of lack of health insurance was twice as high for Hispanic children, with 27% having no health insurance versus only 13% of non-Hispanic children (Corio, Zill & Bloom, 1994). As with other types of data analyzed by sociologists, we have noted linkages between limited access by minorities and by the poor. Children in the lowest income bracket were two to four times less likely than those in the highest income bracket to have medical insurance and a particular provider of care. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the availability of Medicaid to some of the poorest families and not to those in the next income

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category, similar proportions of children in the $10 to 20,000 income bracket and those in the lowest income bracket (less than $10,000) lacked access to health care. Despite the improved economy for much of the 1990s, health insurance coverage rates for children did not change much prior to CHIP. In both March, 1997 and 1998, about 15% of children did not have any health insurance. The percentage with private health insurance declined to 63%, so that the stability in the percentage of children without health insurance was due to the growth in Medicaid coverage (Office of Health Policy, 1998). To a large extent, Medicaid was the major program to help provide health care services to children of the poor prior to the passage of CHIP. Although a common misperception was that all poor children received Medicaid, in reality, Medicaid has never provided care to all children of limited means. Receipt of Medicaid had traditionally been linked to receipt of other governmental subsidies (such as AFDC). Major changes in Medicaid were enacted in the mid to late 1980s, generally expanding coverage. For example, starting in 1984, children born after September 30, 1983 and under age five who lived in families meeting Aid to Families of Dependent children income and resource standards were to be covered whether they lived in single-parent or two-parent families. Another example, passed as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989 was that pregnant women, infants and children up to age six with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level were to be covered (Kronebusch, 2001). These extensions were good examples of incremental reforms in health care policy as it impacted children. Sometimes eligible children were not enrolled. A study of Medicaid in various States estimated that about 30% of uninsured children nationally were eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled in 1995 (Cassil, 1997). The rest of the children, while uninsured, were not Medicaid eligible. Continued studies of children eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled have concluded that at least one of every five children eligible for Medicaid coverage was medically uninsured and that these Medicaideligible children accounted for up to a quarter of all uninsured children, despite state outreach and enrollment initiatives (Davidoff, Garrett, Makuc & Schirmer, 2000; Selden, Banthin & Cohen, 1998). Studies estimating the prevalence and length of gaps in health insurance coverage demonstrated that, prior to welfare reform, the Medicaid program left many gaps. It was unclear the extent to which the new program would fill the gaps. In a follow-up 1991 survey of respondents to the 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey (NMIHS), about one-quarter of children were without health insurance for at least one month during their first three years of life. For half of these children, the gap in coverage lasted for as long as six months. Overall, those children from families with lower income, education, public insurance,

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earlier childbearing and unstable marital status were those most likely to have a gap in insurance. The working poor (those families earning from $10,000 to 19,000 dollars a year) experienced more gaps than other income groups (Kogan, Alexander, Teitelbaum, Jack, Kotelchuck & Pappal, 1995). The number of uninsured families in this group is likely to increase if welfare reform meets its goals of reducing the number of persons carried on public welfare rolls. Other studies also reinforced what we knew about the important links between poverty, limited income, health status and problems in attaining access to health care services. The number of children in poverty was estimated to have increased in the U.S. from 1970 to the early 1990s (Chafel, 1993; Scarbrough, 1993). The percentage of U.S. children living below the poverty level increased from 15% in 1975 to 22% in 1993, before beginning again to drop. The figure declined to 20% in 1996 and decreased to 16% in 1999, the lowest rate since 1979 (Guyer, Minkovitz & Strobino, 2001). The growing recession and rise in unemployment in 2001 might cause the percentage of children living in poverty to again increase, but these data were not yet available. Poverty was not evenly distributed across racial/ethnic groups, but had been disproportionately concentrated among members of minority groups and among one parent households. Now, close to 30% of children live in families with only one parent, versus under 10% in 1980 (Guyer, Minkovitz & Strobino, 2001). These trends varied markedly by race and ethnicity. About a third of African-American children lived in two-parent families versus 62% of Hispanic children and three-quarters of non-Hispanic white children. African-American and Hispanic children were more likely to live in poverty. For example, two-thirds of African-American children living in female headed households were poor in 1980, but this had improved some to 49.4% by 2000 (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2001). In comparison, 33% of white children living in female headed households were living in poverty in 2000 (ferret.bls.census/gov . . ., 2001). As reforms of welfare and health programs were enacted, some contained punitive measures for parents. Several States were introducing requirements tying receipt of welfare benefits to the receipt of preventive health care services. About a third of the States have included an immunization requirement. Some States were reducing a family’s cash payments if children under six did not receive preventive care including immunizations. Others were providing a bonus of twenty dollars for each family member over eight who obtained health care screenings (States Experiment With . . ., 1997). While health sources agree that it is important for children to be immunized, these new rules did not consider the difficulties these families faced. If there was only one parent who must be at work with limited transportation, obtaining these preventive health services presented major difficulties. Punitive measures that ironically jeopardized the ability of children to receive food

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(due to limited money) were probably not a good way to encourage health care requirements. One recent study examined financial and non-financial access to care and utilization of primary health care services among children of working low-income families earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level in California, using 1994 Health Interview Survey data (Guendelman et al., 2000). Children of working low-income parents were more likely to be uninsured than were non-poor children and children of non-working low-income parents. The same group of children was also more likely to experience disruptions in insurance coverage. This is the group that is now eligible for that state’s version of CHIP, named the Healthy Families Program. Guendelman and colleagues (2000) concluded that the new programs may help to reduce the differences in access to care. They also noted that the Healthy Families Program took laudable steps to consider and ameliorate barriers associated with language and immigration status.

CHIP – PROGRAM DESCRIPTION The largest expansion of health coverage since the passage of the Medicare and Medicaid programs was the CHIP effort. Beginning in Fiscal Year 1998, 24 billion dollars became available to cover health care for children. Some sources estimated that free or low cost health care could be provided to up to half of the nation’s uninsured children (States Hustling to Get . . ., 1997; Kids Care Tests . . ., 1997). The program was passed as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and provided States with much sought-after flexibility in how they expanded coverage for uninsured children. Congress has authorized the amount of dollars for CHIP to increase from the initial 24 billion dollars up to 40 billion dollars over ten years after the initial success of the program becomes clear in its initial five years. CHIP is a federal grant-in-aid program that entitled States to elect to participate in federal allotments to targeted low-income children who were ineligible for other insurance coverage, including Medicaid (Rosenbaum, Johnson, Sonosky, Markus & DeGraw, 1998). The main purpose of CHIP was to insure children not already covered by other programs, thus reducing the numbers of children who did not have a way to obtain medical care when needed and a place from which to obtain such services. In the law, a secondary purpose of the program was to improve the quality of health care for the target population. No overall quality guidelines were developed, however. Issues of quality have received little attention at the federal or state level. CHIP, as passed, was a federal means-tested public benefit that fit within the U.S. tradition of joint federal-state efforts in this area. This means CHIP was subject to the same immigration reform provisions as TANF, which

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provides that States could not use funds to assist recently arrived (after August 22, 1996) qualified alien children (that is, most non-citizen legal residents). As was true with Medicaid and critiques of that program, in reality, there was not one CHIP, but fifty different CHIPs, since each state could vary aspects of the program. Operation of the new program has varied in each state, as States were given several different options for implementation of the program. One option was to use the funds to expand Medicaid eligibility. Another option was to set up a “stand-alone” program. A third option was a combination of the two approaches. Funds were allocated to each state based on its share of the nation’s uninsured children with family incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level or 150% of the state’s Medicaid eligibility, with adjustments for differences in health care costs across States (Bruen & Ullman, 1999; Shi, Oliver & Huang, 2000). There were some financial advantages to States to implement the program through Medicaid. States choosing Medicaid expansions received federal funds at Medicaid matching rates if the States exceeded their CHIP allotment, whereas States choosing non-Medicaid plans could not receive federal funding beyond the allotted funds. As of March, 2000, 25 States were using approved Medicaid expansions and fifteen were using separate child health programs, with other combinations and amendments planned in the other States (Shi, Oliver & Huang, 2000). States had great flexibility concerning implementation and operation of the program, within broad guidelines of the federal block grant (as is generally true for TANF also). Missouri, for example, initially set a goal of covering 90,000 additional children who lived in families earning up to 300% of the federal poverty level through a fee-for-service Medicaid program (States Hustling to Get . . ., 1997). Many States planned to incorporate more children into managed care options over time, often by focusing on families earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level. Other States were implementing separate programs, such as those already in place in States such as New York and Minnesota. In many States, coverage to families with lower incomes would be free, with modest monthly premiums charged as income increased. As one example, the Child Health Plus Plan in New York State was in existence prior to CHIP and already was covering 114,000 children under age nineteen. The addition of CHIP and its federal aid allowed coverage to expand. Families with incomes between 120 and 160% of the federal poverty level were charged a maximum premium of 36 dollars a month for a family of four (NY Tests Limits . . ., 1997). Another state with a substantial program in existence prior to CHIP was Florida, who expanded its Healthy Kids Program. This was a school-enrollment based program which used school systems as a mechanism to create groups of children large enough to provide a desirable benefit package

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with relatively low premiums and copayments (Children’s Insurance Programs . . ., 1997). Within broad guidelines, States could also vary the ages of children covered, the income limitations applied, and the application process. A good example was the contrast between Minnesota and Mississippi. In Minnesota, children up to 18 were eligible and families with income up to 275% of the federal poverty level could apply. In contrast, in Mississippi, only children from six through fourteen years of age were eligible and family incomes were limited initially, but were more generous than the Medicaid program in the state (O’Brien, Archdeacon, Barrett, Crow, Janicki, Rousseau & Williams, 2000a). These wide variations often were difficult to explain. It is important to consider the role of allocation issues across States. Under the current Medicaid program, the federal government has paid from 50% of the costs in the wealthiest States to 80% in the poorest States. States have contributed toward the cost of CHIP, and must continue to maintain their Medicaid funds at the June, 1997 levels and must continue to maintain a 1996 level of effort with respect to other State expenditures (Rosenbaum, Johnson, Sonosky, Markus & DeGraw, 1998). In general, the federal government covered 65% or more of the cost of CHIP (Shi, Oliver & Huang, 2000). Most States were receiving 30% more than they had received in the past through Medicaid, but States had to develop specific plans for participation, submit program applications, and have them approved at the federal government level. Not all States participated initially, although most States are now doing so. Generally, States had to have enabling legislation passed by their legislatures to participate in the program. States varied in how quickly this legislation was passed, and also how quickly the implementation of the program occurred. For example, by March, 1998, only six CHIP plans had been approved, while twelve others were under review (Sparer, 1998). Some States such as Washington and Wyoming were initially displeased with aspects of the program and decided not to participate, but then later changed their decisions, had appropriate legislation passed and are now participating States (Page, 1998; Washington State Turns Down $47 Million for Kids Program, 1998). While complexity in federal program design is not uncommon, especially due to the incremental nature of many policy changes, Rosenbaum and colleagues (1998) noted several political and policy themes that contributed to the complexity of CHIP legislation. First, the Clinton administration and Congress believed that the problem of health coverage affordability deserved at least some federal response. Second, States wanted a high degree of flexibility in covering children. Third, child advocates were demanding minimum legislative protection. And lastly, there was concern about “crowd-out” effects of government insurance on private coverage. The resultant legislation had to address all these issues and concerns, and was thus

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an unusual and complex statute. For instance, while billions of dollars in new funding were made available, States had considerable flexibility in how this funding was used. Similarly, to alleviate “crowd-out” concerns, children were not eligible for CHIP unless they were determined to have no other forms of “creditable coverage.” In fact, some States (e.g. Arizona) even imposed a “go-bare” period, a set length of time that children must go without insurance before they were eligible for CHIP. As the program became more fully integrated into child health policy and welfare programs, a crucial test of success was enrollment of children. Nationally, estimates were that only 75% of children eligible for Medicaid because of their family welfare status were enrolled in Medicaid prior to the passage of the CHIP legislation (Kids Care Tests . . ., 1997). Of non-welfare children eligible due to past program expansions, 45% were enrolled. Past experience with these programs demonstrated that if enrollment required complex forms and visits to local welfare offices, then many poor working parents might not enroll children. This was especially true for single parents who were more often women and minority parents for whom English was not the first language.

PRELIMINARY INDICATIONS OF SUCCESS OF CHIP Initial experience with enrollment of children in CHIP nationwide indicated that the program was having mixed success. One estimate was that about two million children were enrolled by May, 2000 (Friedrich, 2000). A recent report has indicated that the rate of U.S. children without health insurance has dropped due to the impact of CHIP, from 15% in the early 1990s to 11.2% in the first six months of 2001 (Rate of U.S. Children Without Health Coverage Dropped Between 1997, 2001 and 2002). One of the impacts of CHIP has been to add more children to the Medicaid roles in many States. This has occurred because, as parents applied for CHIP, it was determined that incomes were low enough to qualify the children for Medicaid. When considering increased health insurance coverage for children either through Medicaid or CHIP, the percentage of low-income children covered by the programs increased from 29% to 33% between 1977 and 1999, while the percentage of insured low-income parents showed the opposite trend, decreasing from 69% to 65% from 1997 to 1999 (Friedrich, 2000). Reports from a Robert Wood Johnson funded study of CHIP were that many parents were still not aware of the program, especially households with two working parents and with incomes above $25,000. Many of these parents did not realize that their children could qualify for the program (Covering Kids Website, 2000). In a study of the design and implementation of CHIP in six States (California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, New York and Washington), enrollment was

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lower than expected initially (O’Brien, Archdeacon, Barrett, Crow, Janicki, Rousseau & Williams, 2000a). One issue in several of these States was enrollment complexity, such as the difficulty of maintaining separate programs and being sure that families understood the different criteria. For example, several States experienced a more rapid decline than expected in Medicaid enrollment that appeared to be related to the implementation of welfare reform. After the passage of welfare reform, children in low-income families were to continue to receive Medicaid even if the families were no longer eligible for welfare cash assistance due to TANF time limitations and a return to work. In some States, however, children were mistakenly eliminated from Medicaid enrollment, lowering the total numbers of children covered by Medicaid or CHIP. The authors of this study concluded that personal efforts to reach people may be required, along with greater education of low-income families about health insurance (O’Brien et al., 2000a). Enrollment was also affected by cost-sharing features of the legislation. States could opt to include cost-sharing features either in the forms of premiums for the health insurance for families or copayments at the time services were received. Twenty-five States incorporated such features; twelve used both premiums and copayments, and seven used premiums only. The other six States had complicated processes of some premiums or copayments (O’Brien et al., 2000b). Premium payments provided both enrollment and logistical difficulties, especially because many poorer families lived in a “cash economy” and had difficulty sending in monthly premium payments. Keeping up with the premiums was also difficult for administration of the program in many States. Copayments created fewer complications for program administrators, but were more difficult for providers of care who had to collect the fees. While families were eligible to receive reimbursement for these fees if they exceeded 5% of annual incomes, this requirement presented a major difficulty in maintenance of records for families in States with such a program. Many States had difficulty reaching enrollment targets initially. Thirty-six States did not reach enrollment targets in the first year, and had to return portions of their federal dollars received for the CHIP program. One dramatic example, Arizona, had to return about $77 million in CHIP funding, or about 66% of what had been received (Groppe & Chavez, 2000). Arizona was a state with special issues linked to large numbers of Latinos. Recent rulings by the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services) have concluded that receipt of CHIP funds would not count as a “public charge” which could hurt the chances of a family becoming eligible for citizenship. However, this concern has created an important barrier to enrollment in border States and others with large Latino populations. The stigma of a “welfare” program, the complexity of the application

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process and the cost-sharing features were other barriers to enrollment in many States.

COMPLEXITY OF PROGRAMS DEALING WITH CHILD HEALTH AND WELFARE Health care experts from other countries (especially those with universal health insurance) often have been amazed at the complexity of the U.S. health care system and at the many levels of government involved in new programs. Many of the features of CHIP have only increased the complexity and variation from one state to another. While a single national program has often been viewed by health policy experts as a simpler way to plan a new program, CHIP provided the opposite situation. First, CHIP itself was an example of a limited type of reform. In addition, CHIP continued to set complex eligibility requirements, rather than simply stating that all children under a certain age were eligible for coverage. CHIP presented all the complexity of programs that were joint state-federal efforts with their marked variation in eligibility and benefits from state to state, along with added variations in names of the programs. Eligibility, methods of application, and use of premiums and copayments varied from state to state. Since the goal of the program was to provide coverage for the working poor, if those families moved from one state to another to follow economic opportunity, they had to find out the new rules, reapply and learn the details of the new program. In addition, as a way to make the programs appear friendlier, many of the States provided their own names for CHIP (such as KidsCare in Arizona & Healthy Kids in Florida). This was just another example of complexity that might confuse parents. Success in recruitment also varied from state to state, and some experts felt that an economic downturn might limit the willingness of some States to continue to provide the needed state funds to participate (Blendon, Scoles, Desroches et al., 2001; Broder, 2001; Capitol Hill Watch, 2002). As States began their legislative sessions in 2001, the issue of cutbacks in funding as a way of dealing with expected declines in tax receipts in a few States was on the agenda, although the funds were generally preserved. As state legislatures began sessions in 2002, the impact of the recession, partially due to the impact of the September 11th terrorist attacks but also due to stock market declines and the decline of the high technology sector, might actually lead to some budget cuts in funding for CHIP and other health and welfare programs. Texas, for example, was a state with initial enrollment problems and enrollment numbers far below the estimated 450,000 eligible for the program. The state then allocated millions of dollars into CHIP outreach efforts, and 510,000 children were enrolled by the end of 2001. Due to

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the enrollment success, the state might face a $20.2 million budget deficit and was considering capping or freezing enrollment or shortening the enrollment period from six months to one year (Increased Enrollment Complicates Fiscal Situation for Texas’ CHIP Program, 2002). Budget problems and possible caps or freezes in CHIP in certain States have helped to illustrate one criticism of many programs that deal with health and social needs of children in the U.S. today, fragmentation. A recent critique of such programs has argued that “the United States does not have a system of care for our children and families. Rather, we have a collection of activities and funding mechanisms that create a complex, fragmented patchwork of services and programs.” (Grason & Guyer, 1995, p. 565). Over 300 separate, categorical programs were currently available that dealt with health, social and educational needs of children (Grason & Guyer, 1995; National Commission on Children, 1991). CHIP was a new, complicated program with major variation from state to state and complicated procedures that had to be followed for children to remain enrolled. Grason and Guyer (1995) have argued that children’s health programs could benefit by having a structure of a single piece of legislation such as the Older Americans Act passed in 1965. The overarching purpose of this act was to consolidate multiple aspects of services for the elderly, thus creating a framework for a comprehensive, integrated system designed to assist older persons. Benefits for the elderly have increased in the past thirty years more than have benefits for children, partially because of the political “capital” that the elderly have possessed (Preston, 1984). The elderly possessed greater political “capital” than poor children because the elderly represented an important voting bloc and voted at high rates. Children, of course, did not vote and voting rates increased as people became older, so often even the parents of young children did not vote at as high a rate as did older people. In addition, many middle-aged people had elderly parents and also voted for programs to benefit that age group, both to help their own parents and to help themselves in future years (Preston, 1984). Political support for programs to benefit children were not as strong as those for the elderly, and this was even more the case for programs that largely benefitted poorer children such as CHIP and TANF. We and most child policy analysts agree that children’s health programs could benefit from having a single piece of legislation such as the Older Americans Act. Such legislation for children’s issues would address in a consolidated fashion multiple aspects of services for children. However, the likelihood of consolidated efforts did not appear high at the national level five years ago and the new emphasis on defense and terrorism only lessens the probability of great attention to issues for children (Grason & Guyer, 1995). Many health policy experts viewed CHIP as a move towards greater emphasis on children’s issues, but philosophically part of

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the “devolution of power to the States” approach (Sparer, 1998). In this approach, the federal government ceded responsibility over certain issues to the States (Kids Care Tests . . ., 1997). In some ways, the last few years have presented contradictory trends. The changes in the welfare program were part of what some described as a new “triumph of meanness” in America. This reflected a political shift to the right that has turned welfare partially back to the States (Mills, 1997). Other experts also argued that since the 1980s, the long historical expansion of support systems for child raising was reversed (Coontz, 1997). Spending on education, child and maternal health, and the infrastructure for future generations did not keep up with increasing needs of the last twenty years. An economist examining issues of children in society described this as “a mindset . . . extraordinarily careless of children” (Hewlett, 1991, p. 211). Coontz, a historian who has examined myths about the recent American past, argued that “the extent to which America has shifted the costs of raising children back onto parents can be seen in the extraordinary retreat from the expansion of public education – a child-centered reform in which the United States once led the world” (Coontz, 1997, p. 143). In contrast, the passage of CHIP reflected an expansion of society’s role, an example of ways in which health and welfare policy in the U.S. has often presented conflicting goals. This overall review of CHIP, however, must conclude by emphasizing that this program has continued a tradition of small, incremental efforts in health policy and health policy development for children. CHIP did not represent a major overhaul of either child health policy or overall health policy. It was not a guarantee that all children living in America would have access to health care insurance or access to health care. CHIP tries to fix, within the confines of existing health and welfare programs, issues of access to health care for one particular group of children. The CHIP goal was to expand health insurance coverage for near poor children and children of the working poor. For child advocates, something was better than nothing, and CHIP represented an important step in improving coverage for one particular group of children. For policy analysts and critical sociologists, CHIP aided some children, but increased the complexity of overall child health policy approaches, and suffered from the variance between States and the incremental nature of the reform.

RECOMMENDATIONS While sociologists are not political activists, sociological critiques of how well new programs work and sociological approaches to finding solutions can help to inform

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public policy debates. Two different types of lessons can be learned from the initial CHIP experience. One lesson focuses on the specific CHIP approach. The other lesson relates to the need for major health care reform. If we accept the reality of incremental reform as the most likely type of reform in the U.S., then we need to be sure that each small new program, such as CHIP, actually works. CHIP would work better if the rules and names were more similar across States. This is not a new critique of welfare-type programs in the U.S., which often are joint federalstate efforts. As a recent review of devolution of power in health programs argued, “States do not have the capacity to solve the nation’s major health problems” (Sparer, 1998, p. 15). In a time when state revenues are declining, a larger federal role in financing may also be critical to avoid inequities across States. In many States, there are children’s advocacy agencies that can help to lobby for rules that are easier for poor families to follow, and less stigmatizing. These groups often understand some of the difficulties of managing a household on a limited income, and have been advocates in some States to eliminate premiums or copayments. They have emphasized the need to better inform families about the programs and to have outreach efforts. On a broader scale, CHIP is one small way to improve access to health care in the U.S. Universal health care access probably through universal health insurance would be a way to ensure that all Americans can obtain health care when needed – children and adults, poorer and richer. How likely is this to occur in the near future? While efforts to pass more comprehensive health care reform occur often in the U.S. (the two most recent examples being under Nixon in the 1970s and under Clinton in the 1990s), successful efforts have not occurred. Medicare in 1965 did provide health insurance coverage (with many flaws) to all the elderly. CHIP provides coverage to expanded groups of children. One or both of these programs might become a model for expanded reform. Comprehensive reform might occur from a very different approach, such as businesses and the middle class becoming increasingly concerned about the failures of managed care. Health care costs are again rising and many people are discontented with the increased restrictions of managed care. These types of concerns might lead to complaints by more politically powerful groups that could lead to comprehensive reform. Comprehensive health care reform would solve the issue of access to health care for all children, but the likelihood of such change in the near future is not high.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1999 American Sociological Association Meeting in Chicago. Research on this paper was partially funded by

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a grant from the Flinn Foundation to explore outreach projects for KidsCare (the Arizona CHIP).

REFERENCES Alford, R. R. (1975). Health care politics: Ideological and interest group barriers to reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Blendon, R. J., Scoles, K., Desroches, C., Young, J. T., Hermann, M. J., Schmidt, J. L., & Kim, M. (2001). American’s health priorities revisited after September 11. Health affairs web exclusive. November 13. http://www.healthaffairs.org/Blendon Web Excl 111301.htm Broder, D. (2001). Health care meltdown needs emergency care. Arizona Republic (January 7, Section B), 7. Bruen, B. K., & Ullman, F. (1999). Children’s health insurance programs: Where States are, where they are headed. In: New Federalism: Issues and Options for States (No. A-20). Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Capitol Hill Watch (2002). Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report. Kaisernetwork.org (January 2). Cassil, A. (1997). Eighty-six percent of uninsured kids in NM eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid. American Medical News (November 17), 4. Chafel, J. A. (1993). Child poverty: Overview and outlook. In: J. A. Chafel (Ed.), Child Poverty and Public Policy. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Children’s insurance programs gain new popularity (1997). State Initiatives in Health Care Reform, 12(23) (April), 4–7. Coontz, S. (1997). The way we really are: Coming to terms with America’s changing families. New York: Basic Books. Corio, M. J., Zill, N., & Bloom, B. (1994). Health of our nation’s children. National centre for health statistics. Vital and Health Statistics, 10, 191. Covering Kids Website (2000). Http://www.coveringkids.org Davidoff, A. J., Garrett, B., Makuc, D. M., & Schirmer, M. (2000). Children eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled: How great a policy concern? New federalism: Issues and options for the State. Number A-41. Urban Institute. http://newfederalism.urban.org/html/anf a41.html Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (2001). American’s children: Key national health indicators of well-being. http://www.childstats.gov/ac2001/ac01.asp Ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/o32001/pov/new01 007.htm (2001). Friedrich, M. J. (2000). Medically underserved children need more than insurance card. Journal of the American Medical Association, 283(June 21), 3056–3057. Grason, H., & Guyer, B. (1995). Rethinking the organization of children’s programs: Lessons from the elderly. The Milbank Quarterly, 73, 565–597. Groppe, M., & Chavez, J. A. (2000). Arizona may lose $77 M in child health care funds. Scottsdale Tribune (July 7, p. 1–2). Guendelman, S., Wyn, R., & Tsai, Y. (2000). Children of working low-income families in California. Health Services Research, 35, 417–441. Guyer, B., Minkovitz, C. S., & Strobino, D. (2001). Morbidity and mortality among the young. In: R. A. Hoekelman, H. M. Adam, N. M. Nelson, M. L. Weitzman & M. H. Wilson (Eds), Primary Pediatric Care (4th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby.

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Hacker, J. S. (1997). The road to nowhere: The genesis of President Clinton’s plan for health security. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hacker, J. S., & Skocpol, T. (1997). The new politics of U.S. health policy. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 22, 315–338. Hewlett, S. (1991). When the bough breaks. New York: Basic Books. Increased enrollment complicates financial situation for Texas’ CHIP program (2002). Kaisernetwork.org. Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report (February 4). Jacobs, L. R., & Shapiro, R. Y. (2000). Politicians don’t pander: Political manipulation and the loss of democratic responsiveness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jecker, N. S. (1994). Employed-based insurance. In: J. A. Morone & G. S. Belkin (Eds), The Politics of Health Care. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kids care tests whether states can handle big-time responsibility (1997). American Hospital Association News, 33(November 10), 3. Kogan, M. D., Alexander, G. R., Teitelbaum, M. A., Jack, B. W., Kotelchuck, M., & Pappas, G. (1995). The effect of gaps in health insurance on continuity of a regular source of care among preschool-aged children in the United States. Journal of the American Medical Association, 274, 1430–1435. Kronebusch, K. (2001). Children’s medicaid enrollment: The impacts of mandates, welfare reform, and policy delinking. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 26, 1223–1260. Kronenfeld, J. J. (1997). The changing federal role in U.S. health care policy. Westport, CT: Praeger Press. Lindblom, C. E. (1959). The science of muddling through. Public Administration Review, 14, 79–88. Mechanic, D. (2001). The managed care backlash: Perceptions and rhetoric in health care policy and the potential for health care reform. Milbank Quarterly, 79, 35–54. Mills, N. (1997). The triumph of meanness: America’s war against its better self. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. National Commission on Children (1991). Beyond rhetoric: A new American agenda for children and families. Washington, DC. New York tests limits of benefit package and affordability as it aims to double size of children’s insurance plan (1997). State Health Watch, 4(7) (July) 2–8. O’Brien, M. J., Archdeacon, M., Barrett, M., Crow, S., Janicki, S., Rousseau, D., & Williams, C. (2000a). State experience with access issues under children’s health insurance expansions. New York: Commonwealth Fund, Publication No. 384. O’Brien, M. J., Archdeacon, M., Barrett, M., Crow, S., Janicki, S., Rousseau, D., & Williams, C. (2000b). State experience with cost sharing mechanisms in children’s health insurance expansion. New York: Commonwealth Fund, Publication No. 385. Office of Health Policy (1998). Chartbook on children’s insurance status. Assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, Department of Health and Human Services. http:/aspe.os.dhhs.gov/ health/98Chartbk/98-chtbk.htm Page, L. (1998). Refusing federal funds. American Medical News, 41(April 6), 1–31. Preston, S. H. (1984).Children and the elderly in the U.S. Scientific American, 251(December), 44–49. Rate of U.S. children without health coverage dropped between 1997 and 2001 (2002). Kaisernetwork.org. Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report (February 4). Rosenbaum, S., Johnson, K., Sonosky, C., Markus, A., & DeGraw, C. (1998). The children’s hour: The State children’s health insurance program. Health Affairs, 17, 75–89. Scarbrough, W. H. (1993). Who are the poor: A demographic perspective. In: J. A. Chafel (Ed.), Child Poverty and Public Policy. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

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Seccombe, K., & Amey, C. (1995). Playing by the rules and losing: Health insurance and the working poor. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 36, 168–181. Selden, T. M., Banthin, J. S., & Cohen, J. W. (1998). Medicaid’s problem children: Eligible but not enrolled. Health Affairs, 17, 192–200. Sherman, A., & Sandfort, J. (1998). Fighting child poverty in the United States: How research can help. Contemporary Sociology, 27, 555–561. Shi, L., Oliver, T. R., & Huang, V. (2000). The Children’s Health Insurance Program: Expanding the framework to evaluate state goals and performance. Milbank Quarterly, 78, 403–446. Sparer, M. S. (1998). Devolution of power: An interim report card. Health Affairs, 17, 7–18. States experiment with using welfare as leverage to get preventive care for children (1997). State Health Watch, 4 (July), 3–11. States hustling to get their share of $24 billion for kids’ coverage (1997). American Hospital Association News, 33(44) (November 10), 5–6. Steinmo, S., & Watts, J. (1995). It’s the institutions, stupid! Why comprehensive national health insurance always fails in America. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 20, 329–372. Washington State turns down $47 million for kids programs (1998). State Health Watch, 5(March), 1–4. Watts, J. (1997). The end of work and the end of welfare: Review of the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996. Contemporary Sociology, 26, 409–412. Wildavsky, A. (1964). The politics of the budgetary process. Boston: Little Brown and Company.

CHILDREN AND HOUSEWORK: SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONS Yun-Suk Lee, Barbara Schneider and Linda J. Waite INTRODUCTION Over the last several decades, as women have increasingly entered the labor force, they are spending less time at home (Bianchi, 1995; Hayghe, 1997). Having a more constrained schedule has resulted in married women and single mothers substantially decreasing the amount of time that they spend on household labor (Bianchi et al., 2000; Robinson & Godbey, 1997). Traditionally, in two-parent households, husbands rarely participated in household tasks. Now that more married women with children are employed outside the home, one might assume that they would turn to their husbands to help them manage their households. However, current research shows that fathers are making only a slightly greater contribution to housework than they did in the past (Gershuny & Robinson, 1988; Robinson & Godbey, 1997). If mothers are now spending fewer hours on housework, and fathers are only contributing slightly more, then there remains a significant proportion of household chores that either must be done by others or must remain undone. Research suggests that children in particular may find themselves responsible for an increasing proportion of household tasks. For example, the more hours mothers work outside the home, the more hours children spend on family work (Benin & Edwards, 1990; Blair, 1992b; Elder & Conger, 2000; Shelton, 1992). Because children spend a substantial amount of time on family work, at least in part due to the hectic schedules of their parents, both scholars and parents are beginning to question whether this responsibility of housework is primarily Sociological Studies of Children and Youth Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9, 105–125 © 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09007-X

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beneficial or detrimental to children.1 Scholars offer different perspectives on the relationship between housework and child developmental outcomes. Some researchers argue that participation in domestic chores enhances responsibility and cohesiveness among family members (Cogle & Tasker, 1982; Elder & Conger, 2000; Kome, 1982; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981a). But others maintain that family work may overburden children and encroach on time that they might use for academic work or social activities (Elkind, 2001; Suransky, 1982). Given these differing perspectives regarding the benefits or liabilities of children’s participation in housework, this paper examines three major questions: (1) How much time do children actually spend on household labor? (2) How do demographic changes such as an increase in the number of dual-earner and single-parent families affect the amount of time that children spend on chores? (3) How does participation in housework influence children’s social and cognitive development? We begin by describing children’s current contributions to the maintenance of American households.

HOW MUCH TIME DO CHILDREN SPEND ON HOUSEWORK? Over the last twenty years, several studies using national probability samples have examined the amount of time that children spend on housework.2 Several of these major data sets include: (1) the 1981–1982 Time Use Longitudinal Panel Study; (2) the 1987–1988 National Survey of Families and Households; (3) the 1993–1995 Americans’ Use of Time Project; and (4) the 1997 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Estimates of the amount of time children spend on housework as calculated by these four data sets are shown in Table 1. The amount of time spent on housework varies by children’s gender and age. Estimates of time spent on housework range from roughly two to four hours per week for children 3 to 11 and four to six hours per week for adolescents 12 to 18. Girls spend more hours on housework than boys, approximately one half hour to three hours more a week, and older children spend more hours on housework than younger children, approximately one half hour to two hours more per week. We suspect several factors may contribute to the differences in these estimates. What is considered housework varies by study: some investigations include sibling care as housework while others fail to include it. Distinctions are rarely made across racial and ethnic groups or social classes; consequently some estimates may be underrepresenting the time devoted to housework, particularly

Authors

Data

Timmer, Eccles and O’Brien (1985)

1981–1982 Time Use Longitudinal Panel Study

Blair (1992a)

1987–1988 National Survey of Families and Households 1993–1995 Americans’ Use of Time Project

Robinson and Bianchi (1997) Hofferth and Sandberg (2001a)a

Hofferth and Sandberg (2001b)b

a Hofferth b Hofferth

1981–1982 Time Use Longitudinal Panel Study 1997 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics 1997 Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

Age Range

Girls

Boys

3–11 12–17 5–18

3 hours 5 hours 30 min 5 hours 30 min

2 hours 30 min 3 hours 4 hours 30 min

5–11 12–17 3–12 3–12

3 hours 4 hours 15 min 4 hours 30 min 3 hours

2 hours 45 min 4 hours 15 min 3 hours 2 hours 30 min

6–8

4 hours 45 min

9–12

6 hours

Children and Housework: Some Unanswered Questions

Table 1. Estimations of the Time Children Spend on Housework per Week.

and Sandberg (2001a) compare the two data sets. and Sandberg (2001b) do not distinguish between boys and girls.

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for minority children. African American or Hispanic children, who typically perform a greater amount of household labor than their white counterparts, are often underrepresented in the sample frames (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001b; Larson & Verma, 1999). For example, the 1975–1976 Time Use Study was designed to be representative of the U.S. population. However, in the follow-up 1981–1982 Time Use Longitudinal Panel Study, there was a high attrition rate for the minority sample, and more than half the minority respondents were excluded in the second wave. Ethnic minorities assign housework differently to girls and boys. Hispanics, for example, are likely to assign more housework to daughters (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001b), whereas Asian Americans are more likely to assign less housework overall (Larson & Verma, 1999; Stevenson & Lee, 1990). Excluding minorities tends to mask important differences among families regarding the distribution of housework by age and gender. Some of the data sets restrict their focus to young children, which is especially problematic since older children are likely to be given more responsibilities in the management of the household (Mauldin & Meeks, 1990; Timmer, Eccles & O’Brien, 1985; Zill & Peterson, 1982). For example, the 1997 Child Development Supplement to the PSID focuses on children aged 12 or under, thus failing to capture the contribution that adolescents make to household labor. In addition, some of the data sets omit certain household tasks that may represent a significant proportion of the time that children spend on household labor. Timmer, Eccles and O’Brien (1985) exclude the time spent on child care activities and babysitting, which are typically the responsibilities of older adolescents, in particular teenage girls (Steinberg, 1998). The 1987–1988 National Survey of Families and Households did not obtain information from parents on how much time their children spend on sibling care. Gager, Cooney and Call (1999) argue that the exclusion of sibling care from categories of household tasks, especially for older adolescents, may lead to large underestimates of the time children are spending on housework.

DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS AND CHILDREN’S PARTCIPATION IN HOUSEWORK The amount of time children spend on housework is related to the mother’s occupation and to the hours she spends at work (Antill et al., 1996; Blair, 1992b; Cogle, Tasker & Babcock, 1983). In the Children’s Time Study of public school students and their mothers, Medrich and his colleagues (1982) find that children whose mothers work outside the home spend more time on and do a wider range of household chores than other children. A recent study of over 400 children in rural

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Iowa also reveals a positive relationship between the number of hours mothers spend in paid employment and the time children spend on household labor (Elder & Conger, 2000). Several additional studies seem to suggest a relationship between mothers’ workforce participation and the amount of time children spend caring for younger siblings (Hofferth & Phillips, 1987; Steinberg, 1998; Weisner, 1987). Girls in particular are more likely to fill the labor shortage related to maternal employment than boys (Medrich et al., 1982; Stephan & Corder, 1985). Stephan and Corder (1985) in their study of 327 eighth through twelfth grade students in five schools show that maternal employment increases the hours daughters spend on housework more than the hours sons spend. Similar results are also reported by Medrich and his colleagues (1982) who confirm that maternal work outside the home increases the amount of time daughters spend on chores much more than that of sons. In her review of the literature on the effects of maternal employment on the amount of time children spend on housework, Goodnow (1988) concludes that while it appears that boys are doing different tasks than they did when their mothers were not working, the amount of time they spend doing such tasks is not substantially different. White and Brinkerhoff (1981b) argue that “mother’s employment has a significant feminizing impact on the work of both her sons and her daughters, but does not reduce the amount of discrepancy between the work of boys and girls” (p. 177). Prior studies appear to support the argument that children of single-parent households spend more time on chores than children of two-parent households (Demo & Acock, 1993; Hilton & Haldeman, 1991). Using data from the 1987–1988 National Survey of Families and Households, Demo and Acock (1993) find that children in two-parent families (excluding stepfamilies) spend less than three hours per week performing housework, but children of never-married families spend an average of four to five hours per week on housework. Children of divorced mothers spend the most time on housework, almost six hours per week. In mother-only families, children spend nearly twice as much time as those in two-parent families on household chores (Goldscheider & Waite, 1991). Comparing children’s time use in 1981 and 1997, Hofferth and Sandberg (2001a) show that children in single-parent households have increased the amount of time they spend on household tasks while children in two-parent households have decreased the time they spend on household tasks. Single parenthood also affects the kinds of household chores that children perform at home. Children from single-parent families spend significantly more time than children in two-parent households on tasks such as food preparation, shopping, cleaning, and care of siblings (Hofferth & Phillips, 1987; Peters & Haldeman, 1987; Steinberg, 1998). Data from 170 households in the Interstate Urban-Rural Comparison of Families’ Time Use indicate that among single-parent

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families, school age children spend triple the amount of time caring for their siblings than is spent by their counterparts in two-parent families (Peters & Haldeman, 1987). Single parents themselves confirm that their children often assume roles as substitute laborers in the household. Mothers and fathers in single-parent households are more likely to say that they ask their children for help than mothers and fathers in traditional families, and in single-parent homes, many parents and their children form partnerships that create a balanced distribution of housework among all members of the household (Weiss, 1979).

CONSEQUENCES OF HOUSEWORK ON CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT Some scholars believe that household chores can offer opportunities for children to develop high self-esteem and a sense of concern for others and can strengthen relationships among family members (Goodnow, 1988; Kome, 1982; McClelland, 1961; Rheingold, 1982; Zelizer, 1985). Therefore, developmental psychologists often argue that assigning reasonable amounts of chores to children is an essential part of the socialization process.3 Parents share the notion that requiring their children to participate in housework will help them become more responsible adults (Goodnow, 1988; Sprinkle, 1996). In the Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey, for example, nearly 75% of Nebraska parents report that housework is important for character building, skill learning, and reinforcing family obligations and responsibilities (White & Brinkerhoff, 1981a). Many children, however, do not consider their involvement in household chores as an opportunity to learn valuable skills (Goodnow & Burns, 1985). Adolescents have a different view about their participation in household duties from their parents. As Larson and Richards (1994) note, adolescents feel “little responsibility” for home chores and “experience parental request of tasks as harassment” (p. 99). The difference in perceptions regarding household chores between parents and children can lead to family conflicts. Housework is consistently reported as one of the most frequent sources of conflict between parents and adolescents (Barber, 1994; Montemayor, 1983). Scholars interested in the impact of housework on adolescent development have examined the relationship between types of housework and adolescent self-esteem, competence, and other psychological factors, but the results have been ambiguous (Goodnow, 1988). On the positive side, sibling care fosters a sense of responsibility in adolescents (Werner, 1984). Data from the Children in Families Study show that when children perform regular household tasks they develop a high sense of competence (Amato, 1988). On the negative side, older

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children report feeling strongly dissatisfied when forced to take care of their younger siblings when their mothers are working outside the home (Steinberg, 1998). A more balanced assessment is given by Elder and Conger (2000) who point out, in the context of chores done by adolescents on farms, that: this work is often joined to the efforts of father and siblings, and the contribution of each participant becomes critical to the completed project or task. Doing something well under these circumstances has immediate payoff and may reinforce a sense of personal efficacy. However, youth work in a different context could weaken feelings of competence or expertise. Unpaid chores may have such effects, reinforcing dependency and resentment among older youth (p. 57; emphases are ours).

What is perhaps most important in the Elder and Conger quote is that they do not assume a straightforward relationship between household chores and adolescent development. Household chores in which members of the family are expected to participate have a different meaning if one member of the family is expected to do an onerous task by himself or herself (Crouter, McHale & Bartko, 1993; Schneider, Ainbinder & Csikszentmihalyi, 2001). When household tasks are viewed by both the adults and children as essential to the family’s social and economic well-being, tasks take on a different meaning. If children and adolescents are to have a positive experience doing chores, the type of household labor they are engaged in has to be valued by the family.

Gender and Division of Household Labor Many parents today encourage their daughters as well as their sons to complete college and seek a professional career, and female teenagers show slightly higher academic and occupational ambitions than boys (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000; Schneider & Stevenson, 1999). Whether girls’ high ambitions will be fulfilled is open to speculation. Moreover, one must ask whether these girls will be able to achieve a more egalitarian combination of work and family life in the future (Goldscheider & Waite, 1991). Working mothers often report that they have difficulty balancing work and family commitments partly because they lack their husbands’ support (Hochschild, 1989, 1997). If young women are employed as professionals, will young men replicate the behaviors and attitudes of their fathers? It is assumed that children formulate their views about the division of household labor from their childhood experiences (Blair, 1992b; Thornton, Alwin & Camburn, 1983; Weinshenker, 2001; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981a). However, the housework literature clearly demonstrates a gender disparity, with working mothers still having greater responsibility than their husbands for managing and

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undertaking household tasks, and these are the patterns that seem to be established in childhood and reinforced in adolescence. Research consistently shows that girls engage in household chores much more often than boys (Blair, 1992a; Brody & Steelman, 1985; Goldscheider & Waite, 1991; Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a; Larson et al., 2001). Lawrence and Wozniak (1987) find that girls spend 77 minutes per day on household chores whereas boys spend 55 minutes per day on similar chores. By adolescence, these gender differences are even more pronounced. Timmer, Eccles and O’Brien (1985) estimate that teenage girls spend twice as much time as teenage boys on home chores during weekdays and three times as much as boys on weekends. Examining the changes in children’s time use between 1981 and 1997, Hofferth and Sandberg (2001a) find that girls reported spending more time than boys on housework both in 1981 and 1997 and more time on shopping in 1997. This sex-stereotyped pattern is evident even for very young children. Huston et al. (1999) find that three- and four-year-old girls spend more time than boys on personal care and chores. The sexual division of labor is also obvious in the kinds of household tasks boys and girls are engaged in (Blair, 1992a; Cogle & Tasker, 1982; Smith, 1984). Blair (1992a) finds that daughters spend more time on family meal preparation and cleaning than do sons, and this disparity seems to intensify with age, with daughters spending more time on female-dominated chores as they grow older (Blair, 1992a, p. 188; also White & Brinkerhoff, 1981b). Call, Mortimer and Shanahan (1995) also show that girls spend more time caring for younger siblings or the elderly than boys. Where boys appear to be spending more time than girls is on outdoor tasks. Blair (1992a) shows that boys devote twice as much time to outdoor tasks than do girls. What this pattern shows is that household chores are feminized beginning in childhood and continuing through adolescence. If young people are to have lives where household labor is evenly distributed, these patterns suggest that some changes will undoubtedly have to occur.

Housework and Concern for Others Most household chores are typically characterized as caring activities for family members; that is, by preparing meals or cleaning up the home, adolescents naturally understand the needs of others and gain personal satisfaction by helping them (DeVault, 1991). Rheingold (1982) and Whiting and Whiting (1975) argue that children may learn how to have a general concern for others by participating in household tasks. This is particularly apparent, scholars argue, for sibling care. These responsibilities provide a chance for older children to learn to recognize the

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emotional and physical needs of their brothers and sisters (Dunn & Munn, 1986; Garner, Jones, & Miner, 1994). Previous research confirms that adolescents who take care of their siblings are more concerned about others than those who do not (Cicirelli, 1995; Garner, Jones & Miner, 1994; Whiting & Whiting, 1975). The effects of sibling care on adolescents may not be entirely positive, however. Werner (1984) reports that because older siblings have less authority than their parents over younger brothers and sisters, younger siblings often make unreasonable demands so older siblings may often get tired of taking care of them. Moreover, adolescents who care for younger siblings are generally less skillful at parenting, so they are more likely to depend on threats or material rewards (Bryant, 1982). As a consequence, there are often fights and conflicts between younger and older brothers and sisters. Berman et al. (1992) report that children in the care of older siblings exhibit lower self-competence than those under any other form of supervision. They conclude that children in sibling care may “be at risk for adverse effects on their psychological development” (p. 659). Grusec, Goodnow and Cohen (1996) argue that part of the problem in identifying the relationship between housework and its effects on children’s concern for others is how housework is defined. They categorize housework by type of task and under what conditions it is performed. First, they distinguish between self-care and family-care tasks. Self-care tasks include activities such as putting away one’s clothes. Family-care tasks include activities such as setting the table or gardening. Grusec, Goodnow and Cohen also suggest that family-care tasks are more likely to enhance concerns for the needs of others than are self-care tasks. They also distinguish between household chores that are performed on a regular basis and those that are performed ad hoc. Chores required on a routine basis, which a child agrees to perform, can increase concern for others because it is the children’s responsibility to determine if they have been completed. However, chores assigned to children on an ad hoc basis may not enhance a child’s concern for others because parents retain control and have ultimate responsibility for making sure the chores are completed. This picture becomes more complicated when considering age and gender. Older children generally take on a broader range of chores, and they may also engage in family-care tasks, including caring for younger siblings, meal preparation, and mowing the yard (Bloch, 1987; Duckett, Rafaelli & Richards, 1989; Goodnow & Delaney, 1989; Timmer, Eccles & O’Brien, 1985). Gender also has an impact on the sorts of tasks children do at home (Cogle & Tasker, 1982; Duncan & Duncan, 1978; Smith, 1984). In particular, girls are much more likely to do family-care tasks than boys (Goodnow & Delaney, 1989). Therefore, housework may be more related to concern for others primarily for females and older adolescents.

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Housework and Responsibility Developing a sense of responsibility is often seen as the primary benefit of housework by both parents and scholars (Elder & Conger, 2000; Goodnow, 1988; Goodnow et al., 1991; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981b). Despite this widely-shared belief, empirical research indicates that the effect of housework on children’s sense of responsibility is complex. In a study of 2,441 town and rural children, Harris et al. (1954) find no evidence that routine tasks such as house cleaning and washing dishes are associated with a heightened sense of responsibility. Werner (1984), on the other hand, shows that caring for siblings brings out social maturity and a high sense of responsibility in adolescents. Researchers have offered some suggestions to help untangle the association between domestic tasks and a sense of responsibility in adolescents. Warton and Goodnow (1991), for example, suggest that we need “some reframing of the issue to clarify results and to generate a new round of research” (p. 158). They argue that there are three conditions that help children feel responsible when involved in housework tasks: (1) direct-cause responsibility (people should clean up the mess that they created); (2) self-regulation (you should not be reminded to clean your room because your room is yours); and (3) continuing responsibility (caring for your sibling remains your responsibility even though your friend plays with her for a while). In a study of 104 third, sixth, and ninth grade students that examined how the importance of these three conditions change as children grow older, Warton and Goodnow (1991) found that there is a clear drop in the use of direct-cause responsibility as children grow older because older adolescents think that people in close relationships should not be involved in close “scorekeeping.” In contrast, the principle of self-regulation becomes more important to children over time.

Housework and Personal Competence and Self-Esteem Some parents involve their children in household work assuming that completing certain tasks will indirectly increase children’s cognitive processing and ability to strategize. Several social-psychological theories support this common belief. Bandura (1977, 1986) argues that “performance accomplishments” are the single most important origin of a sense of mastery. Helping activities can lead to the promotion of personal competence especially when such helping activities make tangible, significant contributions to the well-being of other family members (Amato, 1988; Call, Mortimer & Shanahan, 1995). Recognition and appreciation of properly completed household chores given by parents to their children can also promote competence. Parent recognition in these circumstances can be an important source of self-esteem because the child knows he or she has

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accomplished a task that is highly valued in the family (Gecas & Schwalbe, 1986; Mortimer, Lorence & Kumka, 1986). Other scholars, however, urge caution when assuming that housework is one of the best means for enhancing self-competence or self-esteem. If a child views himself or herself as a parent’s “hired hand,” having little autonomy or creativity, then housework may lead to feelings of powerlessness (Elder & Conger, 2000; Steinberg, 1998). Control, sense of autonomy, and creativity are all seen as key components in the development of a positive sense of self and in improving cognitive performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1993, 1996). Too much control on the part of parents, particularly related to tasks that are not challenging, can soon be seen as drudgery (Rathunde, 2001). In a study of over 1,000 adolescents, Csikszentmihalyi and Schneider (2000) show that when adolescents are engaged in household chores, they tend not to experience feelings of engagement, self-worth, or control. Several empirical studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between housework and competence. Call, Mortimer and Shanahan (1995) report that time spent on housework is negatively associated with competence for white adolescent boys but positively associated with competence for minority adolescent boys. They conclude that racial and ethnic differences may arise because minority groups value housework more than other groups (for the Hispanic population, see Ross, Mirowsky & Ulbrich, 1983). Therefore, minority children may be more willing to make “valuable contributions” to their families, leading to an enhanced sense of competence. Whites, who generally value housework less, may feel that housework is best avoided and interferes with the pursuit of other more valuable activities. Some scholars argue that for household tasks to be valuable, parents must assign them in a manner that is engaging and promotes learning. Goodnow (1988) concludes that strict rules, insisted on with little explanation or negotiation, are significantly associated with lower levels of skill development and social competence. Call, Mortimer and Shanahan (1995) report that performance of housework negatively affects competence for girls if their mothers do not allow them any autonomy in deciding what household chores should be done. Thus, if housework is to be valued, especially among adolescents, opportunity for “choice” should be available. Such opportunities for choice may also be beneficial for other reasons, such as helping adolescents learn how to manage their time outside of school.

Housework and Educational Achievement It is often argued that paid work or household chores may develop responsibility, discipline, and cognitive skills, which may be associated positively with academic

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achievement (Carraher, 1986; Scribner, 1984). On the other hand, others have argued that housework may be detrimental to children’s academic achievement because the time spent on household chores may limit the time available for academic work. In addition, Smith (1992) suggests that children may be resentful if parents assign substantial amounts of household chores and may therefore “feel justified in slighting their school work” (p. 745). Empirical research seems to indicate either no association (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001b) or a negative association (Elder & Conger, 2000; Smith, 1984, 1990, 1992) between housework and academic achievement. Hofferth and Sandberg (2001b) report that time spent on housework is not associated with the Woodcock-Johnson Revised Test of Basic Achievement, which tests vocabulary and comprehension skills and mathematical calculation performance (Woodcock & Mather, 1989). But in a study of 4,918 sixth, eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade students in nine public schools, Smith (1990, 1992) finds that time spent on household chores is strongly and negatively associated with academic achievement scores, suggesting that children who spend significant amounts of time on household tasks may be spending less time on their academic studies. Time spent on domestic chores was also found to be negatively related to academic achievement for young people in a rural community, and this effect became more negative over time (Elder & Conger, 2000). Weisner (1987) points out that how parents assign chores, as well as the time they expect their children to spend on housework, can positively or negatively influence their engagement with academic achievement. Learning is more likely to occur when students are cognitively engaged – that is, when they are interested, involved, find the activity challenging and feel they have the skills necessary to complete the task (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1996). If parents place too much emphasis on obedience, their children may acquire the belief that learning happens in a hierarchical order-and-obey way which may dampen their curiosity, enjoyment, and self-determination. Children raised in these types of family environments may be more willing to accept authority and less likely to question their teachers and interact with them concerning their learning assignments. Some parents believe that housework is not instrumental in the development of their children’s academic achievement. Blair (1992b) reports that parental concern with the qualities of independence and intelligence shows a negative effect on the amount of time spent on housework, implying that greater parental concern about children’s intelligence decreases children’s contribution to housework. Parents who are committed to developing their children’s intelligence may encourage their children to spend more time on academic work or other related activities rather than on household chores (Blair, 1992b). In their study of 200 teenagers talented in academics, art, athletics, and music, Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde and Whalen (1993) find that talented teenagers spend

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significantly less time on household chores and errands than average teenagers. The authors explain that talented teenagers, protected from certain routine experiences of life, spend time with their families that is richer in support and consistency, and provides more opportunities for challenges than the time average teens spend with their families. This is especially the situation for high-achieving Asian American students. Parents of high-performing Asian American students are also less likely to require their children to engage in household chores than are the parents of high-performing Caucasian students (Schneider, Hieshima, Lee & Plank, 1994).

SUMMARY Research indicates that recent demographic changes such as increases in maternal employment and in the number of female-headed households have created a substantial demand for children’s help in the maintenance of the household (Cogle, Tasker & Morton, 1982; Gager, Cooney & Call, 1999; McHale et al., 1990; Medrich et al., 1982; Peters & Haldeman, 1987; Timmer, Eccles & O’Brien, 1985). Children appear to be making up for the labor shortage created when mothers are employed outside the home. The amount of time children are actually spending on household chores is uncertain, since recent studies may even be underestimating the time children devote to housework. While there is general agreement that adolescents spend more time on housework than ever before, researchers continue to debate the consequences of imposing household chores on children. The sex-typing of children’s household labor continues to be common among American households (Blair, 1992a). Empirical studies consistently find that parents assign more household tasks to their daughters than their sons. Moreover, the sexual inequality among boys and girls has not changed greatly (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a). It has been argued that parents should assign household chores more equally to sons and daughters (Burns & Homel, 1989). Goldscheider and Waite (1991) suggest that if boys do not experience household tasks, they may be less ready for independent living and less willing to help their future wives balance work and family. Studies on the effect of housework on children’s cognitive and emotional development show that spending significant amounts of time on housework may be severely detrimental to children’s academic achievement (Smith, 1990, 1992). The evidence on the impact of domestic labor on developmental traits such as competence or responsibility remains unclear. Amato (1988) finds that helping with household tasks enhances competence, whereas Call, Mortimer and Shanahan (1995) show that participation in household labor reduces competence among adolescents. As these results indicate, current research has so far failed

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to provide a clear conclusion about how participation in family work affects children’s psychological traits. As Goodnow (1988) points out, any simple conclusion concerning the relationship between housework and developmental outcomes may be problematic.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Although researchers have investigated the effects of housework on children’s social and cognitive development, these studies have often overlooked several important considerations. First, scholars have tended to overlook differences in the ways various ethnic groups assign household tasks to their children. In many cases, the samples for studies of children’s housework consist primarily of white, middle-class families, so comparison among different cultural groups is at best difficult and in some cases impossible. There are only a few studies examining variations in time spent on housework by children from different racial and ethnic groups (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001b), and those that have been conducted show that, controlling for family structure, Hispanic children spend more time on housework than non-Hispanic white children, while black and Asian children spend less time (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001b). In addition to differences in the amount of time spent on housework, previous research suggests that parental perceptions about household labor differ among various racial and ethnic groups (Larson & Verma, 1999). For example, Stevenson and Lee (1990) find that Chinese and Japanese mothers try not to assign chores to their children because they are worried that household tasks divert children from schoolwork. But American parents may assign chores in an effort to develop a sense of responsibility in their children (White & Brinkerhoff, 1981a). Such variations in parental attitudes across racial and ethnic groups may help foster different attitudes toward housework among children in these groups, leading to diverse developmental outcomes (Gallimore, Goldenberg & Weisner, 1993). Larson and Verma (1999) report that while there is limited evidence for developmental benefits of family work for the youth in the U.S., there is accumulating evidence for “the correlation between family labor and qualities such as responsibility, self-reliance, and nurturance, with the clearest patterns for participation in child-care” for children in non-Western and non-industrial settings (p. 710). They attribute these different effects of household labor on children to different cultural meanings of housework. Their research suggests that we need to consider race and ethnicity in examining the developmental implications of performance of household labor for children. Second, where children live also seems to affect the amount and types of household chores they perform and how they feel about their participation in

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housework. Rural and urban children differ in how much time they spend on chores and what value they place on them (Light, Hertsgaard & Martin, 1985; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981a, b). Even though they have more housework and farm work, rural children tend not to be dissatisfied or resentful of their participation in the maintenance of the home and farm (Elder & Conger, 2000). Elder and Conger (2000) report that rural children may be proud of themselves because they are making a real contribution to their families’ livelihoods. This sense of involvement is less likely for urban youth who may see fewer connections, for example, between having to care for one’s siblings and their parents’ professional careers. Future studies should consider regional differences as potential mediating factors when analyzing the relationship between housework and children’s development. Third, studies examining the effects of housework on children’s social and educational development have perhaps focused too narrowly on the number of hours spent doing household tasks. The quantity of time matters, but so does content, control, creativity, and challenge. Housework, like all other activities children engage in, is not value neutral. We need to see housework as yet one more activity children perform that affects not only their immediate sense of self and achievement, but also the values they are likely to bring to bear when socializing their own children into adulthood. Although few would suggest that children should not have any household responsibilities, little is known about the precise mechanisms for how this should occur (Primeau, 1998), how much time spent on housework is enough taking into account the age of the children, and what tasks are likely to promote cognitive and psychological well-being. In other areas such as children’s educational expectations, grades, and social behaviors, we find that parent-child interactions are very influential (Cunningham, 2001a, b). However, researchers have paid little attention to the relationships between parent-child interactions, the time spent on housework, and the effects these relationships have on child outcomes. We might expect that if parents and children decided together what tasks in the household are needed and who should do them, children would form a more positive view of housework. This view – one that stresses collective responsibility – may promote a greater sense of competence and instill the importance of sharing household tasks well into adulthood. In particular, the literature suggests that when examining the impact of household labor on children, we should consider how often children work together with parents at home, coupled with how much time they spend on household chores. Generally, children regard their participation as an effort to lessen the burden on their parents, not as an educational opportunity and so are less willing to do chores at home. Studies report that if children feel “forced” to perform tasks, they may participate in household chores to avoid punishment, reducing the value

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of household labor as a learning experience (Eisenberg et al., 1985; Larson & Richards, 1994). Elder and Conger (2000) suggest that if children work together with parents at home, they are more willing to perform household tasks and feel cohesiveness with other family members. As parents wash the dishes or prepare dinner, children may feel their household tasks to be part of a collective effort rather than as burdensome, trivial, or inconsequential. Moreover, by working together, parents provide immediate recognition and affirmation of their children’s contribution to the management of the household, which is important to the development of self-esteem (Rosenberg & McCullough, 1981). Therefore, we can hypothesize that how often children work together with parents will mediate the association between the amount of time spent on housework and several developmental outcomes.

NOTES 1. For example, Zelizer (1985) writes: “Should children participate more productively in the household division of labor? Is it reasonable or even feasible for a working mother to retain responsibility for the ‘real’ jobs while children are carefully reserved educational chores (and fathers only slowly and reluctantly increase their share of domestic tasks)? And is it good for the child herself or himself to remain a privileged guest who is thanked and praised for ‘helping out,’ rather than a collaborator who at a certain age is expected to assume his or her fair share of household duties?” (p. 209). 2. The amount of time spent on household tasks has also been studied using local samples. For instance, Bianchi and Robinson (1997) use data from the California Children’s Activity Pattern Survey, a survey of a representative sample of children aged 11 or younger in California in 1989–1990. Gager, Cooney and Call (1999) use the Youth Development Survey, a survey of a representative sample of all ninth graders enrolled in the St. Paul, Minnesota public schools in 1988. In this section, we focus on studies that use national data sets that have been collected over the last two decades. 3. For example, Rheingold (1982) argues that “by not providing opportunities for the children’s spontaneous participation in their everyday activities, we are depriving them of useful and satisfying experiences” (p. 124).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work. This paper is intended to promote the exchange of ideas among researchers and policy-makers. The views expressed here are those of authors and do not represent the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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CHILD LABOR AND HOUSEHOLD SURVIVAL STRATEGIES IN WEST AFRICA Loretta E. Bass INTRODUCTION Few of the world’s social ills arouse such unified opposition as child labor. When we learn that children are sewing soccer balls instead of studying, we are appalled. We shudder when we learn that children are sold into indentured servitude to knot rugs for 10-to-14 hour days in poorly lit workshops. International media attention is sparked when sweatshops are exposed that use children to make clothing for The Gap or shoes for Nike. In general, our understanding of this social problem has been clouded by moral outrage and the consequent clandestine nature of child labor. This partly explains the dearth of effective strategies to end child labor. While there is increasing support to end child labor, there is no consensus on how or where to focus our resources. This research provides a window on what child labor means for children and their households so that we may better understand some alternatives to it. Children’s work often represents a family strategy for economic survival. This research examines the connection between children’s urban market work and the short- and long-term adaptive strategies of their households in Senegal. Market work is the most prevalent form of child labor in urban areas of Senegal (Bass, 1996; Sadio, 1993). Previous research has established that household strategies affect the decisions made regarding individual household members (Becker, 1960,

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[1981] 1991; Caldwell & Caldwell, 1978; Davis, 1976; Hill, 1970; LePlay, 1877–1879; Sassler, 1995; Stack, 1974). The concept of a household adaptive strategy is useful in the Senegalese case because children’s households can be viewed as actively securing what they need to survive. In this paper, I develop a typology that explains how children come to work and what exactly their work may mean for benefits to their households and their own career training. Senegal provides an important study of child labor for several reasons. Senegal is representative of Africa with respect to the percentage, over 50%, of children who are not in school and may be working (Bequele, 1991; ILO, 1995). It is estimated that 34% of Senegalese children aged 10–14 are working full-time (Republique du Senegal, 1993). Despite being illegal, child labor in Senegal is visible and tolerated, making interviews with children and their families obtainable. While one study of child labor in urban areas of West Africa cannot represent all of child labor, these same patterns of survival are relevant for other labor market areas in Africa and throughout the developing world.

THE DIMENSIONS OF CHILDREN’S LABOR For many in the developing world, child labor represents an alternative to formal schooling as career training. Children’s work provides income for the household and varying levels of career training for the child worker. In this way, children who take different types of market work can also be viewed in relation to different household adaptive strategies. Children come from households of different levels of economic well being, social networks, and urban-rural background. Within households, gender further shapes divergent trajectories of opportunity across children. Thus, child workers can be viewed along four dimensions of the parental household: social resources, economic resources, rural or urban background, and gender expectations. These dimensions help define household survival strategies and highlight the stratification processes and relationships that influence how children come to market work. The first dimension, economic resources of the household, refers to the economic well being of the child worker’s household, and the ability of his or her household to survive without the child’s earnings in the short term. Children come from households with varying economic resources. Households with greater economic resources are more likely to be able to forego short-term rewards in favor of long-term economic benefits (i.e. apprentices). Households low in economic resources typically secure work that provides immediate earnings for their children (i.e. sellers). Households with the least economic resources forego any direct rewards of children’s market labor, and may no longer provide financial support

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to their children (i.e. extended family or employers provide the financial support of a child seller). The second dimension, social relationships of the household, refers to the social obligations and resources which a particular household considers when securing market work for a child. Social ties to individuals who work in the market are important in determining this dimension. With a high level of social resources, it is easier to secure a place for a child in market work. Children may come from households with low to high levels of social resources. The third dimension, rural or urban background, refers to whether the child’s parents reside in a household that is in an urban or rural area. Rural or urban background indicates a cultural orientation and physical location of the immediate household and whether the child will have nuclear family members available in the urban market or whether the child must rely on an extended family or non-filial kin for her or his training and supervision. Children’s households may be categorized as either rural or urban. The fourth dimension, gender, is associated with different trajectories of opportunity for children. A stratification process based on gender defines the different socialization and work opportunities available to boys and girls in Senegal (Sow, 1985). Girls are given different life and work opportunities than boys within the same household, even across different levels of economic well being, social resources, and rural or urban background. These four dimensions allow us to understand how children of different backgrounds are incorporated into market work and distinguish five types of household survival strategies (see Table 1): Alternative education seekers, Agriculture-based upwardly mobiles, Market-based upwardly mobiles, Duplicating-dads imitating-moms, and Religious non-careerists. The alternative education seekers take market work as training once they have failed the public school system. The agriculture-based and market-based upwardly mobiles engage in higher status occupations than their parents but differ in what types of social ties make opportunities available to them. The duplicating-dads imitating-moms replicate their parents’ jobs and, in turn, their household economic strategy in the next generation. The religious non-careerists beg in the market while studying the Quran with a Muslim religious leader and receive negligible training for a market career that will provide for their family. In this way, it becomes apparent that parents secure training opportunities for children that have varying economic benefits for the household both in the short and long terms. For some children, market work is an alternative to the public educational system. For most, however, market work is a reliable mechanism to train children for future market careers, either through hands-on sales or craftwork training.

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Table 1. Typology of Ideal Types of Household Strategies.

Alternative education seeker Case 1: Apprentice Agriculture-based-upwardly-mobile Case 2: Apprentice Case 3: Seller Market-based-upwardly-mobile Case 4: Apprentice Duplicating-dad, imitating-mom Case 5: Seller Case 6: Seller Case 7: Apprentice Religious-non-careerist Case 8: Talibe

Economic Resources

Social Resources

Urban/Rural Background

Sex Boy/Girl

High

Low

Urban

Boy

Low

High

Rural

Boy/Girl

Medium

High

Urban

Boy

Low

High

Urban

Boy/Girl

Low

Low

Rural

Boy

Background This household strategy typology builds on the Becker household production framework (1960, [1981] 1991) and uses the concept of household adaptive strategy (Moen & Wethington, 1992) to identify different types of children’s situations. It is useful and empirically valid to regard households as role allocating, income pooling, and income spending units (e.g. Davis, 1976; Hill, 1970; LePlay, 1877–1879; Stack, 1974). The concept of a family strategy, or a household strategy in the Senegalese case, is appealing because children’s households can be viewed as actively securing what they need to survive. Children are workers who help pool resources to aid the household. Although children’s decision-making is constrained by the structure of the household and its more powerful members, linking children’s work to a household strategy also allows us to consider children as actors who actively contribute to the welfare of the household. Moen and Wethington (1992) argue that the concept of a family strategy is a somewhat imprecise construct for testing theory and operationalizing variables. They therefore assert the need to specify components of family strategies. In the Senegalese context it is necessary to think in terms of the household, which typically includes nuclear and extended family and non-filial kin, rather than the Western nuclear family, and important to specify what a child’s work means as a component of a household strategy. Other researchers (Caldwell & Caldwell, 1978; Sassler, 1995) have shown the relevance of concurrently examining factors

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at the individual and household levels in order to understand decisions that may initially appear to be individual-level decisions. For example, Caldwell and Caldwell (1978) found that kin who do not necessarily share a residence but who do share economic activities and responsibilities largely shape decisions regarding fertility and opportunities made available to individual family members. Likewise, Sassler (1995) used the idea of family strategies to examine what educational opportunities children are allowed by considering the interrelation of economic and demographic constraints. Becker ([1981] 1991) argues that household strategies are primarily economic in nature. Under this approach, the Senegalese household should be considered as having an economic strategy securing needed material benefits for its members. Household members should be evaluated in terms of their potential resources and liabilities over the short and long terms. In the Senegalese context, though, the household may augment its low economic resources with its social resources – its extended family and its non-filial kin – to secure training and work opportunities for its children. Further, the Senegalese household’s decision to invest human capital such as formal schooling or trade in a craft in children is not only influenced by the economic level of the household but is shaped by ideas about appropriate work by sex. Finally, the rural/urban nature of the child’s natal household structures how and under what conditions a child will come to work. For example, when the rural mother of a 10-year-old girl makes the decision to send her daughter to work as a market seller with a female relative in Dakar, she considers the potential economic, educational, and social gain for the girl to the cost of losing her daughter’s domestic and field work, and her social and psychological support in the rural setting. The child’s experience as a market seller is viewed as training for an adult career, and the responsibility of clothing and feeding the child is now with the urban household employing her. In this case, extended-family resources and obligations combined with urban migration can be depicted as comprising a strategy used by the rural household to provide for and train its members. The child’s work experience contributes to the parental household now and in the future. The pages that follow draw on notes and informal interviews with children and their families collected during two years of daily observation and participation in open−air urban markets in Senegal, West Africa. Five distinct strategies employed by families to provide economic security are apparent. Actual cases of child laborers are presented, but their names have been changed to protect their identities. The paper concludes by discussing what exactly market work may mean for children’s career training and for their households’ economic well being in the short and long terms.

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Alternative Education Seekers The alternative education seeker (see Table 1) is a boy who grew up in the urban area where he is now apprenticed and typically lives with his mother, father or both parents. He is likely to be found in a metalworking, carpentry, or electrical repair apprenticeship. The child begins his apprenticeship at age 12 or 13 after reaching the final level of primary school. This type of child worker is an alternative education seeker, because this child generally has failed the primary school certificate exam or the secondary school entrance exam. His family seeks an apprenticeship in lieu of the public school system to prepare this child for adult work. This child comes from a household that can afford to forego short-term earnings in order to invest more training in the child. Case 1: Ablaye Ablaye, born in a downtown neighborhood of Dakar, is now 13 years old. He has worked in the market as an apprentice to a metal worker for one year. He works with five other children and the patron or employer, working from 8 a.m. while the sunlight permits until 6 or 7 p.m. Ablaye eats lunch in the workshop, but eats the other two meals of the day and sleeps in his father’s compound. In his fouryear-long apprenticeship, he will acquire some basic tools and learn basic welding and metal working techniques that will allow him to set up his own workshop eventually. He will work as a journeyman in another workshop for a couple of years at the close of his apprenticeship to save money and build his own customer base. He earned the primary school certificate last year after attending the public elementary school in his neighborhood for seven years. He repeated the last level of primary school this year in hopes of meriting a place in secondary school. After failing to earn a place, Ablaye’s father, a retired police officer for the city of Dakar, arranged an apprenticeship. Metal working is a good trade that can provide for a family. Even though Ablaye did not excel in school, the relatively well off economic position of his family compared with other Senegalese families provides this alternative training for him. Ablaye is the third-born of his mother, and the fourth-born of his father. His mother was the second wife, but his father’s first wife is now divorced, so his mother is effectively the first wife now. The divorced wife’s son is the oldest of Ablaye’s father and still studies in the public school system. Ablaye’s mother does not work outside the compound. She has a total of five children. Ablaye’s older brother, Cheick, works as an apprentice to a carpenter, his older sister Oumy still studies, and his two younger brothers study in primary school. If children in this household succeed at school, regardless of the child’s sex, they can continue

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because the household does not need their income or full-time housework to meet immediate needs. Ablaye and Cheick both failed the public school system, and their father then found market-training opportunities for them. Ablaye’s father expects that Oumy will train in a formal sewing school when she is 15 or 16 years old. Within this urban household, human capital investments in education are made equally in both girls and boys. It is the sex segregation of the workplace that requires Oumy to excel beyond the schooling of her brother to obtain the same specialized craft training. The household has adequate economic resources to sustain itself in the short term without the earnings of its children. Incorporating Ablaye and Cheick into market work provides them with on-the-job training and a future career path, an alternative to the training and career preparation of education in the public school system. Their mother explains, “Ablaye and Cheikh are learning trades that are useful to the family and will allow them to marry someday.” In her mind, her boys are receiving adequate training to prepare them to support their own households in the future. This is an adaptive strategy used by the household to educate its children for future careers. In general, the alternative education seeker can be viewed along the dimensions of the typology as being urban and male, and having high economic resources and low market-based social resources. The child therefore has low market-based social resources on which to draw because his immediate family does not work in the market. The child enters a contractual arrangement with a patron or employer, in which the child’s family expects certain skills to be taught to the child during a specified period of time. The alternative education seeker averages a three-to-five year period of on-the-job training in the role of an apprentice. The family has regular contact with the employer, who is held accountable to the terms of the contract. If the family is not satisfied, then the child will quit and the employer will fail to profit from the more productive years of the apprentice. The apprentice sleeps and eats breakfast and dinner within his parent’s household, and the employer provides lunch within the workshop. At the end of the apprenticeship period, the child will have the specialized skills of a market craftsman, and his employer is expected to buy him some basic tools.

Agriculture-Based Upwardly Mobiles In contrast to the alternative education seekers, agriculture-based upwardly mobiles (see Table 1) come from rural areas where their parents are farmers or herders. Because these families have low economic resources on which to

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draw, they generally must use social ties – extended family and non-filial kinship ties – to place their children in urban market work. Through their market work, these children become a part of a long-term household strategy. These children are learning skills that make them less dependent on the land and its vagaries, especially important as the country has experienced several droughts since the 1970s, resulting in the Sahara Desert encroaching on the fertile land and agricultural production steadily decreasing over time. Both boys and girls may migrate but experience different career trajectories by gender. Girls and boys enter selling positions at age 11 on average and sell different products as defined by the sex segregation of market occupations. Boy migrants are equally likely to engage in either selling or apprenticeship training through their social ties, while girls are likely to engage in selling activities. This section first presents an agriculture-based upwardly mobile boy who is apprenticed, and then a girl who sells. The agriculture-based upwardly mobile boy may enter an apprenticeship or selling. His family’s social ties are marshaled in order create an income earning or training opportunity. Thus, the presence of a kin member in one area or the other largely shapes the decision-making process. Some families send their boys into selling while others send their boys into apprenticeships, and this is determined by the social relationships that kin have with those employed in those positions. A boy who enters an apprenticeship comes from a rural area and is sponsored by an extended family member. An employer may recruit boys from his ancestral village. This kin member may be referred to as an “uncle,” but the meaning for this term in the Senegalese context is important to clarify. An apprentice may refer to someone older in the village or to his father’s brother as “uncle.” Morice (1982, p. 520) explains, “A young worker need not be a ‘nephew’; he may . . . be the nephew of a friend” and be called nephew in the workshop setting. Sow (1985) explains the importance of community ties of individuals from the same village who share certain rites of passage together. These non-filial kinship ties are socially constructed and are marshaled to place a rural child in an urban-based apprenticeship. The agriculture-based upwardly mobile who becomes an apprentice is an excellent example of how a household limited in economic resources – which is typical of rural households – can use social relationships to secure training opportunities for its children. The child receives no salary because the employer generally takes the responsibility of rearing the child apprentice. The employer pays for the child’s daily needs of food and clothing, and the child sleeps in the workshop with other apprentices. This agriculture-based upwardly mobile boy generally works with a shoemaker in the capital city or in shoemaking or metalworking in the smaller regional

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cities. With this type of apprenticeship, two-to-four years of training are needed, with the final year being a time when the child has nearly mastered the trade and produces substantially. The length of time for the apprenticeship is generally agreed to be three years, but interview data indicate that many children work four or five years. At the close of the apprenticeship period, the child is expected to work as a journeyman, generally in another workshop, for a couple of years to earn enough money to set up his own workshop. This stands in contrast to the contractual agreements reached between urban parents of alternative education seekers and the patron, in which the employer helps to set up the child’s business by providing basic tools. The agriculture-based upwardly mobile boy is expected to return to a satellite town near the family in the rural area once his apprenticeship is completed. The child is once again a vital part of a long-term household adaptive strategy. However, these young boys live with employers in an urban area away from their families for several years with little rural and familial contact. Most children want to stay in the urban area, preferably Dakar, and many third-year apprentices do not feel the same obligation to their rural families as is common among first-year apprentices with similar backgrounds. One apprenticed shoemaker explains his reasons for preferring the urban setting, “The rural area is dirty and difficult. There is no running water.” However, most of these agriculture-based upwardly mobile apprentices cannot afford to abandon familial monetary obligations at their completion, because their future supply of labor will likely be from their rural area. There evolves, then, a reciprocal relationship of obligation. One 26-year-old employer explains, “I go to my village and do not have to ask parents, but they ask me to train their children. They know that I do good work.” Case 2: Pape Pape is a 14-year-old boy who has come to Dakar from a village. He has worked in a shoemaking apprenticeship for two years in Dakar away from his family in the village. He works with five other children and six other adults in this workshop. Each adult works with one child. His normal workday begins at 8:30 in the morning and lasts until 6 or 7 p.m. Pape provides free labor while he is being trained. He will work for one more year in this workshop before establishing himself in the trade. If he continues in his employer’s workshop as a journeyman, his employer will supply the tools needed to open his own workshop, but employers and apprentices agree that it is better to enter another workshop in order to broaden one’s skills. Pape will be required to work as a journeyman for a couple of years in order to refine his skills and attract his own customers. He is building an urban customer base. In this way, Pape establishes himself in the urban area and serves as a conduit for future migrant apprentices from his area.

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Pape never attended primary school and attended one year of Quranic or Islamic school in the village. His father works as a horse-carriage driver in the village and his mother takes care of the compound and the children. He is the second-born of his mother and the third-born of his father. His mother is the second of his father’s two wives. His two older brothers work in this same type of shoemaking apprenticeship in a regional city near his village. His two younger brothers attend public elementary school and his two younger sisters attend Quranic school. The older children are learning trades that will establish their careers. Pape believes that he will train his younger brothers in the trade. Pape’s employer has ties to the village, and Pape is a distant cousin of his employer. When his employer came to the village to offer the apprenticeship opportunity, his family tie provided confidence in the work arrangement and he was allowed to go. The employer’s brother has the workshop in the regional city where his older brothers are being trained. These training arrangements strengthen the employers’ ties to the village. The contractual terms are verbal, but there are no immediate family members available to oversee the living and working conditions of Pape. The employer is responsible for all of the child’s needs – the food, clothing, shelter, and training. Pape remarks, “Sometimes the patron does not buy us a proper breakfast . . . only kola (cocoa) nuts. We sleep here in the workshop and he (the employer) goes to his compound to sleep. He watches television there. We’re here alone at night.” Because of the distance, Pape feels isolated from his family. Pape’s rural household does not have extensive economic resources, but can sustain itself in the short term without the earnings of its children. Pape and his older brothers are learning the shoemaking trade and gaining city experience. Pape will choose at some point whether he will make his life in Dakar or in the regional city near his village. His decision is a vital part of the long-term survival strategy of his parents’ rural household. The agriculture-based upwardly mobile may also become a market seller, in which girls and boys work with adults of the same sex who share extended family or non-filial kinship ties. This is viewed as an education and adequate training for a future market career as a seller. An aunt will introduce her niece to selling piment or hot peppers in the market. An uncle will oversee the commerce of a nephew while he learns to sell cosmetics. Many times, this child has been given to a family member to aid that family member financially. For example, a grandchild may live and help sustain the needs of a grandparent. If a woman has twin girls, one may be given to her parents in their old age. The girls directly benefit from their market labor and sustain the grandparents’ household. The earnings go directly to their extended-urban household. In some cases, the extended household may remit money or food to the rural household.

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Case 3: Adjara Adjara is a 13-year-old girl who has migrated to Dakar from the rural area. Adjara’s market work involves setting up the stall every morning, selling fried donuts all day, and storing the stall before returning home. She lives with her “aunt” with whom she also works as a maid before and after her market selling work. Her “aunt” is not the sister of either of Adjara’s parents, but is her employer. Her employer shares kinship ties to some members of Adjara’s village. Much like the patron “uncle” of the apprentices, the idiom of kinship is invoked to solidify this working and caretaking relationship. A friend of the employer oversees Adjara’s market work. All of the earnings are given to the employer who then feeds, clothes, and looks after Adjara. The employer talks of eventually helping Adjara to settle in Dakar with another boy who has migrated as a child. Although the employer does not pay Adjara or her family, when she visits the village she reports what Adjara is learning and gives gifts of tea, clothing, and sugar. Adjara’s mother and father are peanut farmers. Adjara has neither attended public elementary nor Quranic school, and was helping her mother in the house until six months ago when her employer came to the village. Adjara is the second child of her mother and father. Her father has two wives; her mother is the first wife and the second wife does not yet have children. Adjara’s older brother, El Hadj works as an apprentice in a metalworking shop in a regional city, and her younger brother, Kosso, attends Quaranic school in her village. Adjara is happy to be in Dakar, although she misses her mother. She explains, “I already learned how to take care of the house of my mother. Now, I help my aunt here in Dakar with her house. City cleaning is different than cleaning in the country. I am also learning to sell donuts in the market . . . I am learning to count.” Although the employer has begun teaching her to count, she knows the different values of the money by memorizing the sizes of the bills and coins. Clearly, Adjara’s work is viewed as providing valuable training. Agriculture-based market mobiles rely more on social than economic resources in market placement. The agriculture-based upwardly mobiles migrate to urban areas and live away from their parents. In the short and long terms, the household expects to remain tied to the child working in the urban milieu. Boys who migrate have more variation as to the types of work that they may enter, for they may enter selling or apprenticeships that have different short- and long-term opportunities. Sellers are sometimes a vital part of a short-term household survival strategy, but sellers and apprentices also represent a long-term economic and training strategy for the household. Among all agriculture-based upwardly mobiles, extended-family and non-filial kinship resources and obligations combined with

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urban migration can be depicted as comprising a strategy used by the rural household to provide for and train its members. The child’s work contributes to how the household will provide for its members now and in the future.

Market-Based Upwardly Mobiles The market-based upwardly mobile (see Table 1) is the son of a market seller who is allowed to train in an apprenticeship because of his sex, his parent’s high social ties in the market, and his family’s relatively high economic position compared with other market sellers. He will generally enter a ten-year tailoring apprenticeship. The market-based upwardly mobile already has market experience in selling, and a future career in a skilled craft provides long-term stability and labor diversification for the selling-based market family. The girls within the same households continue to sell. This ideal type of child worker shows the form of social mobility that takes place in the market, and how this social mobility is different by gender. The father and mother are sellers, and the child is of urban background with extensive market social ties and experience. The market-based upwardly mobile has worked for a couple of years in the market selling, cleaning, or preparing products as an extension of his father’s work, and enters the apprenticeship at age 10 or 11. Case 4: Modou Modou is a 14-year-old boy who has worked four years as an apprentice to a tailor. Modou’s father sells fish in the market, and his mother works at their house. Although his parents migrated from a neighboring country, Modou was born in Dakar. In his tailoring apprenticeship, Modou works with his patron, another apprentice, and a journeyman. He spent the first two years of his apprenticeship procuring materials for the workshop. He began to cut patterns during the third year, and only began to sew basic seams in pieces for customers during the fourth year. Modou reports to work at 9 a.m. and works until the market closes, around 6 or 7 p.m. He hopes to open his own sewing shop in the market some day. Modou did not attend public primary school, but studied the Quran four years. He stopped attending the Quranic school when he was eight years old and started to help his father sell fresh fish in the center of market. He helped to clean the fish and remove the entrails. Modou’s father explained, “Now, I have Alpha Oumar (Modou’s younger brother) help me in the market while Modou learns to become a tailor.” Modou’s father is very proud of Modou’s training. Modou is the oldest son of both his mother and father. His father has a second wife who has not yet had children. Modou has one younger sister and three younger brothers, who have also studied the Quran.

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Modou’s father is friendly with the employer, and the contract terms are verbal. Modou’s family does not pay anything for the apprenticeship, but he is not paid for the pieces that he completes. Modou’s last two years in the ten-year apprenticeship will repay the owner for his training, because Modou is expected to be an accomplished tailor by this time. The patron is expected to furnish the training and lunch daily. The household has adequate economic resources to sustain itself in the short term without the earnings of its children. Modou has already learned marketing skills by selling sacks as an extension of his father’s stall. The parents can do without his labor in order to train him for specialized craftwork, because Modou has a younger sibling to assume his work responsibilities in his father’s shop. Moreover, the child is engaged in an apprenticeship that will provide better long-term opportunities and economic stability for the child and for his household. Both the agriculturebased upwardly mobiles and the market-based upwardly mobiles are expected to experience better career prospects than their parents. While the agriculture-based upwardly mobiles working away from their parents may be overworked and ill-trained, both alternative education seekers and market-based upwardly mobiles are closely monitored to ensure they learn the required career skills. Further, they remain living with their families despite their full-time market work.

Duplicating-Dads Imitating-Moms The duplicating-dad imitating-mom (see Table 1) child worker recreates the household adaptive strategy of her or his parents. A girl will follow the trade of her mother, and a boy will follow the trade of his father. This child worker may be a girl or boy entering selling as her or his parents did, or a boy entering the craft trade of his father. Like the agriculture-based upwardly mobiles, the apprenticeship positions are not open to girls because of the occupational segregation by gender in Senegal. This occupational segregation of work in Senegal is similar to the segregation of work noted in American sociology that explains the wage gap between men’s and women’s labor (Reskin & Hartmann, 1986). However, in the Senegalese context, this occupational segregation of work begins in childhood with children’s labor. Men hold most of the skilled crafts positions. There are no mothers to duplicate, and therefore, no mothers to teach skilled craft trades to girls in the market setting. Just a few girls have entered tailoring apprenticeships in male shops, and generally these girls share close family ties with the employer. Further, fathers rarely teach craft trades to daughters because it is not socially acceptable. Among duplicating-dads imitating-moms, the child’s household is urban-based, and the household’s adaptive strategy is predominantly market-based, as the child

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reproduces the work of her or his same-sex parent. Therefore, the child’s social relationships that secure market work are high, too. These urban, market-based households generally must train their children because they do not have the economic resources to keep their children in good schools (which are generally private and expensive) or among sellers, to forego their short-term earnings so the child may train in more specialized skills for a future career. The duplicating-dad imitating-mom child worker can be a seller for a parent’s benefit in the market setting. Sellers are both male and female, although girls dominate this type of market work. The child learns to sell a product as an extension of his father’s or her mother’s business, where generally girls work with their mothers and the boys work with their fathers. The training of sellers is typically specific to certain tasks within an enterprise; the products are generally procured or arranged by a parent, and most children are supervised by and give their profits to a parent. Moreover, these children contribute to their households in the short term while preparing for their own adult self-employment. Girls train to become like their mothers, boys train to become like their fathers. In this way, it is clear how the labor force of the market is reproduced in the next generation. The child lives with her or his parents and contributes to the household’s economic welfare by contributing work earnings. Most girls work with and give their profits to their mothers, who are small-scale market vendors of vegetables and prepared foods. The seller generally gives her earnings to the mother of household who uses this money for daily expenses. Children’s earnings are rarely given directly to the father. Historically, women have had a right to use the proceeds of their labor in Senegal. Women in Senegal retain this control over their income today, where it is especially necessary within the polygynous household structure (Callaway & Creevey, 1994, p. 93). Sow (1987, p. 10) writes that when the mother’s income is needed for the household budget, that income can also be a source of power for her. A child’s relative contribution to a household enables the child to wield a certain amount of power as well. The child indirectly benefits from his or her own work by contributing to the household budget in the short term. A child who earns outside of the household may be excused from some household chores, like cooking, cleaning, or carrying water and charcoal. There are three cases of the duplicating-dad imitating-mom child worker: a girl seller of hot peppers, a boy seller of school supplies, and an apprentice. Both boy and girl sellers illustrate the sex segregation of work. While boys typically sell manufactured products, girls typically sell locally produced products. This occupational segregation by gender provides the context in which male products are generally more profitable than female products. Men and boys typically sell imported goods whereas women and girls typically sell local products, many of

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which they have created an added value through their labor (i.e. sugar coated peanuts or coconut cookies). Case 5: Anta Anta is a 12-year-old girl who sells hot peppers, onions, and bullion cubes from a tray while walking through an urban market in a regional city. Her mother also sells in the market but sells bread and sandwiches from a more established stall. Anta has learned to sell in the market as an extension of her mother’s selling activities two years ago when she was just 10-years-old. One day, she will have learned the selling skills needed to prepare and sell from her mother’s stall. She is learning the skills needed to become like her mother. The earnings from the products that Anta sells now go directly to her mother, and her market work is essentially an extension of her mother’s stall. Anta never attended public elementary school but has studied the Quran for one year. Anta learns the relative values of products and money through her work in the market. Despite this, she does not fully understand the relationships between the amounts of money she uses daily. She has change amounts memorized from specific amounts for the various products. She also memorizes the names and faces of those customers who buy products on credit and pay later. Anta’s father has one wife and Anta is the second born of her parents. Her older sister stays home to prepare meals, clean the house, and take care of her three younger brothers and one sister while Anta and her mother go to the market to sell. Having an older female sibling to do the household work is common among girls who sell in the market. One younger brother attends public elementary school and the other two brothers are still too young for school or work in the market. Her younger sister is old enough for school, but stays home with her older sister to help with the housework. Anta’s father sells mustard, potatoes, and green peppers in the market, and the family makes just enough to survive. Market selling sustains this household. Anta’s mother has already begun to train Anta in her future career as a market seller. It is likely that at least one of her younger brothers will follow in her father’s career. Case 6: Ousmane Ousmane is the 14-year-old ambulatory seller of school supplies, paper, notebooks, and pens in the market setting. Ousmane sells his products from an open, shallow box. He has sold these supplies for three years. Ousmane’s father arranged for the business and oversees and profits from his selling. Ousmane is training to take over the work of his father. His father sells sewing supplies from an established stall. Ousmane attended Quranic school for three years but has not attended public elementary school. Like Anta above, Ousmane will learn to count as part of his

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market training. This market training is extremely informal and involves his father teaching him various computations by rote so that he can make change for customers. Like Anta, he does not know how to read the numbers or words on coins and bills, but memorizes the worth by the size and shape. Ousmane is the oldest child of his father’s two wives. His mother is the first wife. His three younger brothers all attend Quranic school and his four younger sisters do not attend school but instead help their mother with the housework. The household will sustain itself in the future through Ousmane’s and his brothers’ work. His father explains, “Once a child has three or four years of Quranic training, he has the teachings to learn the skills of the market. Once Ousmane has mastered his work (selling school supplies), he will help me in my stall and eventually become the patron along with his brothers . . . I won’t have to work then.” The duplicating-dad apprentice is a boy who works with his father in a skilled craft, like jewelry-making or carpentry. The boy learns his father’s occupation and therefore reproduces the household strategy used by his father. The household strategy of the next generation will be much the same as this one. If craftsmen have more economic resources, their children continue in school because they believe that there are better opportunities in the formal economy outside the market. If craftsmen have many children and not many economic resources, they diversify their children into other apprenticeships, so the household has more options on which to draw in sustaining itself. Therefore, the household survival strategy becomes more secure. Case 7: Omar Omar is a 13-year-old boy learning the trade of his father, a carpenter, in a regional city market. Omar reports to work with his father during the morning along with three other children from the neighborhood who are learning his father’s trade. In his second year of apprenticing with his father, Omar is learning the same skills as the other apprentices who all have verbal contracts of four years. Omar is training to become an expert carpenter and to assume the workshop of his father. He will not need to work as a journeyman to save money for his own workshop. He will inherit the customer base of his father. He is an extension of his father’s household strategy. Omar never attended public elementary school but studied the Quran for two years in an Islamic school in his neighborhood. He learns to count and make change through his work. His father does not know how to read and write French, so Omar will not know these skills either. Omar is the youngest of five children. One older brother has completed a metalworking apprenticeship and is now a journeyman, while the other brother is currently learning metalworking in an apprenticeship. His two older sisters

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both do housework with his mother. None of the children has attended public elementary school. The children within this household are being trained to replace their parents in their sex-specific work. The boys will become skilled market craftsmen while the girls will learn skills they need to be good wives and mothers. The duplicating-dad imitating-mom recreates the household of the child’s parents. In contrast to the alternative education seekers and market-based upwardly mobiles, the households of the duplicating-dads imitating-moms have fewer economic resources. Like the agriculture-based upwardly mobiles, the duplicating-dads imitating-moms can be either boys or girls, but the better apprenticeship opportunities are open only to boys. Once again, sex segregation structures occupational opportunities for boys and girls from the same types of households. However, in contrast to the agriculture-based upwardly mobiles, the duplicating-dads imitating-moms are already urban.

Religious Non-Careerists The final category of child worker, the religious non-careerist or talibe, begs within the market setting (see Table 1). Talibe simply means student or disciple, but in this developing world context, a boy who becomes a talibe engages in the difficult work of begging in order to help pay for his upkeep while he studies the teachings of Islam. Given to a Muslim religious leader, a marabout, for God’s work, the child will learn verses from the Quran in Arabic. Over 90% of the Senegalese population observes the teachings of Islam. Followers of Islam are expected to give alms, so the begging of talibes provides a religious function in society. That said, not all talibes, or students of the Quran, work as beggars in markets. In urban areas, there are a few talibes who attend private Quranic schools without a begging requirement and then go home to urban parents at night. The talibe who begs is generally a rural-urban migrant whose parents are still in the rural area. This child is generally the son of a farmer, has few economic resources, and comes from a rural area at age 8 or 10 to work, study, and live with a marabout. This child has little or no contact with his family and rarely knows if there are new younger brothers and sisters born into the family. The talibe is no longer a part of the rural household survival strategy, and the economic burden and potential resource of this child have been relinquished from the rural household. The family has no social links to the child’s market begging work. No family member checks on the health and well being of the child, and the child begs in the market for his meals and alms for the teachings of the marabout. This child is a religious non-careerist because he is not learning skills specific to a lifetime career

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in the market and is only allowed to work in this religious begging position until he is 24 or 25 years old. The begging of talibes has its origins in the 11th century practices of Muslim clerics in Senegal (Callaway & Creevey, 1994). Clerics traveled in groups after completing their Quranic training and begged each morning for food. From this, a class of people arose who resided in towns and refused to engage in occupations regarded as degrading, namely anything other than the study of Islam. In addition, almsgiving secures a place in paradise for a follower of Islam and assures that the giver will receive gifts from others. The early practice of begging coupled with current views on almsgiving in Senegal help to explain why begging is a socially acceptable practice today. It is also useful in the sense that theoretically, it provides for the upkeep of rural-based talibes who study and are cared for by an urban marabout. The talibe arrangement therefore lifts the economic burden of rearing a child from poor, rural parents while also providing an Islamic education for the child. There are many cases in which marabouts do not provide adequately for and may even mistreat their talibes, leaving the children in an exploitative situation without parental supervision and intervention. The veneer of Islam and functionality give the talibe arrangement legitimacy and a pass on criticism. Marabouts expect that a talibe contribute to God’s work all coins and whatever uncooked rice and sugar cubes are left in his bowl each day. Some talibes beg in residential areas whereas others beg in markets. Generally, the marabout coordinates the canvassing of his students, and each marabout maintains a well-defined area within a city. All of the talibes in a given market are likely to be from the same one or two marabouts. One marabout explains, “We live together from begging. We eat together what people give them (the talibes) . . . sometimes rice and fish mixed with peanut sauce. The uncooked rice that is given to us in the tomato cans is then sorted and resold in order to buy malaria and other medications, in the case of a malady or illness.” In turn, the marabout is expected to provide the basic needs of the child – food, clothing, housing, and an Islamic education. Generally, a marabout provides one cooked meal per week for his talibes. The quality of housing and education varies widely from marabout to marabout. The act of begging is thought to instill a sense of humility and discipline in the child. This research documents that talibes in urban markets work at begging for 5-to-11 hours per day. Children practice their lessons and receive religious instruction for 2-to-6 hours per day, depending on the marabout. With some marabouts, the child will learn to read and write the Quran. With others, a minimum amount of instruction is given to free up time for the more profitable begging. While most marabouts have less than ten talibes, some in Dakar have as many as 100 talibes. The talibe enters market begging at a younger age

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compared to other children who work in the market and, further, is unsupervised in his work. Although the talibes are no longer a part of the household strategy of their parents, they seem to adapt in different ways in the urban milieu to the marabout’s household. The younger talibe is typically less urbanized and more faithful in rendering all earnings to the marabout. In contrast, the older talibe is more urbanized and likely to use the money surreptitiously to buy candy or fruit in the market. In general, the younger child accepts the marabout’s household as his own, while the older child is more likely to indulge himself before rendering his earnings to the marabout. Talibes who work and study with the same marabout may have different levels of commitment to the marabout’s household. Case 8: Mbay Mbay is a 10-year-old boy coming from the village near a regional capital. His father is dead, but was a farmer by occupation and also a talibe as a child. He does not know anything about his paternal grandparents and does not know them personally. His mother is in the village, and keeps the house. He does not know his maternal grandparents, either. His father had just one wife. He is the second of five children, with one older brother, two younger brothers, and one younger sister. Mbay sleeps in the Quranic school, where there are sometimes three or four students in the same room. He lives in a suburb of Dakar without electricity, a radio, or a television. He uses candles for light at night. Mbay begs for his breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He gets water from a water faucet about 200 meters from the Quranic school. Mbay has only attended the Quranic schooling provided by the marabout and has had no public formal education. A normal day for Mbay begins with begging from 7 to 10 a.m. He learns the Quran from about 10:30 in the morning until noon. Mbay explains, “We recite verses, after we write a new verse we then go beg for lunch.” At noon, he goes to beg for his lunch that is gathered in a piecemeal fashion from one market vendor to the next. Mbay comes to the market because the marabout suggested it. He naps and learns to write in Arabic during the afternoon, and then goes to beg for his dinner from six until eight in the evening. Thus, Mbay learns to recite and then write one verse from the Quran per day. Even though the child learns to read the Quran and write in Arabic, the religious non-careerist household strategy does not prepare the talibe for market work as an adult. Although children obtain a Quranic education, the talibe work does not provide significant future career advantages in the market setting. In this aspect, the religious non-careerist stands in stark contrast to the other household strategies seen among child market workers. Also, these children are

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no longer socially or economically connected to their parents’ household, which is the general pattern for child workers. Typically, child workers contribute their earnings, if there are any, to the family budget. Eventually, the talibe may return to the family and farming in the rural area. In the rural area, giving a child to a marabout for religious training in an urban area is viewed as a pious act. It also has short-term economic advantages for rural households that cannot afford to feed their members. However, for some boys, this strategy leads to permanently severed relationships with their rural households and some fall prey to the ills of urban street life, such as glue sniffing and drug use. A precious few boys will become marabouts, themselves. Overall, though, the boys’ talibe training does not establish these children with training useful for long-term careers in the urban market setting.

CONCLUSIONS Although there are three main levels of market work open to children – apprenticeship, selling, and talibe-begging positions – children at each level of market work are not necessarily from the same type of household. Some children come from urban households with few market relationships, but can afford to invest years of training in a child who has failed to advance in the public school system. The market is a second chance for these children. Some children are rural-urban migrants learning a non-agricultural trade. The market is an alternative career to living off the vagaries of the land as their parents do. Some children learn their parent’s trade. Other children are upwardly mobile in the market by learning a more specialized trade than their parents. Finally, some children fulfill a religious function by begging but gain no long-term market training or career stability. All of these children represent strategies that households embrace in order to sustain themselves and educate their children. These household adaptive strategies may have unforeseen long-term consequences, especially in cases of rural-urban migration. For example, some child market workers act as anchors for future rural-urban migration. Thus, rural-urban migration may threaten the agricultural productivity in the rural area because young adults increasingly move to urban areas and are unavailable to work the land. Another important consequence is the weakening of familial ties by these rural-urban migrant child workers. It is not clear that all rural-urban migrant children will remain closely connected to their families in their adult lives. By overextension and neglect of social relationships, the household adaptive strategy may actually weaken the economic sustainability of the extended family in the long-term.

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Further, the children that make up this typology of household survival strategies are just one piece of a complex family economic arrangement. Households diversify the education and training of their children to create a more secure economic future. By looking at the lives of working market children, we understand that not all children within the same family become market sellers. For example, among agriculture-based children, not all siblings are brought into urban market work. Some agriculture-based siblings stay in the rural area to work in the fields or the household. Some market-based siblings stay home to do housework. Most child labor is not researched because of its illegal nature. Although children in Senegal are not supposed to be working in urban markets by law, the practical reality is that they must. Understanding their work and their household survival strategies as they represent income and training provides insight on other forms of child labor around the world. Passing laws and UN resolutions that limit the use of child labor does little to change the poor conditions of the households in which these children live. Strategies that seek to limit child labor should consider that households need replacement income and public education that trains children for relevant careers in a developing country economy. Although urbanization has been rapid, industrialization and modernization have been uneven and unsustained among developing countries. Looking across the continent, research shows that the social welfare needs of African children generally rank lower in priority than national economic concerns like debt repayment (Buchmann, 1996). Specifically, more is spent servicing debt repayment in sub-Saharan African countries, $10 billion annually, than providing basic education, health, nutrition and family planning, $9 billion annually (UNICEF, 1993, p. 51). Scholars and activists of child labor should consider the relevance of various household survival strategies in explaining this social problem. We cannot merely examine the plight of one isolated child worker in the global economy. Only by considering children in the context of their households can we understand children’s place in economic development. Bradshaw (1993, p. 134) noted that most international development research has “either ignored children or relegated them to a secondary status.” Understanding how central children’s work is to their households is the key to eliminating child labor. In so doing, we can create strategies that incorporate children’s immediate needs for both formal education and income generation into the development process. The future of a continent is indeed contingent upon finding these short-term alternatives for the replacement of a child’s economic contribution to a household survival strategy.

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REFERENCES Bass, L. (1996). Beyond homework: Children’s market work in urban areas of Senegal. Anthropology of Work Review, 17, 19–25. Becker, G. (1960). An economic analysis of fertility, demographic and economic change in developed countries. In: Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries (pp. 209–240). National Bureau Committee Economic Research, Special Conference Service, 11. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Becker, G. ([1981] 1991). A treatise on the family (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bequele, A. (1991). Combating child labor: Contrasting views and strategies for very poor countries. Conditions of World Digest, 10(1), 7. Bradshaw, Y. (1993). New directions in international development research: A focus on children. Childhood, 1, 134–142. Buchmann, C. (1996). The debt crisis, structural adjustment and women’s education. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 37, 5–30. Caldwell, J., & Caldwell, P. (1978). The achieved small family: Early fertility transition in an African city. Studies in Family Planning, 9(1), 2–18. Callaway, B., & Creevey, L. (1994). The heritage of Islam: Women religion, and politics in West Africa. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Davis, H. L. (1976). Decision making within the household. Journal of Consumer Research, 2, 241–260. Hill, R. (1970). Family development in three generations. Cambridge, UK: Schenkman. International Labor Office (1995). Child labor surveys – results of methodological experiments in four countries 1992–1993. Geneva: ILO. LePlay, F. (1877–1879). Les ouvriers europeans (2nd ed.). Tours: A Mame et Fils. Moen, P., & Wethington, E. (1992). The concept of family adaptive strategies. Annual Review of Sociology, 18, 233–251. Morice, A. (1982). Underpaid child labor and social reproduction: Apprenticeship in Kaolack, Senegal. Development and Change, 13, 515–526. Republique du Senegal (1993). Dimensions sociales de l’adjustement. Dakar: Ministere de l’Economie et des Finances et du Plan, Direction de la Prevision et de la Statistique, Bureau Informatique. Reskin, B. F., & Hartmann, H. (Eds) (1986). Women’s work, men’s work: Sex segregation on the job. Washington, D.C.: National Research Council. Sadio, A. (1993). Le travail des enfants au S´en´egal enquˆete m´ethodologique. Dakar, Senegal: ´ BIT/UNICEF/R´epublique du Senegal. Minist`ere l’Economie des Finances et du Plan. Direction de la Pr´evision et de la Statistique. Juillet. Sassler, S. (1995). Trade-offs in the family: Sibling effects on daughters’ activities in 1910. Demography, 32, 557–575. Sow, F. (1985). Muslim families in contemporary black Africa. Current Anthropology, 26(5), 566–578. Sow, F. (1987). African women, family and laws. Paper presented at colloquium, Negritude, Ethnicity and Afro-cultures in the Americas. Miami, USA: February. Stack, C. B. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a black community. New York: Harper & Row. United Nations Children’s Fund (1993). The progress of nations, 1993. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund.

JUST PLAY? A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYZING CHILDREN’S TIME USE Tiffani Chin and Meredith Phillips INTRODUCTION The average American child spends more time “playing”1 than doing any other activity besides sleeping and attending school (watching television comes in next, with children gradually replacing play time with TV time as they grow older) (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b). In fact, free, unstructured time makes up between 20 and 50% of children’s waking hours2 (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; Larson & Richards, 1989). Nonetheless, sociologists currently know very little about how children’s free time use influences their well-being. Although scholars, teachers, and parents all have strong opinions about the types of free-time activities that they think are “best” for children, recent studies of the association between children’s time use and their well-being have failed to find consistent associations (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; McHale, Crouter & Tucker, 2001). Using ethnographic data on ten- and eleven-year-olds’ free time use, we illustrate why previous efforts to link children’s time use to their development may have failed. We argue that rather than categorizing children’s activities according to type (e.g. watching TV, reading, skateboarding), research on time use can more accurately capture the variation in children’s activities by measuring the intensity of activity, the extent of peer involvement, the extent of adult involvement, and whether the activity takes place in a typical or atypical setting for the child. These four variables cut across many different types of activities and seem to represent the aspects of children’s time use that are most likely to be associated with children’s development. If future research adopts this theoretical framework, we suspect that Sociological Studies of Children and Youth Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9, 149–178 © 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09009-3

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it will be more successful in linking differences in how children spend their free time to differences in their development.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON PLAY AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT Social science has a long tradition of studying children’s play. Many major theorists (e.g. Mead, Malinowski, Piaget, & Freud) have used studies of play to develop theories of human development, socialization, and culture. Drawing on Darwinist ideas of social evolution, psychologists first examined children’s play activities as reflections of the stages of general human development (Hall, 1904; Reany, 1916).3 They also studied play in an attempt to describe universal steps in individuals’ cognitive, psycho-social, and psycho-sexual development (Erikson, 1963; Freud, 1920; Piaget, 1951, 1970). Over the years, many theorists have argued that play promotes learning (see, e.g. Bateson, 1956; Bruner, 1975; Isaacs, 1933; Singer & Singer, 1990; Sylva, Bruner & Genova, 1976). For example, Vygotsky (1966) posited that play provides an opportunity for children to try out roles, understand the meanings of situations beyond the immediacy of any particular context, and develop abstract thought. Vygotsky, did not, however, view play as an automatic cause of learning. His theory of scaffolding argued that adults (or more capable peers) could facilitate the learning process by pushing children’s activities just a little beyond their current stage of development. Other researchers have also suggested that certain types of play and play environments matter for learning, because learning new skills, solving problems, or exploring new environments require more mental effort than repetitive play (Hutt, 1975). More recent psychological research on children’s play (often in laboratory settings) has continued ongoing debates about whether play stimulates and creates learning, adjustment, and development among children or simply reflects children’s changing stages of maturity (see Barnett, 1990; Johnsen, 1991; Roskos & Christie, 2000; Trawick-Smith, 1989 for literature reviews and Fisher, 1992 for a meta-analysis of the association of play with cognitive-linguistic skills and socialization). A great deal of ethnographic work from around the world has described the details of children’s games in dozens of different cultures (see Schwartzmann, 1976 for a review). Although these studies rarely draw explicit links between play and child development, they do provide detailed portraits of the components of play (e.g. whether or not play was competitive, whether or not it included pretending, how children learned games, how players gained skills, whether players placed extrinsic value on the game, and whether play imitated adult social structures)

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(see Corsaro, 1992; Fine, 1983; Goldstein, 1971; Hughes, 1991; Leacock, 1971; Royce, 1972, 1973; Schwartzmann, 1976; Sutton-Smith, 1974). In recent years, psychologists and sociologists have expanded their interest in children’s play to focus on additional aspects of children’s free time use. Although the amount of time children spend reading tends to be consistently associated with gains in children’s cognitive skills (see, e.g. Heyns, 1978; Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a; Phillips & Chin, forthcoming), other components of free time, such as television watching, doing hobbies, and using the computer, typically show very little association with children’s cognitive or behavioral outcomes (Anderson & Collins, 1988; Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a; McHale et al., 2001; Shastri & Mohite, 1997 for a review). Yet it seems likely that these free-time activities have some impact on child development. One possible explanation for the lack of clear evidence that free time use matters for child development is that contemporary scholars have not identified the important elements of time use. While researchers have increasingly gathered more detailed and valid data on how children spend their time (through the use of time diaries, beeper methods, and “cued-recall” interviews), they have often coded the data into umbrella (and sometimes residual) categories such as “outdoor play” or “passive leisure” that obscure wide, within-category variation (see e.g. Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; McHale et al., 2001). More important, scholars have paid little attention to variation in the content of nominally similar activities. For example, while some children read challenging “chapter books,” others flip through picture books; while some children ride their bicycles monotonously up and down the street, others have races, try tricks, or pretend that they and their friends are Olympic athletes. Because nominally similar activities differ so much, whereas nominally different activities may have much in common, grouping activities by type rather than quality likely obscures important associations between children’s play and their cognitive and social development. Although recent time use research has not typically succeeded in linking children’s free-time activities to their development, this research has progressed in three important directions. First, scholars have attempted to assess the role of social interaction in children’s activities by asking about the presence and participation of other people (peers or adults) during the child’s activities (see time diary instrument used in the Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID-CS); see McHale et al., 2001). Second, scholars have inquired about the location of children’s activities (also see Child Development Supplement). Third, scholars have recognized that much of the variance in children’s activities may be attributable to the characteristics of children themselves. For example, McHale et al. (2001) found that, if anything,

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children’s characteristics (namely their school performance, depression, and conduct) predicted free-time activities more strongly than these free-time activities predicted children’s outcomes. This concern in the developmental literature that certain kinds of children will select or create particular kinds of environments for themselves (the “child-effects” hypothesis) is analogous to the focus in the sociology of children literature on the role that children play in their own socialization (the “child as agent” hypothesis) (see Chin, 2000; Corsaro, 1992; Thorne, 1993 for research on children’s agency). We expand on all of these approaches in this article. We argue that it is the intensity of any activity that most likely matters for child development. And, in the absence of social interaction, children’s own interests and temperaments largely drive how intensely they participate in any given activity. Moreover, rather than simply noting the presence and participation of others in children’s activities, we show how taking into account the level of involvement of peers and adults can change the content and intensity of the activities themselves. Finally, we suggest that keen attention to where children spent their time (i.e. in a novel or usual setting) predicts the likely intensity of children’s time use. Motivated both by the puzzle that recent research on the consequences of children’s time use for their development has largely turned up null findings and by anthropologists’ detailed ethnographic work on children’s play, we used an inductive, grounded theory approach (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to uncover the elements of children’s activities that seem most likely to be related to their development. Because many childhood activities have no particular name, and many named activities (such as “playing”) describe a wide range of activities, a participant observation approach is better suited to generating data on the content of children’s activities than are surveys, interviews, or even time diaries. Moreover, collecting data primarily from children avoids the problem of parents misreporting what their children do in their “free” time, either because the parents are not around or are busy with their own activities, or because the children deliberately hide their activities from their parents (see Chin & Phillips, 2001). Health researchers have found it useful for understanding healthy child development to classify children’s activities based on physical intensity, along a spectrum ranging from “sedentary” to “non-sedentary” (Andersen, Crespo, Bartlett, Cheskin & Pratt, 1998; Crespo, Smit, Troiano, Bartlett, Macera & Andersen, 2001; Epstein, Paluch, Gordy & Dorn, 2000; Robinson, 1999; Strauss, Rodzilsky, Burack & Colin, 2001). Our ethnography of fourth-graders’ time use over the summer before fifth grade – a season in which most children have the maximum amount of free time4 – suggests that social scientists may find it similarly useful for understanding children’s social and cognitive development to classify children’s activities based on their intensity, the level of involvement from peers and adults, and the novelty of the setting in which the activity takes place.

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METHODS The data for this article come from an ethnography of a diverse sample of children who attend a large urban elementary school in Southern California. The school enrolls children from both a middle-class neighborhood (with single-family homes, lots of trees, and well-groomed yards) and a lower- to working-class neighborhood (with apartments and commercial buildings, including gas stations, a grocery store, and a liquor store). Children who live in the middle-class neighborhood are more likely to be white, while those who live in the working-class neighborhood are more likely to be African-American or first or second-generation immigrants, most of whom are Latino. Although these neighborhoods differ considerably, they touch geographically; most children live within walking distance of each other. A few children in our sample live in poorer neighborhoods located outside the school’s catchment area and attend the school “illegally.” Our sample, which is evenly split between boys and girls, is 41% white or Asian American, 31% African American, and 28% Latino. Half of our sample is eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, and about half speak another language in addition to English at home. Three fieldworkers conducted participant observation with the thirty-two children in the ethnographic sample at least twice over the summer. We observed many of the children more than twice and about a third of them more than five times. The length of the observations ranged from two to twelve hours, with a modal observation length of about four hours. At least one observation took place in each child’s home and at least one took place during an “activity.” These activities included day camps, summer schools, athletic competitions, play dates with friends, and family outings. Our two primary observations occurred at least a month apart. Near the end of the summer, we conducted formal, taped interviews with each child and conducted informal interviews with each child’s primary caregiver. When the children returned to school in the fall, they filled out a survey about their summer experiences. We open coded (see Emerson et al., 1995) the fieldnotes and interviews using Atlas.ti. We then sorted through the data for the ways that children from diverse backgrounds spent their discretionary time.

DIMENSIONS OF PLAY Intensity of Activities When trying to examine the effects of children’s free time use on their development, researchers often try to identify specific activities that they think either promote or detract from children’s well-being. Researchers’ hypotheses often seem

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reasonable, at least at first blush. For instance, most people, scholars included, reasonably suspect that watching cartoons must be mindless, while working on the computer must be more mentally stimulating. We made similar assumptions when we began our research and thus designed our questionnaires and interview guides to assess how much time children spent “doing” various activities such as reading, watching television, playing video games, and working on the computer. We discovered, however, that many of the distinctions we made among children’s activities were arbitrary once we observed and analyzed the content of children’s time use during those activities. We found that rather than categorizing children’s time use by activity, per se, more similarities in content emerged when we grouped children’s activities by the intensity of the child’s involvement in them. Children’s activities tended to fall into three different “involvement” categories: absorbing (watching or listening but not participating), participating (engaging in some kind of activity), and challenging (engaging in a difficult activity and striving to improve at it). The center spectrum in Fig. 1 depicts this variance in “intensity of involvement.” The most typical absorbing activity we observed was watching television. When people imagine how children “waste” time, watching television comes to mind almost immediately. In fact, a recent nationally-representative Kaiser Foundation study of children’s media use found that pre-adolescent children spend over four hours a day watching television and videos (Roberts et al., 1999). Not surprisingly, all of the children in our study reeled off lists of programs that they watched over the summer, ranging from cartoons, to soap operas, to late night programs such as Saturday Night Live and Mad TV. For many of the children in our sample, television provided a primary form of entertainment. I ask Tayra what she does when she gets back from her dad’s house. She tells me that she watches TV. Because her cable’s been cut off for the last two weeks, she watches shows like Boy Meets World, The Simpsons, Blind Date, Baby Blues, Drew Carey Show, Family Guy, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. On cable she tells me she likes to watch the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Fox Kids, WB Kids, and Angela Anaconda, a show where the characters’ heads are cut out from magazines and look really weird. We continue to talk about her TV watching. When nothing but the news is on TV, she says she turns it off and just sits alone and thinks. I ask her what she thinks about, and she tells me that she thinks about how much fun it would be living with her brothers and sister.

Tayra’s long list of television programs suggests that at least some of her time in front of the television must have gotten monotonous. Nonetheless, we learned that while many children spent a lot of time in front of the television, they did not simply stare at it. Likewise, the Kaiser Foundation study found that while only about a quarter of 8 to 13-year-old children feel like they usually “learn something” from TV programs (27%), more consider TV watching to be entertainment rather than

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Fig. 1. Model of Children’s Free Time Use.

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just “killing time” (59% vs. 41%) (Roberts et al., 1999). And, as Tayra indicated, when there wasn’t anything on that she wanted to watch, she turned the television off in order to “sit and think.” The children not only had strong preferences about television shows but also could describe, in detail, the programs that they watched. Although when they watched alone, they generally watched in silence, we found that their silence often hid a great deal of focus. When one fieldworker spent the afternoon with Tammy, they watched Tammy’s favorite program, a soap opera called Passions. At the fieldworker’s prompting, Tammy explained the plots as they came up. [A man and a woman are talking. Tammy explains that the woman is Theresa and that she and the man have been having an affair.] Tammy: He says that he does not love Theresa but he does ‘cuz he’s’ bout to get married . . . Fieldworker: To someone else? T: Yeah, her name’s Gwen . . . see? [On the TV, the man says, “I don’t want to lead you on anymore. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.” Theresa says, “All I asked is for you to dance with me . . . why are you afraid of me?” The man replies, “Theresa, I’m not afraid of you.”] She loves him but he says that he doesn’t love her but he does . . . . [Theresa and the man start dancing . . . .] Do you think she ugly? F: I think she’s kind of in the middle, what do you think? T: She’s ok, she not ug-ly, not really, really peery, pretty . . . F: She’s kinda OK . . . [The scenes change and there’s another couple.] T: And that Chad and Whitney and he loves her but she says that she doesn’t love him. She only loves tennis . . . F: Tennis? T: Yeah, but she has feeling for him. [On the TV: Whitney and Chad talking] And that Kay, she like[s] her sister[’s] boyfriend and when he was calling, he didn’t know anything. He thought he was talking to Whitney, but he was talking to Simone but he was thinking that he was talking to Whitney, her sister, and saying “I love you.” And Kay’s try’na say, um, she’s tryin’ to make her not know about Chad not loving her and she, she[’s] mean, Kay is so mean because she just want her to help, to help her get Miguel. F: Ok. How do you remember all this stuff? T: I don’t know. I guess I really like it. [On TV: Scenes change again, two women appear.] Oh, ok, this is the good part. Her name is Tabitha and that Charity and um, she, it’s this necklace that makes them evil . . . and so um . . . she’s on the devil side and stuff and so she tryin’ to make Charity be on the devil side, too, but the devil gonna kill her ’cuz they been waiting too long . . .

Because the children understood what they saw and heard, we consider activities such as watching television “absorbing” activities rather than “passive leisure.” This distinction differentiates physically passive activities (such as watching TV or movies, or listening to the radio) from activities that are both physically and

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mentally passive such as “laying in sun” or “thumb sucking.”5 While the children did not have conversations with the television, they did process, remember, and think about what they saw and heard. Although television viewing was not a completely passive activity, we noticed a distinct difference between children who were actually participating in an activity and those who were watching television. Surprisingly, not all time that children spent in front of the television involved the same type of activity. We found that although some kids played video games in the same way that they watched TV, most played video games with a strong desire to win, which meant acquiring and applying a great deal of knowledge and a wide range of fine motor skills – skills at which our fieldworkers often failed. We sat down to play Pokemon Stadium and Trey showed me all the different things that the game will do. First it shows you a Pokemon village and you can go to the tournament, or you can chase and catch Pokemon to put on your team, or you can have the Pokemon go through training (to play different Pokemon sports). “I don’t like to do that without Wilson [stepbrother] because he’s good at some of the ones like the “lick-um” [game] that I’m not good at.” There were all kinds of sports – each requiring a different manipulation of the joystick. In one sport, you push the buttons and the fish flops up and down and hits a counter and you have to flop your fish fast enough to get the most hits in order to win. In another sport, little pink Pokemon are in a circle and try to use their tongues to eat sushi. You try to eat as much sushi as possible; some sushi are worth more than others. Some sushi have wasabi [Japanese hot sauce] and they disable your player for a minute if you eat them – slowing you down. Each character has its own sport . . . Then Trey showed me how to choose your team (from 151 Pokemon) for the tournament. Some characters are better than others and he explained the whole matrix of factors: different amounts of HP [power], different types of fighting powers, different weaknesses, and different types of recuperation powers. He told me which ones are better against which opponents. Then the Pokemon go into an arena and take turns attacking each other. When they get hit, their health weakens. But because of the combination of the enemies’ HP and weaknesses and the types of attacks your Pokemon can make (e.g. fire, water, confusion, etc.), some attacks end up being more potent than others. Trey was able to wipe me out every time although I had one guy who could restore his own health (somehow – he had that power!) – and that guy stayed alive for a long time. Trey finally got me when he used a Pokemon who attacked me with confusion and made me keep hitting myself!!

Although scholars often equate playing video games with watching television, our fieldworkers found that playing games such as Pokemon Stadium required considerable specialized knowledge and video game playing skills (so specialized that while Trey seemed very competent compared to the fieldworker he played with, he usually deferred to his stepbrother for several of the Pokemon tournament games).

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About half of the children in this study had home computers. Although we initially expected children’s computer time to be more academic than the time they spent in front of the television, when the children in our sample used computers, they used them mostly to play games (a finding supported by a nationally-representative survey, which found that 8 to 13-year-old children spent twice as much computer-time playing games than doing anything else (Roberts et al., 1999)). While children’s computer play had no more academic content than the Nintendo and PlayStation games we saw children play, the computer games did require similar amounts of specialized knowledge and finger agility. April was playing Pokematch, which is one of the free games on the Warner Brothers website. It’s like the board game Memory except, according to April, “you have to match each Pokemon with it’s Evolite” – in other words: match each Pokemon with the character it evolves into. So, the game requires not just memory but a knowledge of how Pokemon work. I was surprised at how hard it was – I know some of the characters and a lot of them look similar in their evolved and unevolved states. But April matched a couple that did not look alike at all. She just went right through them, click, click, click, so she clearly was not guessing but knew who the characters were.

Like April, Cali also spent a lot of time at home. Her older sister was there to “watch” her, but because they lived in a questionable neighborhood, their mother would not let them go out during the day. When a fieldworker visited Cali, she had a stack of brand new computer games next to her computer desk, including a CD-Rom encyclopedia and a CD-Rom about African-American history. But the program she liked the best was a game in which she and her sister could dress up Barbies and make them compete in dance competitions. Then they put in a Generation Girl CD, which is a game where you design Barbie girls, the dances that they do, the stage, their clothes, and everything, and then put on a show. Cali and her sister showed us how you click on all these buttons to change the background (of the set). And Cali showed us how you can push F2 to make stars fall from the sky, and how you can check out all the different music the Barbies had for their performances. Cali said, “I like the Barbie song – whenever I don’t like someone’s [each Barbie had their own song] song, I just use that one.” Then they were telling us that the black girl [in the game] can’t dance, explaining that, “The other girls kick really high and pretty and she barely even raises her leg up.” Cali said, “I have a great idea for Generation Girl 2000: I think that you should be able to change their hair and their nail polish and stuff. That was what I thought that you were going to be able to do with this, but that is what they should do for [Generation Girl] 2000.” Then she showed us various dances, how to make them, and how to store them on the virtual shelf of videos. There is a virtual shelf of videos where you can store your dances. Cali showed us the one that she had made for her little cousin, who was three and “really too little to make up his own dances.”

The children in our sample did not use computers exclusively for games, however. Some spent a lot of time “surfing” the net. Nationally, entertainment-related

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websites rank as the most popular websites among pre-adolescents (Roberts et al., 1999). We also found that the children in our sample mostly used the Internet to keep up on their favorite actors, musicians, and television programs. Ashley found a site for Amanda Please, which connects to a Nickelodeon show that she likes. She explained that Amanda, is a girl who is “really cool” and who has cool stuff on her website. One part of the site is Ashley’s favorite – the “Amanda video clip of the week.” She showed me this week’s “clip of the week.” It showed Amanda gargling and Ashley thought it was hilarious. She also emailed Amanda Please. Then she went on all the sites about the boy bands (although she asked me, “Is it bad to be called a boy band? N’Sync said that they don’t want to be called a boy band”). She is very into O’Town, which is the band that a TV station created from scratch and now they are going to try to make them into stars. On the Internet, Ashley took a bunch of quizzes testing how much she knew about the bands and she wrote emails answering questions asked on the websites (e.g. about whether she thought that it was possible to be a good band and not be good looking and how important looks are to being a good band and becoming popular.)

Although Ashley spent a lot of time “working on the computer,” as she put it, when Ashley used her computer for emailing and taking celebrity quizzes, her activities were very similar to watching television programs about entertainment figures or looking through magazines about pop stars (which she and many other kids in our sample, and children nationally (Roberts et al., 1999) did fairly often). Ashley clearly engaged with the material – and enjoyed it – but it was neither academic nor particularly challenging for her. In fact, although we usually think of reading as one of the most stimulating activities children can do in their free time, most of the reading we observed children do in their free time (i.e. time when their parents did not force them to read) involved “light” reading material similar to what Ashley read on the Internet. Most of the time when we observed most children reading for fun, they picked up a magazine, catalog, or other picture-heavy book (e.g. Jaycee had a book of spells and potions that she liked to flip through when she was “bored”) that they could read easily. Abel was telling me that his Lego Pod Racer came out of a kit. He said that they had a lot of different kits and showed me the ones that he’d built. Then he said, “I have a catalog, do you want to see?” and he climbed up to the top bunk of the bed and pulled down a catalog. “This is my new one – I just got it. There are so many things that I want inside it.” The catalog had pictures of all the different kits and there was a blurb on each one describing what it did, where the design came from, and what the model would do (e.g. wings flap, doors open) when it was done . . . Abel said that he loves it when the catalog comes, “I wait and wait!” I asked if he reads the blurbs or just looks at the pictures and he said, “I read the whole, entire thing, I read everything . . . except sometimes he [his brother] bugs me and interrupts me, ‘I want to read, I want to read.’ ”

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Abel typically read books only under duress. However, he devoured every word of his Lego catalog. Likewise, Ashley said she did not read books because they are “long and boring” but she loved magazines, even going through recently vacated apartments in the building that her parents managed looking for discarded magazines. When a fieldworker dropped by Ashley’s apartment one afternoon, she and Ashley looked through an issue of YM together. While I was there she gave me another YM. She showed me a poster that came with it and said that she was reading about me, “You’re a Pisces? Right?” and she showed me that the poster had everyone’s horoscope on it. Then she wanted to show me some things in another magazine. So she went and got a copy of a Big Bopper-type magazine. She wanted to show me how a guy, “Freddie,” looked just like a Korean actor. Ashley said, “I’m going to write to him and tell him to be proud of that because the Korean actor is FINE!” Then she showed me all kinds of other pictures and articles, asking, “Which of these outfits do you like the best?” She pointed out several different hairstyles and jean designs (with rhinestones and tears). She really liked one article that had several pictures of the same movie star in different outfits, with fashion critics commenting on which outfits they thought looked good, ok, or awful,

Although magazines constituted most of Ashley’s summer reading, even kids who read books voraciously also spent time reading YM and other magazines designed for kids and young adults. For example, although Rachel read more than a dozen chapter books over the summer (the most of any child in our sample), her mother estimated that about half of her daily reading time was spent reading magazines or the kids’ section of the newspaper. Other children occupied themselves with artistic pursuits such as music. Hanging out with Manuel at home, one fieldworker saw that he would often listen to tapes of music (usually religious) and learn to play the songs by ear. He also learned popular songs that his teenage sister preferred. Sitting on the back stoop of their apartment they entertained themselves by playing and singing songs that they knew by heart. Manuel said, “I learned a new song” and Lupe moaned, “Oh no, not the guitar!” But Manuel went into the house, got his guitar, and then sat on the stoop playing a tune. Lupe was sitting next to him, hitting her knee in time, and then she said “Do [a song I didn’t recognize].” So he started to play and she sang with him. The first song had a chorus of “caminando con Dios [walking with God]” that repeated a lot. Then Lupe said, “Do something faster” and Manuel played a little flamenco-type tune that was faster but there were no words. Then Lupe said, “No, no, another one” and he played another one, a slow one, and they sang but they had a lot of trouble remembering the words. Then we were just talking about singing and listening to the radio and Lupe said that she loves The Backstreet Boys more than any other band and Manuel started to play “Bye Bye Bye” [a Backstreet Boys song] and Lupe said, “He just listens and he can play it – isn’t that good?”

Here, we classify Manuel and his sister’s sing-a-long as participating, rather than challenging (the next step in activity intensity). They sat on the stoop, enjoyed

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themselves, and sang songs that they knew (giving up on songs that they did not know well). During other visits to Manuel’s home, however, we saw him listening repeatedly to a music cassette and trying to play the music by ear on his guitar. This activity, through which he built his music skills, seemed to us to be one step more intense: a challenging activity. Although children participated in many types of activities, challenging activities, in which the children tried to achieve some kind of goal, were unique. Many of the children had particular skills that they worked to improve during their free time and although some of the activities were mundane, the effort and enthusiasm the children brought to them made them stand out. These challenging activities also highlight how children learn new skills and improve existing skills on their own, without the help of peers or adults (see also Lancy, 1996 for cross-cultural evidence that children often learn new skills without explicit instruction or help from adults). Ironically, video games provided an arena in which many of the children (especially boys) challenged themselves on a regular basis. Of course, children had to want to challenge themselves. As the earlier example of Trey playing Pokemon Stadium illustrated, some children preferred to play games that they had already mastered. David, another boy who loved to play video games, showed us how he bypassed levels of one game to get to the level he liked best, “even though I’ve beaten it already.” In contrast, James worked so hard at one game that he became frustrated when he reached the limits of what the game could do. James was really excited about his Tony Hawk Pro Skating game because ESPN’s X-Games had just finished and he had watched them everyday, trying to transfer the skills of the real skateboarders to the game. He told me, “I tried to do some new tricks on it . . . ’Cuz I watched the X-Games, they do new tricks, right, that they made up, or they try stuff. And so then in the [Playstation] game you can’t do that . . . [he explains how a grinding move does not work in the game] . . .” I asked him, “So it doesn’t know how to do all that stuff?” He nodded, “Yeah . . . yeah, like a handstand, I know there’s this other kind of handstand that this one guy did [in the X-Games], like when you grab up and like twist and he like does a twist and he goes like that, and it [the Playstation] doesn’t do that. It just does a handstand – it just goes like that and goes back down.” He showed me how to conquer courses (all different kinds of places – skate parks, schools, beaches, etc.) from all over the country. You beat all different kinds of cities and then you get the “tape,” which is a video tape. You can gather several tapes from each site and when you get all of the tapes you win the site. James has gotten amazingly proficient at the game since I last saw him – he moves very fast and he does some really amazing moves. He was grinding all over everything and trying so hard to do a 900 and 720 and talking to himself while he played, “Wow, I’ve never done a 720, before!”

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In this case, James moved back and forth between his video game and the television, focusing hard on the X-Games broadcast in order to try to improve his own performance at Playstation. Real sports, of course, provided another arena for challenge. Although we often think of lessons as the primary way in which children develop athletic prowess, many of the kids worked to improve their sports skills on their own. Zack, an only child, spent hours in his cul-de-sac practicing tricks, turns, jumps, and mastering tall driveways on his new “Micro” scooter. Zack was riding the scooter. From the garage he said, “Look at this!” and he started at the top of the driveway, which is really quite steep and curves sharply at the bottom, and holding onto the scooter quite casually glided right down and then into the street [a move he said he had been practicing although it terrified his mom]. He did that a couple of times, grinning as we watched him. Ashley asked, “Is that better than a JD Razor [another scooter brand]?” Zack said, “This is better because the base is bigger and it’s more comfortable.” Ashley said that she heard that you can’t do tricks as well with it but he replied, “I can jump it.” He then showed us how to do tricks and how when you jump you have to get your back end [of the scooter] up and that you need to bend your legs. Then he went down the street, up and down another pair of driveways that curved into each other, and then down a really tall one. He said that he has done all the hills by his house and that it is really cool at the beach. He also said that it was harder to ride than a skateboard and harder to do tricks on because the side scrapes [when you turn] but he thinks it is more fun than a skateboard . . .

Peer Interaction Playmates (siblings, relatives, neighbors, or invited play-dates) influence the type and intensity of children’s activities. However, just as activities differ in intensity, so does social interaction. While time diaries often ask parents to report whom children played with (siblings, friends, neighbors), they rarely ask about the level of interaction or involvement. In our data, the types of playmates did not seem to change children’s activities in any consistent way. Although brothers and sisters sometimes ignored each other, other times they played together as intently as other children did with invited playmates or school friends. We found that the interaction level among any group of playmates could be as limited as an occasional comment of “cool” about a television program or as involved as a debate about feminism. In general, we observed three different types of interaction: sporadic (when children interacted only occassionally, usually in direct response to the activity they were doing), casual (when children chatted with each other in a more sustained way), and dramatic (when the children’s conversation was part of creating something, such as a make-believe game). The left-most spectrum in Fig. 1 depicts this range of social interaction.

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We often saw children engage in mundane, sporadic conversation that did not change the content or intensity of their activities. In the following example, Tammy and Shona talked about potato chips while watching television together. They had the preview station on and then Tammy said, “ ‘Sister, Sister[’s]’ on” and Shona said, “Oh yeah! I keep forgetting that it’s Friday. I keep thinking that it’s Saturday” and so they turn on ‘Sister, Sister’ and we all watch that. It is about the father getting a new girlfriend and the daughter not dealing with it very well . . . Then Shona said, “Can you open the chips and give me what I’m supposed to have?” And Tammy said, “Go ahead and open them, just leave me a lot.” And Shona said, “No, I don’t want you to get mad – you do it.” So then finally Tammy opened them up and dumped some on the plastic bag between them for Shona to eat. Then the “Wayans Brothers” came on but the TV got static-y and Tammy said, “Let’s move to the living room.” Shona moaned, “I hate it when it does this. It only does it for the Wayans Brothers. I don’t know why.”

Sometimes sporadic conversation was slightly more focused. In the next example, James and Benito rode back and forth behind their building on their scooters, not chatting but occasionally mentioning each other’s scooter’s performance. They were scooting on the sidewalk on the North side of the apartment buildings. They were just going back and forth – comparing how their scooters went over the bumps and jumping as they went (James said, “See mine gets stuck a little bit there?” And then, “See? I have to go around that spot” [where the sidewalk jutted up]).

Riding together, James and Benito forced each other to articulate their experiences more than they would have if they rode by themselves. Nonetheless, their meager interaction did not spawn a great deal of conversation. Other times the kids had longer, more directed conversations in which they tried to articulate their points of view in ways that others could understand, relate to, and even argue with. In the next example, Jason and his friends engaged in a casual conversation about what they did over the weekend – spilling into stories about times that they spent at the movies and the Science Center. While not complex narratives, in these stories the children commented on more than their immediate surroundings, using their conversational skills to relate past experiences. Jason was telling his friend Rex about a movie on the Galapagos Islands he saw at the IMAX theater. Rex says that he has seen Wild America. Other kids join in and say that they either saw that, too, or wanted to see it. Jason says that on Saturday he went to the California Science Museum to see the magic exhibit with his parents. There were “all these shows.” Rex says, “When I went to the IMAX theater, we went, we went behind the− You know where the IMAX theater is and there’s another building there? (Jason replies, “Yeah.”) I went in there and I went upstairs, and there was like this . . . body. And there was a surgery theater and it showed someone having heart surgery.” Rex tells a story about how he went with a group to see Wild America, and there were people up in a tree. Some kindergartners were wondering how they were going to get down, and getting answers like “I think they’re gonna fly,” “I think they’re gonna snowboard.” He had said, “They’re gonna use the rope.” Then Jason tells his own story,

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“Have you gone down there where it’s a theater? There was this noisy group, and you know what happened that was rude? The cup spilled, and it’s banging on my chair. It’s like a brick. It . . . like . . . I was like so . . . I was like having a nice day . . . then Boink!”

Other conversations sprung out of television programs rather than children’s experiences but still went deeper than remarking on the obvious. In the next example, Tammy’s television watching led to an opportunity for real conversation with her older cousins. Then Macy Gray came on TV in a commercial for a rerun of recent music awards. Shona said, “The music awards . . . remember she’s like all messed up looking . . . I didn’t see ‘em.” Jayna said, “She ain’t that good.” Genevieve said, “No wonder that guy didn’t call her back!” [Referring to a Macy Gray song entitled, “Why didn’t you call me?”] Shona said, “Why didn’t you call – that song?” and she started singing the song, “I thought I’d see you again . . . .” Jayna said, “Duh, he don’t wanna look at her and her hair, look like she stuck her finger inside a socket . . . her teeth, ugh, they’re like so big . . . .” Shona said, “I don’t get it, they be having a whooole bunch of money but they teeth look all . . . .” Jayna said, “Like Puff Daddy! He could afford braces, too, put his teeth back in his mouth . . . .” Tammy said, “I know!” Jayna said, “But they always want another house . . . and a ‘PD’ [for Puff Daddy] on the gate . . . .” Shona said, “If I had a lot of money I would not be buying like a house with all these bedrooms if it’s only me and my wife or girlfriend.” Genevieve said, “It’s only him and his girlfriend living together . . . Only him and Jennifer Lopez are living in that house. Or like a dog or something . . . .” Shona said, “If I was Jennifer I’d do like, uh, what’s her name, Carmen Electra . . . She only has like two bedrooms but it’s a three story house . . . .” Tammy said, “He has about three living rooms . . . .” And Shona said, “I’d want one great big living room, like a great big one . . . .” Jayna said, “If it’s . . . just me and him!” Shona added, “That’s the thing – if it’s just you it doesn’t matter ‘cuz it’s all your space so it doesn’t matter if it like your bedroom . . . .” Tammy jumped in, “I wouldn’t like to live by myself . . . .” Shona agreed, “I don’t wanna live by myself” and Jayna agreed, too. Shona said, “I’ll have a roommate . . .” And Jayna said, “If I wasn’t married, I’d wanna have like a roommate . . . .”

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In this instance, the interaction that arose out of Tammy and her cousins’ TV viewing made the activity a more thoughtful one. Although TV remained the primary stimulus, the girls bounced ideas off of one another and their discussion provoked thought and debate not only about a song but about some of the complexities of fame, wealth, and social class. Other times, when children got together in pairs or groups, they often engaged in complex imagination games and constructed dramatic conversation. We distinguish between casual conversation and dramatic conversation because dramatic conversation did not merely reflect outside stimuli (such as the television) but created whole new environments, roles, and identities. Not only were dramatic conversations often more intense than casual conversations, but they represented the socio-dramatic play that has been found to be related to cognitive and social development (Fisher, 1992). In these instances, children’s conversations built on each other’s ideas and created a momentum that sometimes lasted over several days. April and Jane spent the entire summer together. They played school (taking turns being teacher and student), fake-wrestled with each other (using a schema from the Captain Underpants books to make up stage names), and turned their scooters into horses. While we were putting on shoes to ride the scooters, the girls talked about what they had done yesterday. Jane said, “Yesterday, I said, ‘Let’s pretend that the scooters are horses.’ Mine is called Starfire. I asked my mom what I should call a horse that is all black with a white face and she said, ‘Starfire.’ ” April said that her horse is all white and she calls it Snow White. Jane said, “So, let’s pretend that the scooters are horses, but just one, because it’s too hard to keep track of 4 . . . .” Confused, I asked, “What?” Jane explained, “Yesterday, we each had 4 horses, but today, let’s just have one.”

As the girls rode, they called to each other, making up scenarios about what each of them and their horses were doing. Sometimes they pretended that they were sisters, taking care of each other. Other times they used their horses to pursue husbands, which sometimes led to debates about which scenarios fit with their church’s doctrine (which was fairly strict). Jane said, “Yesterday we were playing that she [April] was dating the sheriff and I was dating the sheriff’s brother.” I didn’t know what to say, so I said that dating the sheriff sounded like fun. Jane added, “And the sheriff’s brother . . . .” I nodded and laughed. They started discussing dating the sheriff and whether or not they should play that game today. They decided to and then debated how old they should pretend to be [they had already chosen to be 13 and 17 for their previous game]. Jane said, “Well, you can’t if you’re 13 – you can’t date one person until you’re 18. It’s against church standards.” April sighed but nodded and they decided to be 18 and 19.

When they did not have an adult watching them, April and Jane were only allowed to ride about 200 yards of sidewalk in front of April’s house (4 houses in one direction and 4 houses in the other). Their pretend scenarios, in which they

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enforced consistency not only in their play world but also with their religious morals, made what could have become very monotonous scooter riding into a constantly evolving game. Other kids had even more complex and long-running play scenarios. Tayra and her friends made up a “Baby-Sitter’s Club.” They put together the club to make money but devised a complex set of rules and initiation rites that kept them occupied for a number of playdates. On the front of her bedroom door are five sheets of paper that say “Baby Sitter’s Club” in color. I ask her about the club, and Tayra says, “We have like, we just have this business where we baby-sit kids . . . And I have this trunk, filled with stuff, that talks about the Baby Sitter’s Club. And we have tryouts, for kids who want to be a baby-sitter.” [Pulls out a pink trunk from underneath her bed and opens it.] On the cover of the trunk is another sheet of paper with “BABY SITTER’S CLUB” written on it. I ask her to tell me more about it and who started it. She says, “Me. I watch a lot of TV, and I just get ideas . . . We’re gonna have a, um, like a fund-raiser. And then, we’re gonna do lemonade. We’re gonna make lemonade, we’re gonna like, for the next summer, we’re gonna have, like, a car wash, lemonade stand, candy stand . . . . And this – these are our Baby Sitter’s Club files. Right here. So we have like – we have a Baby Sitter’s Club schedule book. We decorated this stuff Saturday . . . . Like, you see the names? [Flips open a pamphlet made of half-sheets of lined paper, which has many misspelled words inside.] I’m the manager and the director. Michelle’s the president. Katy’s the vice president. Joceyln is the secretary. And Nicole is just the helper.

The girls had also put together a rule book and plans for how to admit new members to the club. Over the course of several Saturdays, they took a simple teenage “job” and created a whole organizational structure to talk about, build on, and plan. Just as Tayra picked up the idea for her babysitter’s club from a TV program, many of the kids based their play activities on things they saw on the television. Over the summer, Iyana played with her neighbor Tracy (who was a year older than she) almost every day. As with James, their TV watching often inspired more creative play. On a typical day Iyana says she will wake up around 10 or 11, and then either Tracy or she will call the other on the phone. Iyana might go over to Tracy’s house, where they’ll talk or play something or listen to Tracy’s CDs, usually Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. They might also watch TV, like Spanish soap operas, although Iyana doesn’t quite know what they say but can infer from Tracy’s [who speaks Spanish] gestures or explanations during the commercials. Iyana says that they might play Doctor if it’s really, really boring, or they might play “Stephanie,” or they might make up their own “novels.” She says, “Like it’s usually the same thing we always do. Like, we’re popular or we’re rich or something, and like something happens. Like, um, where we were like, not rich anymore, or like um, we lost stocks or something . . . She [Tracy] always has like a fake cell phone, like um, and she’s like, ‘Dad, don’t call me right now.’ Like a rich, elegant teenager or suh’m. And it’s like she has her own cell phone and stuff.” I ask if they do that all the time and Iyana says, “Not all the time. We usually do something like that, or we talk about like did you see the last Mad TV or something like that.”

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Boys also played imagination games, although theirs tended to include more violence. The following quote comes from John explaining a typical sleepover at his friend’s house and how they pretended that they were members of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), which they watched religiously on television. John said, “We made up a wrestling league, and we would wrestle. We would take the mats off our beds and put ‘em on the floor, and we would like, totally kill each other. It was fun. I was Stone Cold. Me and the Undertaker were a tag team.”

When John got together with his other friend, Carter, they played a more general (and more gruesome) pretend fighting game. While we were walking, John and Carter played a game where they told each other how they would hurt each other. John said that he’d take a sword and, touching the back of Carter’s legs, that he would chop his legs off. Carter says something like, “I’d fall and then cut your head off.” Another time John says, “I’ll cut you legs off, and then go straight to your midsection.” They laugh as they come up with these scenarios.

In all of these instances, the children did more than chat about something that went on around them. Instead, they worked together to build an imaginary world, activity, or scenario, keeping each other on their toes as they constructed their play.

Adult Involvement Although having a playmate often intensified whatever the children were playing, as well as opened up new avenues of play, having an adult around (and paying attention) added several new dimensions to children’s free time. Adults’ mere presence did not change children’s activities much. However, adults’ active involvement turned them into playmates and, as playmates, adults often served an important “scaffolding” purpose (Vygotsky, 1966), nudging the children to challenge themselves more than they might have on their own. Time diaries often ask parents to record what children were doing, whom they were doing those things with, as well as who else was present but not directly involved. While this method distinguishes between adult supervision that merely prevents children from getting into too much trouble and actual adult involvement, it misses peripheral but attentive adult involvement in children’s activities. In general, we found that when adults were present and paying attention, even if they were not explicitly playing with the child, their slight involvement could intensify children’s activities in important ways. And, when adults did get involved in their children’s activities, they often made the activities more challenging. The right-most spectrum in Fig. 1 depicts the levels of adult involvement we describe below.

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Sometimes the importance of adult involvement is most apparent in its absence. One afternoon, a fieldworker stopped by Jaycee’s house and she proudly brought out several sheets of math that she had been working on. Jaycee said, “I’ve been working on my math!” and I asked “What?” She said, “I’ve been doing multiplication and division.” When I asked her why, she said “Because everyone says that 5th grade is really hard and that you have to know multiplication and division really good!” Then she went to the house to get some papers out. When she showed them to me, I could see that she had written all the times tables out (from 2 through 12) and had gotten about two thirds of them right. Then she showed me that she had also written a division page but was frustrated that she had not been able to do it. She had written out, “3 ÷ 1 = 3 ÷ 2 = 3 ÷ 3 = 3 ÷ 4 = 3 ÷ 5 = 3 ÷ 6 = 3 ÷ 7 = 3 ÷ 8 = 3 ÷ 9 = 3 ÷ 10 =.” She had a whole sheet of them – written out just like her multiplication! I tried to explain to her with money and pizza how division works and that it is easier to divide bigger numbers by smaller numbers. She said, “They have to be bigger, huh?” and I said yes, and that it was easier if they went in evenly. She seemed to get it and she kept working and working on the new (doable) division problems I wrote out for her.

Jaycee wanted to improve her math skills over the summer and put in a considerable amount of time trying to learn her “division tables,” but she found herself frustrated and discouraged. Although her mother worked part time and was typically home supervising Jaycee during the day, she often had five young children in the house, as well as older children she was trying to shuffle to various activities. She also did part-time work from home to earn extra income. So, although Jaycee’s mom was available in case Jaycee got into trouble and to make sure that none of the children got hurt, she was not involved in their activities. Even though Jaycee practiced math while her mom was not more than a few steps away from her, because her mom was preoccupied with other things (and happy that Jaycee was entertaining herself), Jaycee did not get the quick intervention that might have made her practice more productive. In contrast, when Jaycee showed her work to the fieldworker, the fieldworker had the time to sit down with her, show Jaycee how to do the work, correct Jaycee’s errors, and write out new problems for her. The fieldworker’s attention dramatically changed the exercise from a situation in which Jaycee was trying to challenge herself but not learning anything she didn’t already know to a situation in which Jaycee gained new skills that she could then practice on her own. When adults were present and paying attention to what the children in their care were doing, they could easily intervene to change, improve, or correct the children’s activities. In the next example, April was playing on the computer while her older sister, Sheri (April’s parents, older siblings, and Jane’s parents took turns providing day care for the girls over the summer), watched TV and occasionally checked over April’s shoulder.

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Meanwhile, April had switched to another game: a superman game. You fly through the air and when you run into an asteroid, you explode it – but there are also kryptonite things coming at you that you are supposed to avoid. April was going along and doing pretty well but occasionally an asteroid would kill her and she would lose a man (which prevented her from getting very far in the game). I asked her “Why do you crash the asteroids sometimes and not others?” and April said, “I don’t know.” Sheri looked over at the game and explained, “When you get hit by the kryptonite, then you can’t hit asteroids. That red bar at the top tells you when you get your power back.” April nodded, “Oh!” and then she tried harder not to get hit by the kryptonite, which meant not only steering more but pulling back on the mouse and slowing down, which was what Sheri had been trying to tell April to do.

By interjecting what she understood about the game, Sheri not only improved April’s understanding of the game, but encouraged her to work harder to succeed at the game. Throughout the summer, Sheri’s intervention often raised the standards of the girls’ play. For example, when they played the board game, Mancala (with Sheri watching), Sheri forced them to play by the official rules of the game rather than the easier version that the kids taught each other at school. Still other times, adults did not simply pay attention to what kids did, but got involved in the children’s activities. As the instance with Jaycee and her fieldworker illustrated, adult involvement can radically change children’s activities. When children’s activities involve actively challenging themselves, adult involvement can transform the activity into a true skill-building experience. Instances of adult involvement helped children improve a wide range of skills, from reading comprehension to laser tag. Twice a month, Rachel and her mother, Judy, met with other daughters and mothers for a book club. The involvement of adults forced the girls to think critically about what they had read and learn to translate their ideas into arguments. The four girls took turns choosing discussion topics and leading the other girls and their mothers in conversation. In the next example, the girls and mothers were discussing Letters from Rifka. After a few minutes, Judy tells Rachel to go on to the next question. Rachel asks, “What are the types of experiences that you best remember in Russia?” The discussion began with the girl who didn’t get to answer the last question. At one point, Judy asked if anyone remembered the term “Typhus” from the book, and the girls eagerly raised their hands for a chance to answer. Daisy answered that it “was a really terrible bacteria.” Judy then began to read from another sheet of paper with the definition hand-written on it. She explained that Typhus was transmitted in times of overcrowding, and that it afflicted more than 3 million people in Russia alone. Jenny says that she’s almost positive that if you get Typhus once, you can’t get it again. Her mom replies that that was the belief, but it’s now known to be false. Another girl asks, “Why didn’t Rifka get Typhus from the baby?”

Adult involvement also improved kids’ success at less academic tasks. During a “laser tag” birthday party, the Zack’s team lost to the other team in the first round.

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Zack’s father then got involved in an effort to improve their success the next time around. The other team went into the “changing room” where they put their vests on. Zack’s dad said, “Wait – we need a strategy” and he held our team up in the first room. He pointed to the map on the wall and said, “In order to win, we need to get these” and he pointed to each of the home bases on the map. “So everyone go out and try to get all of them . . . .” He looked up at us, “Do you see where they are?” Zack and the other boy were yelling, “We’re gonna win!” and not paying a whole lot of attention but Zack’s dad insisted, “Come on. We need a plan.”

Other times, casual conversation with adults simply brought up a line of discussion that the children might not have thought to bring up on their own (and which the children often continued with their peers). In the next example, Iyana and Tracy embarrassedly relate a conversation with some of their neighbors. Tracy continues, “We came all sweaty from the park with Kee, after playing with their dog Moe. We love Moe. He’s sooo cute, he’s big . . . . It was my first time sweating that much, and [Iyana’s], too, I think. And then [Ursula] said, ‘You guys are growing up. Now you’re gonna get [pause] titties,’ and we’re not used to it [someone talking like that].” We laugh and Iyana adds that Ursula said, “You guys are growing. It’s called puberty. And then she starts doing this [lifts her arm and sniffs under it].” Tracy continues, “ ‘Cuz that means you’re grown up when you start sweating and developing, and whatever she said. And we’re like, ‘We know, you’re not supposed to tell us, okay.’ And she’s like, ‘You get your period, you get pubic hair,’ and all this stuff. We’re like, ‘Okay Ursula . . . .’ And she’s like, ‘So when you’re sweating that shows that you’re mature.’ ” Iyana adds, “Yeah, and then she said, ‘Guys like when girls are sweating and stuff.’ And I’m like, ‘Eeww.’ ” Tracy adds, “A sweaty, fresh, sweat, I don’t know.” Iyana says, “She’s just kidding around and stuff, but, I mean – [giggles.]”

Although Ursula’s conversational topic embarrassed both Iyana and Tracy, it also interested them enough for them to continue talking about it.

Environmental Novelty In addition to social interaction with children and adults, novel environments, even those as accessible as parks or fast food restaurants, seemed to stimulate new thoughts, conversations, and activities among the children we studied. Figure 1 depicts this dimension as two boxes overlapping the activity spectrum. Although children can engage in almost any kind of activity in either “typical” or “novel” settings, novel settings are more likely to increase children’s interest in their environment and thus raise their levels of engagement. The children we studied read signs (advertisements, posters, stickers) avidly. One afternoon a fieldworker accompanied Ashley and her grandmother to “Japantown” to shop. In the cab, Ashley engrossed herself not only in the ticket

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book of cab fare that her grandmother had (from her senior center) but all the stickers and postings inside the cab. While we were in the cab, Ashley was reading all the signs: “Please buckle seat belts,” “Driver only carries 5 dollars in change,” and that sort of thing. Then she was playing with her grandma’s ticket book . . . she counted the tickets and then the number of pages: “So eight tickets, six pages, eight times six is 48, right?” I said yes. “Plus two, that’s 50 – and we used 10 today, and she gets 60 every three months.”

On another occasion, when a fieldworker spent an afternoon at the beach with Jaycee, she was immediately attracted to the trashcans, which had recently been painted with advertisements for the new Jaws film that was coming out, as well as plugs for the community group that cleans up that section of the shoreline. Not only did Jaycee spend time reading the signs, but she also speculated on their meaning and tried to make sense of them. As we walked up to the sand, Jaycee looked at the garbage cans, which had stickers on them. One part of the sticker said, “Keep our beaches clean – To adopt a beach call 1–800–555–6765.” Below that was an ad for the movie Jaws. It said “Jaws” on it, accompanied by a picture of Jaws, and then it had the movie information at the bottom. The Jaws picture showed the shark coming out of the water and opening his mouth – kind of scary but clearly a drawing and not meant to look like a photograph. Jaycee asked, “There are sharks here?” and I said no, that that was an ad. She pointed at the trashcan, “Look – there’s sharks here – there’s a number to call if you see one.” She started to walk around the trash can, talking to herself, figuring it out, “Oh! That’s for adopt-a-beach . . . what’s that?” I told her that it was like when you see on the freeway, “This freeway cleaned up by . . .” and she said, “Oh, the one that say Litter Control by . . . whoever?”

Not only did the new environment provide something for Jaycee to think about, it also provided an easy way for her nearby adult (in this case, the fieldworker) to help Jaycee try to figure out the meaning of the signs. This situation involved thinking and learning but, much more than the incident with the “division tables,” occurred easily and naturally just as they walked along the beach. And, although the kids often seemed particularly observant when they had a fieldworker all to themselves, the kids’ interest in new surroundings spanned all kinds of experiences. For instance, every time we ran into Jaycee over the summer (on the street with her siblings, at the recreation center) she mentioned a comparison that she had made between the signs that she observed near her home and those she observed while driving cross-country to a family reunion on the east coast. We talked about Jaycee’s roadtrip. “Then we had to get gas or someone wanted a drink or was hungry or something – have you noticed that the signs are different? Like KFC is FKC.” I asked her if she knew why and she said that she didn’t know what it stood for. “And the gas stations are different and everything is express – every store we went to in a gas station was an express, like MacDonald’s Express, or Burger King Express, or Taco Bell Express.” She named some of the gas stations that she had seen that I could recall seeing in other places as well, talking

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about how they are totally different from the Shell and Arco that we have here . . . . “I saw one called Loves!”

Jaycee’s constant recollection of the stores and signs she saw on her trip, and her comparisons with her home town, reveal that almost any novel experience can encourage a child to think, compare, and explain. The fact that children this age need adult assistance to get far enough from home to have novel experiences may make the experiences doubly influential – not only do new surroundings stimulate new thoughts but they also stimulate conversations with nearby adults.

CONCLUSION Although we often dismiss children’s free time as mere “play,” our research uncovered several different dimensions of children’s free time use. Not only do children engage in a wide range of activities when left to their own devices, but they engage in these activities in very different ways. Our research suggests that merely noting children’s activities and the presence of companions (friends or adults) obscures differences in how much children focus on their activities, how hard they work to succeed at them, and the extent to which other children or adults encourage children to expand on their free-time activities and improve their skills. Beyond describing various ways in which peers and adults influence children’s activities, this article also suggests that exposure to novel settings may stimulate children to become more engaged in their activities and surroundings, ask more questions, and initiate conversations with others. The conceptual schema presented in this article provides one way to capture the intensity level of children’s engagement in activities and social interaction in order for social scientists to investigate associations between children’s time use and their cognitive and social well-being. This framework may also provide a useful tool for integrating the study of children’s free time use with the increasingly popular study of children’s “structured” time use (see Arendell, 2000; Kinney et al., 2000; Lareau, 2000). Socioeconomic inequalities in access to “structured” activities (e.g. music and art lessons, sports teams) have garnered considerable sociological attention and spawned hypotheses linking differential “organized activity” participation and learning (Entwisle, Alexander & Olson, 1997). Although this article explicitly examines only children’s free-time activities, our observations of children’s structured activities (e.g. day camps, sports lessons, vacation bible school), suggest that our schema may be useful for studying both unstructured and structured activities.

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Just as “free-time” activities range considerably in their intensity level, extent of social interaction, and novelty, structured activities span the gamut as well. An optimal structured activity would probably involve a great deal of challenge, a lot of interaction with other children, the extensive involvement of adults, all in a new environment. For example, in our study, two children attended an intensive basketball “clinic” at a local university where they played competitive games and struggled to master dribbling, shooting, and passing drills. The children interacted a great deal, making up and executing plays, and the coaches provided almost constant advice and correction. However, not all ostensibly “structured” activities provide this sort of intensity. In our study, we observed day camps where children had a lot of social interaction but generally engaged in the same activities day after day, on the same school playground, with very little adult attention. Still other camps provided children with little challenge or adult involvement but did provide new environments almost every day (e.g. fieldtrips to the beach, parks, museums, and amusement parks). Thus, although most structured activities are probably more intense than the free-time activities that we classify as merely “absorbing,” lumping together all lessons, camps, and sports as “structured activities” may obscure as much variance as categorizing all free time as “play” or “passive leisure.” We suspect that rather than simply distinguishing between structured and unstructured activities, it would be useful for studies of all kinds of children’s activities to consider the dimensions we have outlined in this article. The schema we have presented is, of course, preliminary. Because we observed a diverse range of children, we feel comfortable generalizing our results to children from various ethnic and social class backgrounds. However, our findings remain rooted in an urban, fourth-grade world and thus may not generalize to younger or older children. Among the ten-year-olds we studied, adults often enhanced the intensity of children’s activities simply by paying attention (although they often made a bigger impact when they actually involved themselves in children’s play). We suspect, however, that intense adult involvement may be crucial for younger children’s development. Likewise, older children may get somewhat less purchase out of new environments simply because, by the time they reach a certain age, they have already sampled almost every “kind” of new environment. The purpose of this article was to develop a framework that might help future researchers uncover heretofore hidden relationships between children’s activities and various developmental outcomes. We have outlined aspects of children’s activities that merit more attention than they generally receive, and in some cases our schema applies easily. For example, consistent evidence indicates that children who read more tend to score higher on reading tests. Our schema implies that scholars can learn more about the association between reading and reading

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scores by examining the effects of reading more challenging material or of reading with an adult who can explain the meaning of unknown words.6 However, as the data in the article emphasize, children’s activities promote many different types of learning and development that, while not explicitly schoolrelated, may be essential to the development of socially and physically competent adults. Some of these “skills” may be relatively easy to measure (e.g. the fine motor skills that may improve as a result of playing video games, or the creative thinking skills that may improve as a result of constructing fantasy worlds or games). Other skills and competencies, while more subtle, may be equally important. For instance, when children watch television, interact with adults, and become proficient at adult-scripted activities (from playing adult-designed video games to following an adult strategy during laser tag), they likely gain important information about the adult world and how to negotiate its pre-existing rules, norms, and goals. Similarly, when children build a business (such as the baby-sitters’ club), they likely learn organizational skills, cooperation, and how to distribute power among a group of people. To investigate any of these less well-established relationships between children’s activities and development, researchers must first clearly define the developmental area of interest and explicate the mechanisms by which any one type of activity should affect that particular developmental outcome. Once researchers have identified an activity and the outcome it should affect, our schema implies that if they take into account the intensity of the activity, the extent of social interaction (with peers and adults) that occurs during the activity, and the location of the activity, they will be equipped to detect and understand the seemingly complex relationship between children’s time use and their well-being.

NOTES 1. We include in this category only activities specifically reported as “playing.” 2. Estimates of children’s free time vary by age as well as different researchers’ ideas about what constitutes “free time.” Among activities reported in the time diary portion of the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID-CS) (as reported by Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a), we designate time spent in “outdoor” activities, having “household conversations,” reading, studying, visiting, watching television, working on hobbies, and in “other passive leisure” (which includes, e.g. going to the movies, listening to music, and “just sitting around”) as “free, unstructured” time. We do not include time spent at church, in day care, doing art, doing household chores, doing “personal care” activities, eating, playing sports, in school, sleeping, or working as “free time.” Of course, some of these categories, such as playing sports or “doing art” are ambiguous since many children probably spend some time taking art lessons and playing on teams and other time practicing on their own, during their “free time.”

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3. American social reformers such as Jane Addams and Jacob Riis adopted these ideas and insisted on providing playgrounds for poor and immigrant children to insure that they had “played” enough to thrive in modern society (Cavallo, 1981). 4. When children are out of school, they find themselves free from mandatory academics. Although many children attend camps and other structured activities in the summer, summers provide a unique window into a time in children’s lives when they have relatively few obligations (e.g. homework, projects) and thus more free time than they likely have during the school year. Research on children’s academic progress (or lack thereof) during the summer indicates that children’s summer activities may account for significant differences in children’s academic achievement over the course of the school years (Cooper, 1987; Entwisle, Alexander & Olson, 1997; Heyns, 1978). 5. In the PSID-CS, all of these activities (watching TV, listening to the radio, lying in the sun, thumb sucking) are coded as “passive leisure.” 6. In a statistical sense, our schema implies that the association between time spent reading and reading skills is biased downward because researchers do not typically take into account the difficulty level of the reading material, the effort children exert while reading, or the social context in which reading occurs (i.e. Is a well-educated adult present to help explain unknown words? Do the adults know enough about the book to talk about it with the child and verify comprehension?). Although all of this complexity would be difficult to model statistically, our schema implies that models that include statistical interactions between time spent reading, reading difficulty, children’s effort, and adult involvement will explain more of the variance in reading skills than current models do. For other types of independent variables, such as video game playing, our schema implies that such activities may seem unrelated to certain outcomes, such as cognitive skills, because researchers have not allowed for non-linear associations. Modeling these nonlinearities by including the various levels of “video game playing intensity” may improve model fit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful to Maniya Gatmaitan for her excellent research assistance. We also thank the reviewer and editor for their helpful suggestions. Chin thanks the Spencer Foundation and the Leroy Neiman Center for the Study of American Culture for their financial support. Phillips thanks the Urban Education Studies Center at UCLA and UCLA’s Academic Senate for their financial support. Author order is random.

REFERENCES Anderson, D. R., & Collins, P. A. (1988). The impact on children’s education: Television’s influence on cognitive development. Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Washington, DC. Andersen, R. E., Crespo, C. J., Bartlett, S. J., Cheskin, L. J., & Pratt, M. (1998). Relationship of physical activity and television watching with body weight and level of fatness among children: Results

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from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association, 279, 938–942. Arendell, T. (2000). “Soccer moms” and the new care work. Working paper. Center for the Study of Working Families, Berkeley, CA. Barnett, L. A. (1990). Developmental benefits of play for children. Journal of Leisure Research, 22, 138–153. Bateson, G. (1956). The message ‘This is play.’ In: Group Processes: Transactions of the Second Conference (pp. 145–256). New York: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Bruner, J. S. (1975). Play is serious business. Psychology Today, 8, 81–83. Cavallo, D. (1981). Muscles and morals: Organized playgrounds and urban reform, 1880–1920. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. Chin, T. (2000). ‘Sixth grade madness’: Parental emotion work in the private high school application process. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 29, 124–163. Chin, T., & Phillips, M. (2001). Cartoon network, razor scooters, and Harry Potter: How educational are children’s summer activities? Paper presented at American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. Anaheim, CA. Corsaro, W. A. (1992). Interpretive reproduction in children’s peer cultures. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55, 160–177. Crespo, C. J., Smit, E., Troiano, R. P., Bartlett, S. J., Macera, C. A., & Andersen, R. E. (2001). Television watching, energy intake, and obesity in U.S. children: Results from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988–1994. Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 155, 360–365. Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Entwisle, D. R., Alexander, K. L., & Olson, L. S. (1997). Children, schools, and inequality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Epstein, L. H., Paluch, R. A., Gordy, C. C., & Dorn, J. (2000). Decreasing sedentary behaviors in treating pediatric obesity. Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 154, 220–226. Erikson, E. H. (1963). Youth: Change and challenge. New York: Basic Books. Fine, G. A. (1983). Shared fantasy: Role-playing games as social worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fisher, E. P. (1992). The impact of play on development: A meta-analysis. Play and Culture, 5, 159– 181. Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principal. J. Strachey (Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goldstein, K. S. (1971). Strategy in counting out: An ethnographic folklore field study. In: E. Avedon & B. Sutton-Smith (Eds), The Study of Games (pp. 185–196). New York: John Wiley. Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence (Vol. 1). New York: D. Appleton. Heyns, B. (1978). Summer learning and the effects of schooling. New York: Academic Press. Hofferth, S. L., & Sandberg, J. F. (2001a). How American children spend their time. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 63(2), 295. Hofferth, S. L., & Sandberg, J. F. (2001b). Changes in American children’s time, 1981–1997. In: T. Owens & S. Hofferth (Eds), Children at the Millenium: Where Have We Come From, Where Are We Going? (pp. 193–229). New York: Elsevier Science. Hughes, L. A. (1991). Conceptual framework for the study of children’s gaming. Play and Culture, 4, 284–301.

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IN GIRLS, OUT GIRLS, AND ALWAYS BLACK: AFRICAN-AMERICAN GIRLS’ FRIENDSHIPS Kimberly A. Scott INTRODUCTION Despite the recent increase of segregated neighborhoods and schools (Schmitt, 2001), many children find themselves playing with others from different racial and/or ethnic background (Nieto, 2000). Within social science literature, there are a number of studies that explore social interactions and youngsters’ friendship groups (Adler & Adler, 1998; Corsaro, 1985; Eder, 1995; Rizzo, 1989). While instructive, too few analyze what occurs among and to students of color (for exceptions, see Fordham, 1993; Goodwin, 1990, 1998; Grant, 1984). As a consequence, intragender distinctions remain misunderstood and White girls’ group dynamics often eclipse or trivialize the cultural happenings of their racial opposites – African-American girls. This ethnography illustrates the interplay between context and race-gender for first-grade African-American girls’ friendships. Within this chapter, I consider the question of how two sets of Black girls gain and maintain friendships, while exploring their sense of belonging and identity, as well as their ability to negotiate cultures of the Black and White world they experience at school. Informed by Black Feminist Theory’s discussion of intersectionality, I document two emergent peer social systems and how they treat Blackness and femaleness as manifestations in children’s play activities and define friendship networks.

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FRIENDSHIPS AND CLIQUES Children, like adults, need time and opportunity to develop a friendship. Play grants youngsters such occasions (Corsaro, 1988). It is during play that a child learns the norms of a given group, modifies and/or appropriates the standards, and learns about their self in the process (Mead, 1934). For a young child, school presents ample opportunity to negotiate this process. Indeed, many teachers consider a young child’s ability to demonstrate prosocial interpersonal skills an important feature of their self-development (see Paley, 1992). Whereas a young child’s ability to amicably associate with others reflects a valued personal characteristic, there is no conclusive evidence as to what attracts one child to another. Some findings indicate that preadolescent children do not have a racial or ethnic preference of playmates (Rubin, Lynch, Coplan, Rose-Krassnor & Booth, 1984). Instead, children seek play partners who display similar behavioral patterns. Yet Hallinan and Kubitschek (1990) among others, suggest that while White students avoid cross-race friendships, their Black counterparts are more likely to have a friend from a different race. Whether race attracts or repels one child to another, there is a corpus of literature that clearly demonstrates how this sociocultural feature affects the maintenance of friendship groups (Connolly, 1998; Eder, 1995; Troyna & Hatcher, 1992; Van Ausdale & Feagin, 2001). In Eder’s (1995) work with middle- and lower-income students in a predominantly White middle school, African-American girls expend more energy than White girls in maintaining their membership within a White female dominant clique. Her study further suggests that Black girls are more likely to be low-status individuals within the female aggregate than White girls. Other research also illustrates the interplay of race on group dynamics (Connolly, 1998; Troyna & Hatcher, 1992; Van Ausdale & Feagin, 2001). It is a common finding within the body of literature that children of color tend to occupy a low-status position within a racially or ethnically diverse peer group. However, instead of examining difference along race and gender axes, researchers tend to focus on differences by gender (Thorne, 1993). Granted, gender does make an impact on youngsters’ group formation and interactions (see Finnan, 1988; Lever, 1988; Scott, 2002; Thorne, 1993). For instance, the cause and resolution of conflicts among girls differ from their male counterparts. Girls view divulging secrets as a severe transgression (Azmitia, Kamprath & Linnet, 1998; Goodwin, 1998), but possess complex styles for negotiating such disputes (Hartrup, French, Laursen, Johnson & Ogawa, 1993; Sheldon, 1996). Boys, however, often create conflict through verbal insults questioning each other’s masculinity and sexuality and respond in ways that demonstrate an individual’s toughness (Best, 1983; Eder, 1995). In contrast, for girls there is greater

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emphasis on groupness even during moments of duress. Among adolescent and even younger females, groups thrive on conflict and deriding both clique members and isolates to maintain their cohesion (see Adler & Adler, 1998; Eder, 1995; Merten, 1996). While this information undoubtedly advances the understanding of gender differences and challenges the commonly held belief of girls’ passivity, many researchers limit their studies to White girls and their informal behaviors. Researchers’ emphasis on White female adolescents developing hierarchical social systems with clearly defined roles for individuals does not capture the experiences of all girls. As will be discussed below, race and gender as intersecting forces distinguish the experiences of African-American females from White females (Collins, 1998, 2000a, b). And even as early as first-grade, girls are developing knowledge of difference and reproducing many of the same race-gender functions and dysfunctions into their play worlds which reflect patterns of the larger world.

Subversion to Reproduction Corsaro (1992, 1998) has found that children do not merely appropriate the larger society’s cultural norms but interpret and fit them into their own landscape. An integral part of play activities with friends is circumventing adult rules in an attempt to assert one’s separateness from the adults’ norms. Props and cultural objects become part of the play, allowing children to use adult-generated items in contradictory fashion from their original purpose. Part of the fun is finding the contradiction and flaunting risk-taking behavior to the peer audience. The method to exhibit this behavior and the extent to which the display manifests itself within the peer world may vary according to context and the norms of the larger society. As much as children may want to separate from adults, and often are successful in such endeavors, adults nevertheless make an impact on youngsters. Giordano, Cenkovich and DeMaris (1993) demonstrate that Black adolescents experience high levels of parental control and intimacy, while feeling less peer pressure and need for peer approval than their White counterparts. Not only does their work challenge the notion that Black peer groups are dangerous aggregates to the individual Black child and illustrates the salience of adults in children’s lives, it also raises questions of which contextual elements usually affect a child’s peer interactions.

The Import of Race-Gender as Intersectional Forces Children’s success within a social group depends on their ability to articulate their individuality with their peer group’s cultural practices (James & Prout, 1995). The

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American school system presents an interesting arena for this process. Historically, White students’ power and superiority have been valorized (Joseph, 2000). Students of color have learned to navigate their selves in environments hostile to their culture, unforgiving of their skin, and suspect of their abilities. Central to the history of African-Americans is developing many cultural identities allowing the individual to adapt and successfully function in both the African-American and the dominant (White) society (DuBois, 1903/1961). This socialization lesson is markedly different than what the White student learns from their significant others. It then follows, based on different experiences due to a student’s position within a larger context that polarizes individuals along racial divides, that peer group interactions will differ. Among Black and White children, both style and substance of peer group interaction will differ significantly. Way, Cowal, Gingold, Pahl and Bissessar (2001) correctly warn researchers of problems with essentializing about friendships exclusively using the experiences of White middle-class youngsters as paradigms. Among the list of dangers, they state that little attention is paid to critical explorations across racial minority groups. To assume that all girls establish and maintain friendships using identical behavioral styles often reifies the experiences of White girls. Already, Goodwin’s (1998) work has shown working-class African-American girls’ play and friendship styles involve assertive speech patterns and group-oriented play. Given the schools’ penchant to standardize the White middle-class dynamics as the norm, one could postulate that if combined, a multicultural group of girls might readily adopt the norms of the White society – that is the values and practices predicated on naturalizing and/or rationalizing Whiteness to the extent of “subjugating those ‘with’ culture” (Perry, 2001, p. 60). This would require the Black girls to relinquish the assertive behaviors reportedly exercised in same-race interactions. But Black Feminist Theory implies that Black women’s experience leaves little room for the abandonment of self that this would require, regardless of the context. Earlier research (Ladner, 1971) provides empirical evidence demonstrating how even in the face of the most depressing conditions, Black girls establish and maintain a resiliency that prevents them from self-hatred or self-disparagement. Historically, Black women have created “safe spaces” to affirm their own and each other’s experiences, resist oppression, and devise acts of defiance (Collins, 2000b). Carrol (1997) advances this discussion illustrating Black girls’ developing consciousness through this process. The empirical works expand the one-dimensional analyses that rely exclusively on race or gender-only and incorporate from Black Feminist Theory the heuristic framework of intersectionality. In general, Black Feminist perspective does not concern itself with hierarchizing oppressions. Instead it demonstrates the eventuation of simultaneous oppression according to racism, sexism, and classism (Smith, 1995). To focus on race or

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gender-related experience, while failing to survey and measure impact of other experiences, limits understanding of Black women and diffuses the complexity of their experiences. A “single-axis framework erases Black women in the conceptualization, identification and remediation of race and sex discrimination by limiting inquiry to the experience of otherwise privileged members of the group” (Crenshaw, 2000, pp. 208–209). Stated differently, an examination of high status Black girls does little to illustrate the discrete set of macro and micro-level features affecting their low-status counterparts or how both sets of Black females interact as a group. Herein lies the significance of intersectionality as it advances critical analysis that uncovers the powerful combination of elements that shape inequitable power relations. Further, Collins (1998) develops the significance of standpoint theory. Without allowing Black women and girls to articulate their multiple consciousness and knowledge of existences, their standpoints remain absent and misunderstood. This present study aligns itself with her postulations by not only documenting Black girls’ relationships but also paying careful attention to the operative forces and boundaries that shape their multiple locations within different types of collectives. In so doing, rather than examining Black girls’ behavior as an effect of their position and differential treatment, this study examines oppression and the institutional system in which the Black girls exist (taking my lead from Ladner, 1971). Given the import of group interactions, the peer social group serves as the smaller system functioning within the larger (e.g. school) that requires analysis and deconstruction in terms of Black girls’ experiences within the collective. It is during recess and lunch that youngsters have the greatest freedom to play out their roles within the emerging aggregate. Therefore, this study focuses on girls’ interactions in these two contexts.

METHODOLOGY This ethnographic study used observations, interviews, and document analysis during three academic years (1996–1999) to capture first-grade African-American girls’ play experiences during lunch and recess periods. From the larger study (see Scott, 1999), three themes emerged. Friendship formation, the subject of this chapter, is one of them. The data collection procedures relied on the participation of several groups of first-grade girls and supervising adults in two socioeconomically different elementary schools – Rose Mount and Marcus Garvey (all names have been changed). Rose Mount’s kindergarten through second-grade setting serves a diverse student population (40% Black; 30% White; 20% Hispanic; 10% Asian). During

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the data collection stage in this school, there were seven first-grade classes the first academic year (1997–1998) and five classes the second year (1998–1999). The diminishment of the student populations was due to the district opening a new elementary school. In total, I followed twelve Rose Mount classes containing the participating Black1 girls. Once the first set of Black girls graduated to the secondgrade, I refocused my gaze on the new first-grade class. Between the two academic years of data collection, there were thirty-two first grade Black girls participating in my study. The first year at Rose Mount, there were three thiry-five minute lunch periods servicing the first-grade classes. With the opening of the new school, the decrease of the student population only required two lunch periods for the first-graders. I observed all three lunch periods the first year and two lunch periods the second year. For both years, the same multiethnic team of four female lunch aides supervised the children (1 Middle-Eastern woman; two Black women; one White woman). Once the children exited to the playground for recess, two of the lunch aides remained inside to prepare for the next lunch period while the other two received supervisory assistance from one classroom teacher. The three adults (two lunch aides and one teacher) were responsible for watching the children on the expansive, well-manicured playground space. The vast play space along with the various play equipment (e.g. climbing apparatus, sand boxes, and moveable items) reflects the relative affluence of the school. According to the State Department of Education, Rose Mount is in a middle-income district. Yet the majority of the Black girls (57%) during both years of this study qualified for free or reduced lunch – meaning their families were at or below the poverty level. When I entered Rose Mount, the children eyed me suspiciously. As an adult present during lunch/recess, they believed I was another lunch aide. Therefore, when I obviously witnessed an infraction of the rules and did not respond, their suspicion heightened. Instead of asking me the purpose of my presence, the initial verbalizations occurred among the children. Typically, a child would ask a Black girl if I was one of her relatives. Black males were not the object of these questions, probably because I was not directing my gaze to their activities. The questioner could be male or female, Black White, Asian, or Hispanic. The girl’s negative responses generated the next wave of inquiries. Perhaps in an attempt to clear their names from association with the new adult, Black girls were the first children to ask me the reason behind my consistent presence. In response, I explained that I was writing a book (i.e. my dissertation) on first-grade girls’ play patterns. I purposely did not mention the racial component. I wanted to gain the trust of all the children, realizing that they could be valuable informers, and did not want any of them to feel left out.

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I am not certain why the children attempted to connect the Black girls with me. In addition, I cannot explain with any certainty why the Black girls and not the other children assertively approached me to discover the purpose of my presence. It may be that because I shared the same race and gender categories as the Black girls, they felt more comfortable approaching me with such direct questions. However, as my visits continued and became more multifaceted, other children began to interact with me more frequently and freely. While I attempted to spend the entire lunch and recess periods observing, as my visits continued I began arriving in the lunch room at different times. Whether my arrival was ten minutes before or after the beginning of the lunch period, the children became accustomed to my presence. A few Black girls, however, could not understand my continued attendance. One of the confused exclaimed after several months of my visits, “You’re still here?! We don’t do anything different.” Most of the Black girls were happy to see me. Even once the first-graders I observed during the first year graduated to second-grade, many of them continued to acknowledge me with a verbal greeting upon seeing me. Once both sets of girls learned that I was a teacher of prospective teachers at the local university, their treatment of me slightly changed. After my other identity was revealed, the Black girls greeted me with hugs at the beginning of each visit. Some of the White girls also showed signs of affection towards me: offering to share some of their lunch, giving me money, and/or flowers. These approaches took place within the confines of the lunchroom. Outside on the playground, the children generally ignored me. Occasionally, a Black girl would attempt to use me as a safety zone or solicit my help in a dispute, but they quickly became accustomed to my presence as a non-punitive figure. In the end, the children treated me as a pseudo-adult. While I attempted to maintain this field identity in the other school of Marcus Garvey, my relationship with that school’s students evolved differently. One academic year prior to entering Rose Mount (1996–1997), I began collecting data in a school no more than ten-minutes away – Marcus Garvey. Located in a poor, urban district, this kindergarten through grade eight school accommodates a predominantly African-American population (84% African-American; 16% Hispanic). There were three first-grade classes each year. Over the three years, I followed nine classes, attending to the activities of thirty-nine Black girls (this figure does not include girls who transferred in or out during the year, special education students, Hispanic girls, or the few girls who chose not to participate). Similar to my actions in Rose Mount, I observed a new set of first-grade girls each of the three academic years I was present. In addition, the lunch structure remained constant with all three of the first-grade classes eating during the same foty-minute lunch period. Along with the school’s second – and third-grade students, the six

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lunch aides (three African-American males; three African-American females) alone supervised the children both inside and outside the lunchroom. The State Department of Education classifies the district in which Marcus Garvey resides as a low-income, urban area. All of the participating AfricanAmerican girls throughout my study in the school qualified for free or reduced lunch. That the lunchroom also served as the gymnasium, and the littered playground was actually the community’s park served as indicators of Marcus Garvey’s lack of resources. Despite the perceived deficiencies, my relationship with the African-American girls here were rich and satisfying. From the first time that I entered the lunchroom, children noted my presence. After a few weeks of data collection, the African-American girls began to approach me. They demanded to know what I was writing. Before I could fully explain, they would put their arms around my shoulders to listen. Once I responded, I usually received a verbal greeting during the next few subsequent visits. My continued attendance seemed to encourage the girls to ask more pointed questions (e.g. “What are you exactly writing?” or “Did you write what that boy did over there?”). By the conclusion of the first year, I received daily hugs from most of the girls. Comparable to their Rose Mount counterparts, even when the Marcus Garvey participants advanced to the other grades they continued to acknowledge my presence. Therefore, in the last year of data collection, I continued to receive hugs from several third-grade girls who were a part of the original sample set of this study. The years of non-participatory observations, and informal and formal interviews generated nearly seven-hundred pages of data. Field notes reflect the over sixty visits and estimated four hundred hours of field jottings. Included in the field notes are informal interviews with both youngsters and adults. I also conducted formal interviews with supervising adults and the girls in both settings. Adult interviews at both schools followed Patton’s (1990) standardized open-ended format – the interviews were scheduled some times weeks in advance, and I presented the respondents with an identical set of questions. However, in an attempt to enhance the conversation’s flow, the order of the questions varied for each interviewee. Also, the conversation often led me to ask unanticipated probing questions, as I “responded to the situation at hand, to the emerging worldview of the respondent, and to new ideas on the topic” (Merriam, 1998, p. 74). In addition to field notes and formal interviews, I also videotaped lunch and playground behaviors three times in each school. After viewing these tapes and constructing initial analyses, I then sought out girls’ interpretations of my analyses. The average length of these interviews was ten minutes, providing rich data generally transcribed to ten or more typed pages. Ten of the Rose Mount Black girls and fourteen of the Marcus Garvey African-American girls consented to speak with

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me in this way. Progressively, I analyzed these conversations along with the field notes, and informal and formal interviews. The final level of analysis used a modified version of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). I coded field notes and interview information for related categories and themes. The data revealed conceptual elements of three factors: making friends, maintaining friends, and isolating friends within a cohort called the Club. In the remainder of this chapter, I explore these three factors within each setting, including as much as possible the voices of the participants, particularly the girls. I use the discussion section to make sense of both experiences. I begin with my experiences at Rose Mount.

ROSE MOUNT When asked, the Black girls believe play is a “kid’s job,” providing them with leisure and opportunity to interact with their friends. Adults also believe that recess is a time for the children to be with their friends, as this lunch aides states: “You know they like sittin’ with their friends. And we like them to be able to eat with their friends, and we like for them to talk, but not to, you know, go overboard, not to be too loud.” However, friendships are confirmed and not created on the playground at Rose Mount. During lunch and other non-teaching/learning moments prior to recess, friendships are made, and the methods to accomplish this task are clearly defined and practiced by the participants. Making Friends There are two basic rules for making friends: (1) Learn and remember a person’s name; and (2) Share. All respondents agreed that learning someone’s name is the initial step in this process. The act typically occurs in the classroom during an activity. It is uncertain as to who initiates the gesture, but as the following Black girl explains, the process occurs over time: Researcher: How do you make friends? Gabrielle: Well, from the next day we went to school um, when we went to school we know each other name well, and after that, um we said, maybe we all should play together so, we all played together and we had fun then the next day we know each other names very well so, now we know each, all of our names in the class. That’s all!

Sharing is the next stage in the process, signaling to all that this is a friend. Lunchtime provides an ideal opportunity to share. Children of both sexes enjoy

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sharing coveted food items or, among the multicultural girls’ group, money with their friends. Black girls, however, are typically the recipients of the candy, cookie, or quarter; they rarely are the distributors. Invariably, during all of the lunch periods, a White girl will return from buying a snack, walk around the table exhibiting her purchase to her classmates, and wait for the outstretched hands of the onlookers. If a Black girl is the first recipient, she happily receives the item and ensures that her neighbors acknowledge the present: She enjoys nudging the closest person to say, “Look what she gave me,” in order to reveal her gift. The White girl distributes the item according to her relationship with the individuals. The object is typically a sweet or piece of junk food (i.e. potato chip, fruit roll up), not the substantive part of the school lunch such as a sandwich. The distributor’s best friends receive the first pieces, then her general friends, followed by classmates with whom she is amicable. Girls she does not like receive an excuse, such as, “I don’t have that much. No you can’t have any!” or a quick shake of the head indicating no. If this is a Black girl, she either questions the White’s decision or attempts to convince the Black girls who do receive the gift to share with her. Black girls who do receive the item do not necessarily share with their racial counterparts or any girl who she does not identify as a friend. Sharing food is an act that a distinct group of girls who call themselves The Club uses to indicate their connection to each other. Within the aggregate, however, some girls have closer bonds than others, and the “best friends” share more than just food. While supervising adults do not seem bothered by the girls exchanging food items, they openly discourage the children from sharing money with each other. As one lunch aide explained to the children: “You don’t share your money with nobody . . . Your parent work too hard for that money. If you have extra money you take that home to your parents.” The children habitually break this school rule (see Corsaro, 1985, 1997; Goffman, 1961, on these types of “secondary adjustments”). When the adults indicate “Snack Time,” the girls with money will quickly purchase a snack in order to get change. The change she quietly offers to her “best friend” by placing it on the table or slipping it into her hand while quietly saying, “I’ll give you my money if you want.” This movement is very rapid. At times, the recipient does not notice the initial stages of the process, and missed the call for snacks. However, she always knows who to turn towards and give a quick “Thank You”– her best friend. She then either purchases her own snack, or returns the money preferring to forgo snack altogether and/or partake in her friend’s purchase. Again, this process depends upon the relation of the two girls and reflects the desirable behavior for initiating and maintaining friendships.

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Friendship Maintenance The Black girls in Rose Mount’s setting perform two other types of acts in order to maintain their friendships with their female classmates: compassion and camaraderie. Evidence of their compassion occurs when they detect a friend’s sadness or need of help. When a girl cries, it is her Black girlfriend(s) who discontinue their play and approach her. The approach begins with an arm around the crier’s shoulder while the concerned individual places her face directly in front of the other’s, affectionately asking what is the matter. Regardless of the cause, the comforter maintains this stance while listening to the complaint. Even if the disconcerted individual does not acknowledge the concern, this does not discourage the actor from similar future behavior. For instance, the approaching girl in the following episode continues to replicate this behavioral pattern in later play incidents despite the reception of her actions: Many girls, both Black and White, crowd around a heavy set crying Black girl (I think she is upset because it is so windy.) Another Black girl with braids . . . notices the growing crowd, drops the White boy’s hand she is holding in order to approach the crier and ask, “What’s wrong?” The heavy Black girl finally moves to a female teacher and the Black girl with braids follows.

Generally, Black girls will not articulate the problem to an adult, but allow the White girls, if they should follow the pair, to explain the situation. This is the case in the following event,2 which involves two Black girls, one Hispanic girl, and one White girl: Black girl puts her arm around crying Black girl’s shoulder and they move towards the lunch aide. A Hispanic girl now joins them. They lead her to the lunch aide and the White girl, who was trailing behind them, now puts her arm around the crying Black girl and speaks first. I cannot hear what is said. As the lunch aide tells the crier to go and wash out her eyes, the White girl moves to be beside the adult, facing the group of girls. The crier goes off to take care of her eyes, and the Hispanic girl is the first to run back to the jungle gym followed by the White girl. The Black girl stands a little longer near the adult, watching the crier walk away.

The Black girls will wait with their friend until the adult responds. This may consume a large portion of their playtime with others, but they do not leave their friend’s side or withdraw their touch until the adult reacts. At times, the adult will ask the comforter(s) to extend their role and accompany the disturbed girl off the playground. But it is important to note that the Black girls perform this compassionate act only to their friends. If a girl who is not their friend cries, the response is much different: Janet (who I later found out was the Out Girl, which I will explain later) stands underneath an arched climbing structure. She periodically yells to the boys sitting at the top, dangling their feet through the rungs. After the third glance, sand apparently falls in her eye and she begins to

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cry. Ruth (who I learn is an accepted Black girl) stands in front of Janet, who is now crouching on the sand rubbing her eyes, wailing loudly. “What’s wrong with you?! Stop cryin’! She [Me] gonna get that on tape! You want to be cryin’ on tape?!?”

Again, the Black girls console friends of any race, but chastise or ignore Black girls who they do not like. One respondent justified the differential treatment based on the following reasoning: “So they [the friends] won’t feel bad anymore.” Daily, Black girls demonstrate signs of affection to White friends. Gentle caresses of the cheek, rubs on the back, or hugs characterize their physical interactions: Judy (a White girl) sits next to a Black girl, who with her mouth half opened signals to her many missing teeth. The Black girl strokes Judy’s bobbed hair and Judy ignores her, not even turning her head.

Especially with White girls who are small in stature, Black girls enjoy carrying their “baby.” However, this type of tenderness is not typical of Black girls’ relationships with each other. Without specific cause, the Black girls will touch their White female friends, signaling the continuation of their affable relationship. With her Black girlfriends, physical affection is less pronounced and substituted with greater acts of camaraderie illustrating a desire to establish a community: Sandra (Black girl) beckons Terry (a Black girl) with her hands and calls, “Terry! Terry! Come here!” Finally, Terry comes over to Sandra and Sandra tells her, “Terry, you can sit here.” Terry does not say anything but returns to her original table, retrieves her tray, and sits to the right of Sandra. The two do not talk.

When I noted that Black girls seemed more attentive to each other than to White or Hispanic girls, one lunch aide contested that observation: “Basically it’s the Spanish children that will stick in a group by themselves. But not your Black children, they’ll reach out, they always do . . . If they have homework to do they’ll help one another and whatever.” As my observations continued, I too began to note that Black girls tend to help whomever is socially acceptable and in need of assistance. As will be illustrated later in this chapter, Black girls at Rose Mount offer aid to particular girls based on the receiver’s social status rather than the color of their skin. The lunch aides, however, remained unaware of the favoritism. The adults’ confusion may stem from the fact that the Black girls are more interested and adept at creating a community of autonomous, interdependent players than any other observable group of first-grade girls, but upon closer inspection this behavior is reserved for certain girls at certain times. Unlike the multiracial nursery school children in Corsaro’s (1985) study, the Rose Mount Black girls are less concerned with protecting interactive space than maintaining it. For example, the girls may sit and “sand” together, even though each person has their own individual scoop and pail. “Sanding,” which the girls call the act

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of digging in the sand, is an individual act. Yet the girls describe this activity as group play because they are sitting in close proximity to each other. For them, they are bonded by the space in which they “sand.” Indeed, there were no observed occurrences of Black girls wanting to leave their groupmates, although they may become bored by the activity. In that case, a girl may disrupt the group’s actions and use the equipment for another purpose, but not leave her friends. Even during disagreements, Black girlfriends will remain together, share a space, and not desert each other: The tall Black girl [Sara] begins to run with a short jump rope while jumping to other end [of the porch] and the small Black girl follows her. They do this twice and after the second time, the tall one yells at the other, “I beaty’a! You needed to come all the way back here.” Small: Sara, you cheatin’!! Sara: You cheatin’ too! Small: “I’m not playin’!! I’m practicin’ ” and she stands in the middle of the porch while the other continues to run/jump back and forth. Sara: Pretend I was practin’ because we was havin’ this magic show and I was jumpin’. The small girl begins to jump with her again and they move to the far end of the porch.

None of the girls use the sand pail and/or bucket as an item for multiple players. Instead, a girl appropriates these items, and does not offer to share with her playmates. Despite this perceived penchant for solitary activity, the Black girls aim to create a community – at least communal activity – within a larger context that emphasizes separateness. At Rose Mount, there are three or four “zones,” depending upon the supervising teacher. According to two of the three teachers, there are four zones. At the beginning of each week, each class is assigned a particular zone. For the remainder of the week, the class must remain within the invisible boundaries of their designated space. Adults punish children for going into other zones. This zone separation forces children to only play with their classmates and severely limits options for those children who are ostracized. Due to the limited number of Black female first-graders and general desire of most Black girls to play in the prestigious multicultural collective called the Club, only a few Black girls will play in a racially homogeneous group. An Asian, Indian, Hispanic, or White girl will customarily join the Black female group. However, the non-Black girl frequently leaves the all-Black groups’ activity while it is in progress and joins a less racially homogeneous cohort, often this is the Club. Their departure does not disrupt the Black girls’ play. This group rarely moves within the confines of their zone, preferring to occupy the smallest space in their assigned area. Along with the individualized equipment, they sustain their interactions with their girlfriends.

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Besides the climbing apparatus, the moveable equipment is meant for individual play. To most adults, some of the items seem appropriate for group play, but the girls’ peer culture normalizes the equipments’ usage as suitable for individual activity. The jump ropes, which the girls call “short ropes,” allow for a single jumper. Boys grab other play objects, such as the balls. The sand bucket and scoop, tub of colored chalk, and plastic streamers are divided between the zones. For Black girls who wish to play with a group, they either use these materials individually, but remain close to others, talk during their isolated actions, or attempt to communize the activity. The latter option is typically chosen when a jump rope game begins. “Short rope” can be turned to “long rope” by tying the ropes together or expending time to locate in the equipment cart the longest rope. Unfortunately, the longer ropes are rarely used and are usually at the bottom of the bin. When an appropriate length rope is found, the Black girls lead their friends of any persuasion in the play. In this instance, they become the guides, especially to the White girls, teaching them how to jump double dutch or a rhythmic jump rope song (see for other examples Goodwin, 1990; Heath, 1983). As one adult explains, I find that a lot of the African-American girls might play with things such as cheers, the rhythmic things that they like, the cheers, they like the uh the double dutch songs, that you know they do that, um, they like the hand clapping. They seem to perhaps enjoy play sometime with rhythms a little bit more . . . And other girls will join in but I think our, the leaders generally are the African-American girls so, they like the singsong and the body movement kinda going in. They enjoy that.

The Black girls, then, teach their female peers two lessons: (1) The necessary techniques to successfully engage in rhythmic play; and (2) How to become involved in an activity that requires multiple participants. Interestingly, the data suggest that not all of the girls in the peer culture internalize or practice the second lesson.

The Club While the Black girls seem to enjoy the occasions during which they can organize their friends, these opportunities are secondary concerns in comparison to the activity and relationships afforded by the celebrated Club. The Club plays a more important role in most Black girls’ play life than her loyalty to a friend, Black or otherwise. An individual’s belonging and exclusion from The Club are not based on friendships, but a girl’s adherence to its rules. While there appears to be one Club per class and the majority of the girls belong, only White girls become the Leaders. Not all White girls are eligible, by rules that were never clearly explained, however. The reigning individual maintains the highest degree of power in the collective, and is forever changing the rules.

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During the lunch periods, the protocol to join The Club is constant. In order to become a member of The Club, girls must ask the Leader to join. While not all girls in any one class aim to join the collective and two or three who do not tend to be the Black girls from the previously mentioned all-Black play group, any first-grade girl can join and the Leader rarely refuses a request. The only stated reason girls are not granted membership is if the Leader deems the club is “too big” for her to manage. “Too big” means she cannot observe all constituents’ behaviors and determine if they adhere to the rules. Although the rules vary, the ideal member is not too aggressive, continuously follows the Leader’s directives, and never plays with boys: The leader sitting next to a Black girl on the climbing structure looks and she directs the Black girl’s attention to the boy (who is attempting to grab the bar) by shaking her head no and yelling, “No boys!” The Black girl then hits his hands with her hat causing him to remove them from the bar.

If the Leader observes a girl playing with boys, the transgressor becomes the “Out Girl.” The Out Girl is typically a girl of color. Each Club identifies one girl as an Out Girl. This designation applies to girls who are excluded from the Club for an extended period of time. Daily, however, there are Club members of any race preferring for some inexplicable reason not to play with this particular collective. Instead, these temporary deserters form their own female group and/or approach the all-Black female cohort. Upon first glance, I believed these girls were Out Girls. However, I learned that their estrangement from the Club is short-lived. Unlike the Out Girl, no more than one day passes before the vacationers would rejoin the Club activity. After the brief reprieve, the Leader does not hesitate including the returning Club member. However, once a girl becomes the Out Girl her re-acceptance is almost impossible. Conceivably, there can be more than one Out Girl, but once the title is taken the Leader is hesitant to permanently exclude another Club member. Perhaps when a girl violates a rule she detects the Leader’s discontent and distrust and then chooses to take her leave from the collective. The data, however, do not present substantive evidence confirming this causal relationship between a girl’s fleeting absence and her adherence to the group’s regulations. What does seem clear is that those girls who maintain their membership do not necessarily support the excluded individual regardless of her race. The following conversation between a Black Out Girl, Janet, and two Black Club members, Ruth and Larisia, depicts the terms of expulsion: Janet: She (the Leader) said I’m out! Researcher: What do you think, Larisia? Larisia: I am too!

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Researcher: Larisia: Researcher: Ruth: Researcher: Janet: Researcher: Larisia: Researcher: Janet: Researcher: Larisia: Researcher: Janet: Researcher: Janet:

You are too what? Are you in or out? In. So, can’t you help Janet get back in the club. Nooooo! Why not? She won’t give me another chance. How can you get someone back in the club? Ask them. Ask who? The leader. So, why don’t you – I asked the leader already and she said, No! Janet’s not in the club! So, why don’t you stop being in the club and play with Janet? The club is very fun. The boys chasin’ the girls and the girls chasin’ the boys. So, why don’t you stop being in the club, Larisia – And we can make our own club. Then we can be the bosses and we don’t have to boss people around. We can just play. Researcher: Why don’t you do that? Larisia just looks at me with wide eyes, neither comments nor moves. Evidently, the prestige of the Club overshadows loyalty to any one individual.

Similar to the White middle- and upper-middle class preadolescent and adolescent girls in Adler and Adler’s (1998) study, the prestige of the Rose Mount Club also overshadows loyalty to any one individual. At times, the excluded girl is unaware of her culpability and finds herself expelled from the group for an unknown reason. The group may not verbally inform her of the exclusion, but their actions are clear. As one supervising teacher explained, girls cause emotional pain while boys inflict physical harm: Um, the first grade girls are more mean to each other emotionally. And the first-grade boys are more mean to each other physically . . . I’ve never had a boy come to me crying that so-and-so doesn’t want to be my friend anymore. But I’ve had girls coming to me crying saying so-and-so won’t be my friend any more . . . if you had to do an animal analogy, the little girls are more like cats. They kind of they think a little longer, and they take a little longer, and they’re very, they’re doing their thing.

The adults may observe this behavior, but only one admits to interfering: Mrs. Banks, one of the two Black teachers in the school. She explains, I dislike it when they exclude someone. That bothers me. If I had to choose the word annoy that would be it. Because I never let that go by, I always go and run interference personally when they exclude someone because that I don’t like, I don’t like it when they hurt someone’s feelings by not allowing them to be a part of their playtime.

The girls will positively respond to Mrs. Banks and include the Out Girl for that day, but the ousted female youngster realizes this is a perfunctory gesture and the group’s concession to the adult. Janet explicitly told me after an

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adult asked a group of girls to include her in their play, “I still don’t got any friends.” The Black girls at Rose Mount create friendships prior to recess and develop the relationships during lunch. This school’s playground is the place to maintain relationships. It is also a context in which the Black girls learn how to gather each other in communal activities set against a backdrop emphasizing individuation. At the same time, the Rose Mount playground is also the space in which the Black girls come to understand the social hierarchy of The Club, the meaning of loyalty, and the significance of friendship and exclusion. The Marcus Garvey AfricanAmerican girls, however, view play differently. Therefore, the evolution of their friendships, emphasis on compassion, camaraderie, and community also differ.

MARCUS GARVEY For the African-American girls in this predominantly poor African-American setting, play is not a time to interact with friends. When asked the purpose of play, their responses reflected the following theme: Play is a time for children to get out of adults’ way and escape the confines of school, home, or any other adult constructed institution. Nevertheless, there are rules for making and keeping friends. Unlike the girls in Rose Mount who will play only with already established friends, girls at Marcus Garvey use play to make friends. The following section illustrates this difference.

Making Friends In order to make friends, all interviewed African-American girls and one AfricanAmerican male adult stated that the seeker of a companion must ask another individual to be a playmate. It is the responsibility of the lone girl, newcomer, or friendless individual to initiate the interaction by asking, “Can I play with you?” If a girl does not approach others requesting to be involved in their activity, the players will rarely approach her. Once a request is made by the lone individual, the answer is always affirmative. The girl(s) unhesitatingly adopt the requesting individual, either placing her in the drill team line, giving her a stick with which to dig in the sand, informing her of the jump rope line order, or lifting her onto the swing. Occasionally, the reverse occurs and a girl or girls invite another to play, but this is met with confusion. As one of several similarly observed episodes, the following incident reflects the typical response when there is a violation of this behavioral pattern:

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Aiida: ’Cause every time we ask her [another African-American female classmate a question], she ’nore us. She act like she don’t hear us, and that’s messed up! Lania: Or she run. Amelia: She run away from us! Researcher: Well, what kind of questions do you ask her? Lania: We say, Sara, would you like to play with us? Amelia: No, we say, Was’up?! Or we say hi! Lania: And we say hi, and then she looked at us and then she turned her head then she ran!

Apparently, the girls’ violation of the typical making-friends routine led to Sara’s seemingly unfriendly behavior. Sharing is also important for friends. Unanimously, all interviewed girls claim sharing toys and food defines individuals’ relationships as friendly interactions. The salient feature of sharing is to provide all who request with a piece of the desired object because this is a sign of a “nice” girl. Exclusion is not practiced in Marcus Garvey as it is in Rose Mount. Sharing with all demonstrates both value of the collective whole and the individual within it. For instance, “nice” girls are the ones whom people seek out for play. The African-American girls in Marcus Garvey also use verbal and physical cues to call attention to their value as individuals. Mainly during lunchtime, they engage in behavior that causes others to look in their direction. If their actions go unnoticed, they will loudly state, “Look it!” or a similar statement calling attention to themselves. The behavior may be obtrusive, such as slapping another girl or placing their face close to another’s while contorting facial features. It may also be more individualistic, such as performing a complicated dance routine from a popular music video while standing in front of the lunch table. In any event, they perform for an audience of potential friends/playmates and continue their actions until they receive acknowledgment. This Lookatme behavior leads to a possible interaction on the playground. In Marcus Garvey, acting by one’s self seems to be less desirable than interacting with others; the individual performance is a means to the desired ends of more satisfying group interaction. The African-American girls in this setting see all of their female classmates as their friends. Therefore, they behave similarly with all first-grade girls. If any one of their female classmates is distraught and/or crying, girls approach as a group, rather than individuals. Their approach begins by surrounding the crier and demanding to know the cause of her distress. If the cause is the result of an individual’s actions, such as a boy hurting the girl, the crowd will lead the girl to the culprit and adjudicate for her. They reprimand the accused, verbally and/or physically, in front of their friend and remain with her until she regains her composure. It is not sufficient to express compassion as

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willingness to share suffering with another, but compassion demands redress of a perceived wrong. Since individuality is less pronounced in Marcus Garvey than in Rose Mount, compassion emerges from the Marcus Garvey peer group’s emphasis on collectivism; compassion is a characteristic of the group rather than the individual.

Friendship Maintenance The environment at Marcus Garvey encourages the maintenance of a community and camaraderie. Three factors reinforce the community atmosphere: the lunch aides’ involvement, the structure of recess, and the equipment. First, half of the supervising adults actively and positively interact with the children inside and outside the school. Two of the adults live in the community and note they associate with the children during evenings and weekends. One African-American female adult explains, several children visit her house and/or play with her own children. Although it is rare for first-grade girls to do so, by the third grade she says the children regularly visit her home. The other adult, a lunch aide, enjoys inviting children to his church. He believes his actions demonstrate to the youngsters the interconnectedness of church and school as communal institutions caring for the individual. Both adults’ continuous affiliation with the children seems to discourage class or even grade segregation on the playground. Mr. Smith, the principal lunch aide, articulates the purpose of recess: “We kinda designed the lunch period so that it can become that, but also be an outlet for some for that energy that’s been pent up during the morning hours.” The lunch period in this context seems to have three functions with the last two specifically related to the theme of camaraderie. First is the nourishment of the children. Second providing the students the freedom to roam the playground area with the other grades present. For the African-American first-grade girls, this gives them an opportunity to play with older girls, a point that will be discussed later in this chapter. And third, it is a time allowing the norms of this peer culture to evolve and shape the usage of the equipment by the community. For example, the children’s use of jump ropes demonstrates the emphasis on community. The majority of the ropes are long requiring at least three children: two to turn and one to jump. Even with the few short ropes, the girls create a dyadic jump rope game. While one girl holds the two ends of the rope, another stands facing her and jumps simultaneously while she turns. At the least, one African-American girl will jump singularly while the other stands nearby and chants a song until it is her turn to jump. While other equipment can be used individually, it was almost unheard of for children to use swings, slides, or climbing equipment alone.

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I have established above that adults at Marcus Garvey emphasize creating a community atmosphere, and the African-American girls tend to call every female a friend. Nonetheless, a club does exist. In this context however, the Club is an inclusive entity that reflects the friendships of the African-American first-grade girls with their older counterparts.

The Club Generally, there are two Clubs in existence during one lunch/recess period. No more than five African-American and one Hispanic girl belong to either. The two collectives function when the Leader calls the members into action. When inoperative, the Club members happily play with other non-Club girls. Girls need only ask the Leader (a second-grade girl) to join the club. The Leader, in turn, asks “her boss,” who is another second-grade African-American girl. Only second- or third-grade girls can be leaders because it is believed that the older girls “know what they doin’. First-graders only be runnin’ around.” According to the Leader, those girls who are not too “wild” gain membership to the Club. Once a girl becomes part of The Club, part of the “crew,” she must follow the Leader. The Boss has very little contact with the members, preferring to delegate commands via the Leader. During the 1998–1999 school year, Teglinia was the Leader. The Club engages in three types of activities: drill team practice, climbing/sliding on the jungle gym, and chasing the boys. Drill team practice and girl-boy chase games generally combine: The boys take pleasure closely observing the Club or even trying to join the drill, both causing the Leader to command their immediate removal. Within the limited time of recess, the Club rarely reaches the point where they are actually performing synchronized movements. The Leader expends five minutes placing the girls in a line order, five minutes verbally reprimanding girls for not taking the situation seriously, and the spare moments chasing the boys out of their area. The Leader’s verbal admonishments do not dissuade the African-American first graders from “playing Club” the next day. Part of the play is listening to the Leader complain about her incorrigible girls: The Leader gets up and chases a boy out of the club’s area. When she returns, she yells at her members, “Awright. All you girls!! I ain’t playin’ witch you no more ’cause you don’t listen!” One smiles and the leader says to her, “Ain’t nothin’ to laugh at, buck tooth!” and the girl sits, continuing to smile.

Even creating their own Club is less desirable than playing with Teglinia. As one Club member explains, “We play with Teglinia because we think she’s

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much . . . fun. She takes us places when the boys chases us.” Again, only “wild” individuals are excluded, and this is a temporary state. Although the Leader expects the girls to be aggressive against the boys, they must abide by the rules of The Club. There are two rules for the group: Follow the Leader no matter what; and only discuss Club affairs with other members. As Teglinia states, “I tell them to do something and they do it because if they don’t they be out of the Club.” This first principle requires absolute submission to the Leader, even if she asks a girl to engage in criminal behavior. For example, according to one first-grade African-American girl, when Aiida was a member of the “crew” the Leader “made” her deface the school building with graffiti. This incident caused her to withdraw from the Club because “We [she and her best friend] want to boss our own self around!” However, the Leader claims Aiida was expelled from the group, as well as her best friend because “. . . they too wild and we tell a secret they’ll go back and tell, if we say a secret about a boy they’ll go back and tell them then the boys will chase us.” The two girls apparently violated the second rule, divulging Club secrets to non-Club members, meaning boys who are consistently excluded from gaining membership. Generally, excluded girls are first-grade African-American females. However, such a girl is not completely removed from Club activity. If she wishes to join their play, the individual simply physically joins the group’s action. Therefore, as Teglinia directs her members to chase boys, an outsider may also run in the same direction as the Club members. In response, the Leader does not verbally exclude her from their discussions, but does not acknowledge her presence either. The Leader permits the rejected girl to follow the Club to their play activities, but will not speak with her directly. Responsively, the outsider will not call attention to herself, following the movements of the group without verbalization. She may accompany the group for several minutes, but typically deserts them seeking a more interactive play situation. Excluded girls often, but briefly, find themselves roaming the playground alone or with other first-grade girls searching for an attractive play activity. The Club is one of the many diversions offered to the African-American first grade female. Playing on the swings, jumping rope, or “playing race” are all activities the participants describe as possible play, but the Club is most popular. Despite its popularity, the majority of the first-grade girls prefer their freedom to circulate among several playgroups and games rather than belong to any one group. While membership is freely granted and exclusion almost non-existent, when called into action, the members must respond. This often forces girls to leave other non-Club playmates. As Teglinia explains, the peer interaction during Club allows the older girls to “ get the first-graders together to teach them how to fight. How to fight other girls.” The Club members are more than friends and/or classmates; they are part of a group

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that any girl on the playground can identify. Adults, too, recognize the existence of a group of girls, but do not realize its intent. None of the interviewed adults describe the Club as a cohesive female-centered group with a specific social system and mores. Instead, the adults perceive the cohort as disruptive female collectives frequently engaged in girl-boy chase. Considering this type of chase is against school rules, bunches of girls near a boy means trouble, according to adults. Adults in this setting do not describe the girl-girl interaction causing problems, but the girl-boy associations are deemed problematic. Besides the chase games, he-said-she-said quarrels are the most frequent causes of conflict between the playmates. As Mr. Smith aptly states, “’Cause you can never get to the bottom of he-said-she-said because everyone’s denyin’, but there’s a lot of that. It’s something that starts somewhere and it just escalates and that’s usually it, just a bunch of confusion. People just get, I guess, out of confusion so frustrated that they want to lash out at something or someone.” The possible emotional damage such arguments may cause does not worry adults. Adults only get involved when a girl approaches them. Even then, they are reluctant to act, claiming the pettiness of the situation is most annoying: “You know, ’cause they gonna be right back together, playin’ anyway so, it’s no use’a tryin’ to push it no farther.” Similar to girl-boy chase, such squabbles rest on the participation of a boy. Therefore, if The Club remains girl-centered, the adults are not likely to intervene. In Marcus Garvey, the African-American first-grade girls are rarely isolated from other girls or bothered by adults. They can always find a friend, if they are assertive and reflect the desirable attributes. Even expulsion from a group, such as The Club, does not destine them to solitary play. The African-American first-grade female’s play experience reflects the school’s emphasis on community.

DISCUSSION James, Jenks and Prout wrote, “Learning to be friends involves learning the subtle processes through which ‘friendships’ are enacted by children through their peer group culture, a ‘culture’ marked by conformity and individuality, equality and competition” (1998, p. 95). My data suggest that the Rose Mount Black girls’ behavior patterns for securing and maintaining friendships are quite different than those normalized at Marcus Garvey. Although the dominant peer cultures in the two schools hold some similar views of friendship, the participants receive vastly distinct treatment as a friend or isolate. As a consequence, two oppositional peer cultures evolve within the divergent contexts – Rose Mount’s hierarchical peer structure versus Marcus Garvey’s more egalitarian social peer system.

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The pyramidal peer system at Rose Mount teaches the Black girls they should adopt the role of a relatively passive individual in order to gain friends. Similar to the Black boys in Coie, Dodge, Terry and Wright’s (1991) study, aggressive behavior is a catalyst for an individual’s unpopularity in their peer group. The startling part of this reality is it does not hold true for White girls in this setting. Elsewhere, I discuss how the White girls’ assertive verbal and non-verbal behavior patterns are reinforced while their Black female playmates become more passive and silent (Scott, 2000). Along with this unspoken cultural norm, the Black girls cannot be too confrontational. The significance of peer influence on determining the appropriate behavior patterns for Black girls in desegregated settings are in concert with Grant’s (1984) earlier work. And like Rosier’s (2000) findings, Black girls find themselves ostracized when they oppose the Club leader’s rules. In other settings and among different age groups, an individual who challenges societal convention may be idealized as a maverick leader – at least by some. For the Black girls in Rose Mount, however, there is no reward for independence and autonomy, only loneliness. Similar to the clique members in Eder’s (1995) research, even the In girls at Rose Mount will not jeopardize their status by comforting a distressed Out Girl. The In Black girls in the middle-income setting are duped into believing that they are powerful. Unlike more mature African-American women who realize that their social positions preclude assuming “the role of exploiter/oppressor” (hooks, 2000, p. 114), the Rose Mount Black girls ostracize other Black girls. Instead of developing a sense of shared consciousness along race-gender lines, these girls’ opposing positions – one being accepted and the other excluded – follow a different axis than commonly identified. Despite their agency to exclude each other, the In Black girls suffer some form of oppression and subjugation within the clique. Since Black girls cannot become recognized Leaders, and they generally hold a low status position within the collective, their station is relatively fixed and immutable. In this respect, whether they are an In or Out Girl, neither set of Black girls maintain enough social power to change their predestined positions. In addition, the emerging economic system of the peer culture reinforces their marginalized location in the peer power dynamics. Along these lines, in Rose Mount, as in Marcus Garvey, food and money are cultural objects used by the youngsters to establish an economic system of exchange. The greater affluence of Rose Mount, however, allows the children in this setting to categorize the two objects differently. That children hold high esteem for certain foods, such as cookies, chips, and snacks, is a common observance (see James, 1998, p. 403). Similar to adults who bestow gifts of high monetary or sentimental value to individuals they feel a greater connection with than acquaintances, the White girls at Rose Mount

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follow a similar gift giving pattern when distributing food. Perhaps the congruence between the child-directed act and that of adults explains the lunch aides’ disinterest in this peer cultural practice – at least for the Marcus Garvey adults. Comparably, the Rose Mount adults perceive the exchange of money as a much greater transgression than their Marcus Garvey counterparts. And these different perspectives seem to make an impact on how the two sets of youngsters construct their peer interactions. When White girls at Rose Mount give money to any girl, regardless of race, it is a form of oppositional behavior. As the adults actively discourage this practice, it gives children greater delight. Since the White girls possess the money they are the greater risk takers and the ones to challenge the adult system. The need to rebel against adults and their rules is conspicuously absent in Marcus Garvey. Rather than focusing on ways to outwit the supervising adults, the Marcus Garvey participants draw more attention to each other. In both cases, the adult influence is noteworthy. More research needs to be done on ancillary staff members’ roles in children’s social development. On the microlevel, money itself is an important commodity given its correlation with social status. That White girls are the high status individuals and always the financial distributors poses an interesting question: Is the possession of money and ability to freely disperse it the cause of their high status or does their social position and its maintenance demand that they demonstrate their monetary wealth? My data do not provide a specific explanation of this causal relationship. Whatever the cause-effect, this children’s culture is reproducing one aspect of the power dynamics of the larger society – those with power and prestige tend to be White and have more money than Blacks. In turn, Black girls often nurture and carry on their hips many of these same White girls. Simultaneously, these White girls serve as the financial benefactors to the Black girls and managers of their peer groups, but still enjoy being the physical dependents of the Rose Mount Black girls. The use of food in Marcus Garvey holds a much different meaning than symbolizing the differential status of the girls. Since complete exclusionary practices are not used in Marcus Garvey, there is no power dynamic when candy is dispersed or playgroups are formed. Distribution of food is an indicator of group membership. That all Black girls receive, at some point, a piece of the desirable snack reflects the prominent socialization lesson of this culture – inclusion. Even in the face of seemingly aggressive behavior, girls remain friends and are quick to maintain a female-centered network. Indeed, the social circle of the Club channels the girls’ aggressiveness to engage in the cohort’s favorite play – chase the boys. Notwithstanding the peripheral associations with their male classmates, group socialization in this setting moves the girls from being lone individuals to seeing themselves as part of a community.

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In Rose Mount, community holds a much different meaning for the girls. One result of this phenomenon is blaming the Out Girl for her fate. Comparable to one of the African-American adolescent females in Wells and Crains’ (1997) findings, the Rose Mount Black girls blame the Black isolate for her rejection instead of the methods and people responsible for the exclusion. Furthermore, and very importantly, attempts to develop a more solidified Black girl network that emphasizes inclusion are minimal. The all-Black group holds little to no prestige or attraction within the entire peer culture of Rose Mount. Arguably, the existence of a multicultural collection may be beneficial, encouraging cross-cultural interactions and a heightened sense of cultural awareness. However, the current power dynamics of Rose Mount’s multicultural groups imply this dialectical approach seldom takes place. How then can these Black girls follow the suggestions of Collins and learn “to provide mirrors for one another that enable us to love one another” (2000b, p. 167)? There is some hope. DuBois and Hirsch (1990) claim that Black adolescents tend to have a higher number of neighborhood friends than school-based peers. For the Rose Mount participants, this implies that their interpersonal relationships may increasingly be located outside the school, permitting them the exercise of greater social agency than the White, female-dominated, school-based peer group affords. This assumes that the Black girls’ neighborhood friends share a different set of cultural norms than their in-school peers. While my data cannot speak to this proposition, they do suggest that at this time in-school friends are very important for the Marcus Garvey girls. How both sets of girls will fare as they progress through their respective schools is a point deserving future study. Also, the effects of their relationships with parents and other non-kin adults certainly affect developing consciousness and should be considered in further research. Future research may also consider the correlation of their social standings and their academic achievements, and how Asian American and Hispanic girls influence the social system. Notwithstanding these qualifying factors, this study identifies several points of departure for school officials and sociological researchers to address. One could argue that because the Marcus Garvey girls are actively practicing social inclusion and community building while the practice at Rose Mount is diametrically opposed, the lower-income school is best serving the girls. This leads to the question of what are the contributing factors to the peer group’s cultural norms? Is it the Blackness combined with gender allegiance set against a White female environment that limits access and opportunity for social empowerment? Along those same lines, is it their status as the numeric majority in Marcus Garvey that allows the girls greater space to develop Black female-centered networks? Would the norms differ if there were only one or two White girls? The answers should

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consider that for the Black girls at Rose Mount, race-gender privilege and disadvantage is inextricably linked to power and money. As a consequence, the heterogeneity of the Black girls’ experience is highlighted in this study and further challenges social scientists to widen the scope of examining dominationsubordination, power and prestige, acceptance and isolation. These data challenge social scientists to explore the taken-for-grantedness of Black girls’ experiences (Collins, 2000a), and assumptions of uniformity within racial parameters. Researchers would do well to realize the multiple realities of existence and trajectories of Black women. By examining more than behavior, we should draw equal attention to the context of interactions and the forces that create the environment. Children are social actors and possess the social agency to develop and maintain their own worlds (see for example Corsaro, 1985, 1997), and this is amply illustrated in my study. Given this, studies of their lives require “that researchers situate the study of those competencies in the empirical circumstances of children’s real, ordinary, everyday lives” (Hutchby & Moran-Ellis, 1998, p. 10, original emphasis). Being Black and female is a real experience that women of African descent living in America confront daily. The depths of this experience are not easily explained or obtained, and without the standpoints of Black women the information remains narrow and misunderstood. Yet schools are, theoretically, expected to teach and provide the socialization experiences necessary for the success of all children. Although my data cannot be generalized to all African-American girls, the study does challenge the perceived advantages of attending a middle-income school and the supposed deficits of a lower-income institution – at least for Black girls. Ironically, it is commonly believed that the segregated lower-income school settings too often offer a substandard education. This study suggests that while this may indeed be true, these same settings may benefit Black girls in terms of their identity development and opportunity to be powerful autonomous actors. However, the political climate is not necessarily supporting examinations of Black women’s or their younger counterparts’ experiences or demanding a “minimal level of consciousness and respect for those who write or talk about our lives” (Smith, 2000, p. 6). Until more researchers and educational practitioners confront this reality and actively resist its implications, children will use our discriminatory and exclusionary practices to further race-gender oppression.

NOTES 1. Throughout this article I use the terms African-American and Black. While understanding the political and cultural controversies of these names, my decision demonstrates the teachers’, school administrators’, and lunch aides’ usage of these terms. In Rose Mount,

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the term Black was used and in Marcus Garvey the participants used the term AfricanAmerican. 2. This excerpt is from very early in my research before I learned all the girls’ names.

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COUNTERFEIT CLASSROOMS: SCHOOL LIFE OF INNER-CITY CHILDREN Sarah H. Matthews INTRODUCTION In an ethnographic account of a junior high school, Everhart (1983) distinguishes the “reified knowledge” of teachers on which the formal curriculum is based from the “regenerative knowledge” of students: To compensate for . . . and in opposition to the domination of reified knowledge, regenerative knowledge emerges in those organizational hiatuses that exist through the inefficiencies of mass education – inefficiencies in the manner by which school occupies student’s time, the amount of time that formal education “takes up,” and the standardization of tasks that “fits” so few students at any one point in time (p. 194).

Recent ethnographic research on school children focuses almost exclusively on student culture or “regenerative knowledge” rather than on “reified knowledge” (Adler & Adler, 1998; Eckert, 1989; Eder, 1995; Thorne, 1993). What goes on in classrooms with respect to teaching and learning has only a shadowy presence in these research reports, often by design.1 Understanding student or peer culture, however, cannot by itself capture children’s lives in schools. What goes on in classrooms where education is assumed to occur also plays an important part. This chapter focuses on one classroom in an inner-city intermediate school during the course of one year. The goal of the research was to gain first-hand knowledge of the school life of inner-city children by focusing on “social relations, Sociological Studies of Children and Youth Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Volume 9, 209–224 Copyright © 2003 by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1537-4661/doi:10.1016/S1537-4661(03)09011-1

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the organization and meanings of social situations, the collective practices through which children and adults create and recreate [school] in their daily interactions” (Thorne, 1993, p. 4).2 Wilson (1987) observed that in the inner city, “Teachers become frustrated and children do not learn” (p. 57). What this means for the everyday lives of such students is the focus of this chapter. No attempt is made to explain why the arrangements are as they are (Hurst, 1991) nor to link students’ current experiences with their adult lives (MacLeod, 1995; Willis, 1977). Rather, the intent is to produce a realistic picture of the classroom lives of these children. Successful formulation and implementation of policies to improve educational outcomes for inner-city children require an accurate depiction of the problems they are intended to solve. Few would argue that inner-city schools are without problems. Understanding more clearly what constitutes classroom life is a first step to solving them. To illuminate life in the inner-city classroom, an interactionist perspective is used. The argument is made that the students and the teacher together produced a counterfeit classroom, one that appeared genuine when in fact they all recognized that it was not. Interactions in which people cooperate to produce fictions are an important part of everyday life in modern societies. As Goffman (1959) pointed out, stress-free interaction relies on people agreeing not to express what they really feel about various topics and one another. Not to engage in such deceit is seen as thoughtless, insensitive, and inconsiderate. As a result, “civility” is widely practiced in almost all settings in modern societies. Persons who have reached a point where they view continued civility as dangerous or counterproductive and become whistleblowers are rare (Jackall, 1988; Miethe, 1999). In their research in hospital settings, Glaser and Strauss (1964) describe situations in which persons tacitly agree to pretend that identities are something other than they know they are. Drawing on research in hospitals, they identified four “awareness contexts” – open, closed, suspicion, and pretense – to describe the degree to which someone who is dying and those around him or her are willing openly to acknowledge the prognosis. In the pretense awareness context patient, family members, and hospital staff make an unspoken pact not to refer to the patient’s impending death, even though they all know that the patient is dying: “interactants are fully aware but pretend not to be” (p. 670). Unlike the suspicion and closed awareness contexts, collusion in the pretense awareness context is not against anyone because all parties are aware of one another’s “true identities.” Instead, by committing themselves to a charade, the interactants are deprived of the opportunity to talk about the impending death. The argument made here is that the classroom constituted a pretense awareness context in which teachers and students interacted as if education were taking place, as if their “true identities” were teacher and student.

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Following an overview of how the data were collected and the setting, the chapter argues that the teacher and students maintained a pretense awareness context in the classroom. The way information was imparted by the teacher and how the students’ knowledge was assessed are described. Evidence that both the teacher and the children recognized that the classroom was counterfeit and that they colluded to make it appear genuine is presented. Discovering whether a classroom or school constitutes an open or pretense awareness context has important implications for implementing change in inner city schools.

RESEARCH METHODS The data were collected through participant observation by the author and a colleague during the course of one year in an inner-city intermediate school comprising seventh and eighth grades. The school principal reluctantly agreed to the research in exchange for the ethnographers’ tutoring math. Initially we were introduced to adults and students as math tutors but as time went on we explained to students who asked that we were sociologists, interested in understanding what it was like to be a student. We spent alternate days in the school from August to December and two to three days each week from January to June. Much of the time we were in a classroom in which four eighth-grade math and two eighth-grade algebra classes met each day. When there were no students in the classroom we went to the lunchroom, the main office, a room staffed by an adult (not a teacher) who was assigned to work with “at risk” students, other classrooms, and school events and outings with the students. We attended “discipline” and awards assemblies, basketball games, parent/community meetings, and an open house. Although we spent the most time in the eighth grade math classroom, other settings in the school are well represented in the fieldnotes. Fieldnotes focused primarily on students’ interactions with one another and with school employees. Initially the problem of recording information accurately after seven hours in the field was a concern. It soon became apparent that neither the students nor the teacher cared what I was doing in the classroom, largely because my method of passing time was similar to the students’. After only a brief period, I began to take notes in the classroom (but not in other settings) in open view which I elaborated as soon as possible after leaving the field (Lofland & Lofland, 1995). Beginning in mid-February I usually took notes at school that I added to fieldnotes without elaboration. By then the number of issues on which to focus had been narrowed and “saturation” had occurred (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), although time constraints was the primary reason.

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Gaining rapport with children is difficult in any setting because adults routinely have authority over children who, from an early age, learn to hide things from them (Adler & Adler, 1998; Best, 1983; Fine, 1987). Cultivating a peer relationship with students is all but precluded by the sharp distinction in status between adults and children. In this school the status difference between adults and students was extreme. In the “discipline assembly” for eighth graders during the first week of school, the principal told the students, “All adults have a right to tell students what to do, including the cleaning lady and the custodians.” Students were reminded often that bells were for adults and that students must wait to be dismissed by an adult. Students routinely were treated rudely by adults, which emphasized the status difference. All adults in the school were always called by a title – Mr., Mrs. (for married women), or Ms. (for unmarried women) – not only by the students but by one another; the ethnographers were referred to as Dr. As a result of these two caste-like categories, dissociating myself from school employees was problematic. Being accepted as at least harmless by the students while not being seen as disrespectful by the adults was a constant concern when I was in the presence of both adults and children. In the end, members of both castes seemed to view me as harmless but feckless. I spent my time observing, listening, and doing what the students were doing. I avoided talking with adults when students were present. In addition, I did not react to students’ “misbehavior” except on rare occasions when bodily harm to someone appeared imminent (Fine & Sandstrom, 1988). At the beginning of the school year “misbehaving” students often glanced at me to see whether I was watching and others reported “infractions” to me. I told them that I was not a teacher (“I don’t count.”) and as time passed they were less concerned about my apparent authority. What students came to expect of me was evident late in the year when a student angrily accused me, undeservedly, of betraying him by providing his name to a substitute teacher. Although officially I was a math tutor, the teacher rarely asked me to perform this task. He did not expect me to act in his stead when he was out of the classroom. He interacted with me when no students were present. Occasionally I was sent next door with a few students to tutor, but more typically I sat through the classes as much at the mercy of the teacher’s agenda as the students. When students were supposed to be working in class, I provided assistance when it was requested and occasionally cajoled students into starting assignments. Although students sometimes included me in conversations and activities, most of the time they ignored me unless they wanted to borrow a pencil or help with a math assignment.

THE SCHOOL The school is located in a northern industrial city whose public school system has the problems associated with most large, urban school districts. Unlike some

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schools in the district, it had no distinctive programs other than those for “special” students – mentally and/or physically challenged children and those with “behavior problems.” The students were assigned to the school as part of the overall plan to bring the district into compliance with a court-ordered desegregation plan. Approximately 70% of the students were black. All but a few qualified for free lunches, evidence that they were all lower class. Students in the eighth grade were 13, 14, and 15 years of age. There were slightly more than 400 students officially assigned to the school. Approximately 80 of these were “special.” Of the remaining students, slightly less than half were in the eighth grade. Each of these “regular” eighth graders – approximately 150 – was in one of the six math classes. According to the official tally, between 80 and 85% of the students were in attendance on any day. There were approximately 40 adults in the school. Non-professional staff, with one exception African American, included secretaries, teachers’ aides, cooks, a security guard, several paraprofessionals in charge of various special programs, and a custodial staff. Professional staff included a principal, a vice-principal, two student counselors, a librarian and approximately 20 teachers almost evenly divided by design between black and white. The school building was in fairly good repair. It was built in the 1960s to serve approximately four times as many students. The furniture was worn but functional. The asphalt parking lot included net-less basketball hoops. A fenced lawn next to the building supplemented the gymnasium. Most of the building was well heated in the winter but resembled a sauna in the late summer when classes began and again in the spring. The computer lab was equipped with a dozen or so out-of-date computers most of which were broken. A women’s organization painted lockers to spruce up the building during spring break. The school had a corporate sponsor that provided breakfast twice each semester to reward students with good report cards and locally famous African American motivational speakers for assemblies. Students were enrolled in eight courses and assigned to one of three 20-minute lunch periods. Each class was 40 minutes long. Between the bells marking the end of one class and the beginning of the next, there were either three or four minutes during which students were to move from one classroom to another. The eighth-grade math classroom was located on the third floor of the threestory building. In it, thirty student desks were scattered throughout the room, most arranged facing one another in groups of four for “cooperative learning.” The room was large enough to accommodate the desks with space left to walk among them. At the beginning of the year the teacher’s desk was in the back corner of the room but was moved during the year to center front. Initially students chose their seats. After the first four weeks of school, the teacher assigned students to seats alphabetically. For several months each student had an “official” seat which

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could be invoked by the teacher: “Where are you supposed to sit?” As time passed, however, groups re-convened and new ones formed and reformed, often during the class period as students moved to different desks.

THE CHARADE OF TEACHING AND LEARNING Jackson (1990) argues that schools are very familiar places to most adults in American society: “If a person stumbled into a classroom blindfolded, his nose alone, if he used it carefully, would tell him where he was” (p. 9): This is not to say, of course, that all classrooms are identical . . . But the resemblance is still there despite the differences, and, more important, during any particular historical period the differences are not that great (p. 6).

Anyone who came into the eighth-grade math classroom would draw on previous knowledge of schools to infer that math education was occurring. Students, sitting together in foursomes, had papers on their desks and were talking together, an expected accompaniment of “cooperative learning.” The mere presence of the teacher would give the appearance that he was in charge. This very familiarity with school life would prevent the observer from seeing that the classroom was counterfeit, educational in name only. The educational “form” was correct but the educational “content” was absent (Simmel, 1959). To make this case, a detailed account of what occurred in the classroom is presented.

Imparting Knowledge The teacher and the students shared the classroom, although the teacher was routinely late to class and frequently left during class. Nevertheless he was ostensibly in charge of the classroom and went through the motions of teaching. Occasionally he lectured, standing at the board: The teacher explained something at the board for a few minutes. No one was paying any attention. He turned to one of the girls at the table by me and said, “Do you have this in your notes?” She said, “Uh huh.” The teacher said, “Let me see.” She said, “I didn’t write it down.”

It was not unusual for the teacher to lecture to only one or two students: At one point when the teacher was at the board, he asked for a volunteer. Grace3 raised her hand and said, “Can I do it?” The teacher picked Anna and focused his attention exclusively on her. Others in the class began to talk to each other.

He often lectured, not at the board, but sitting at a student desk:

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Rachel and Ruth are sitting with the teacher in a foursome of desks. Rachel has a sucker in her mouth and is watching Ruth, who is writing a letter. The teacher is lecturing. They are not paying attention. No one seems to be paying attention until he gives an instruction: “Write down the number 24 on a piece of paper and write its prime factors.”

Two points are telling here. The first is that the teacher continued to lecture when even the two students nearest him were obviously paying him no heed. The second is that when he gave a direct order, the students reacted. At other times, the teacher asked a student to read aloud from the textbook. Students, who usually seemed pleased to have been asked, typically read with difficulty and often inaudibly: The teacher asked the students to open their books and then asked Patricia to read about coordinates. She stumbled through a couple of paragraphs. She had a great deal of trouble reading some of the words.

Unless a student were also following along in the book (which rarely happened), little information was imparted. Barring distractions, the teacher then reread the material, interspersing it with explanations (and other comments). When this occurred, it was unusual for more than three or four students to be paying attention. A boy said to me one day sotto voce, “He’s talking to himself.” As these incidents indicate, imparting information by lecturing or reading from the textbook rarely was the sole focus of interaction between the teacher and the students. In some cases, this was not their own decision: The teacher, writing on the board, said, “You will be tested on this.” He wrote, “7 = mx + b, m = slope, b = y intercept.” A student appeared in the door and showed something to the teacher. He said to her, “Later.” Two minutes later the vice-principal on the public address system said, “Please excuse this interruption.” He read a list of names of students who were to report to a specified room instead of going to their next class.

At other times, however, the students and the teacher chose not to give formal instruction their undivided attention: Fifteen minutes into the class the teacher announced that today we would be dealing with graphing a system of equations. At this point Natalie and Aimee decided to go get their books. They both left and came back fairly soon, Aimee with a book, Natalie without. Books were in short supply (although all students had been issued one at the beginning of the year). Jonah, Andy, Fred, Mathew, and Chartreuse had none. Diana and Hope were sharing as were Pearl and Beth. The teacher told Beth to read from the book. He then asked Truman what simultaneous meant. Truman said, “At the same time.” The teacher then asked four girls who were sitting together to repeat what Truman had just said. No one responded. He then asked what another word meant and tried several students, all of whom claimed not to know. He read a bit more in the book. The teacher, who was then standing in the back corner, asked Chartreuse where her book was. She said it was in her locker but that she didn’t know the combination because she hadn’t been in it for two months. The teacher said, “Are you ever going to get your book?” Chartreuse said, “Yeah. Can I go get my book?” The teacher said,

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“Yes.” Chartreuse left. She came back a few minutes later and said to the teacher, interrupting him at the blackboard where he was lecturing, “The principal told you to give me a pass.” The teacher said, “How come Fred didn’t need a pass? He’s more clever than you.” Chartreuse explained that the principal had been in the stairwell. Chartreuse wrote something on a piece of paper, which the teacher signed, and she left. With approximately fifteen minutes of the class period remaining, the teacher said to the students, “I want you to read the rest of this.” He told Jonah to move to sit next to someone who had a book. Jonah moved to sit next to Andy. The teacher said, “Whose book are you looking at?” Jonah pointed to Grant who was sitting across from him. The teacher told Jonah to move to sit next to Grant. Jonah did not move. The teacher left the room. The students talked relatively quietly in their groups. Aimee painted her fingernails. Natalie was writing a letter or doing an assignment for another class. Just before the bell rang the teacher came back in and said, “Okay, class, let’s see if we can get back.”

Rather than lecturing, the teacher often simply handed out work sheets with examples of how to solve the problems at the top. Multiple choice answers were provided for each problem. Occasionally the teacher went over a problem or two on the blackboard, but more often students were expected to read the examples and to do the problems without assistance. There was never any explanation for why students were given a particular work sheet. Each work sheet was treated as discrete. Students indicated their answers on an answer sheet that could be graded by machine. Sometimes instead of handing out worksheets, problems in the book were assigned. Students wrote answers but not computations on a separate sheet of paper that they numbered. Note that neither this nor the multiple choice answer sheets included information about how the student obtained an answer. In a class of twenty to twenty-five students, it was rare to observe more than a handful of students working alone on problems. Many students ignored the assignment and got on with what interested them, an amazing variety of “pastimes” that included reading, talking, drawing, wrestling, sharpening pencils, writing notes, doing assignments for other classes, and leaving the classroom. Students who did work, usually worked together, solving problems, comparing answers, and arguing about whose were correct. Occasionally they divided the problems and then shared answers. Working on problems was usually interspersed with other activities. Other students simply waited until someone in their foursome had selected or written answers for some problems and then copied them. Students who worked together sometimes came to a consensus about how to solve the problems and did all the problems wrong: Near the end of the period I sat with two girls. The one whose paper I could see had worked her way through the problems but had done them wrong. The teacher had been sitting with these two girls at the beginning of the period when they started the assignment.

If students were working on in-class assignments, they were expected to turn in the answer sheet when they were finished or at the end of the period. Sometimes the teacher would require that students turn in their papers before they could leave

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the room. This made evidence that they had attempted the assignment necessary. Some students then retrieved papers from the wastebasket or copied someone else’s paper with the other student’s permission, in full view of the teacher while he waited to collect papers at the door: “A girl grabbed another girl’s paper and said, ‘The bell’s going to ring and I’m stuck.’ ” Some filled in their answer sheet randomly, although they might have attempted to solve the first few problems. Others produced an acceptable facsimile from someone else’s scratch paper. The requirement was to turn in a piece of paper. What was on it was unimportant. Scores from the machine-graded answer sheets occasionally were read aloud by the teacher. It was not atypical for most of the class to have failing grades: The teacher said that he was going to read the scores from the assignment that the students had done on Friday but that he wouldn’t read the names of those who had failed the test. He then proceeded to read everyone’s score. Almost everyone had failed. Had he been true to his word, he would have read only two or three names. I had tutored two girls in the classroom next door on Friday and by the end of the class period we had worked (diligently!) through only 14 of the 35 problems. I had looked through the answer sheets on Friday to see whether other students had turned in completed answer sheets. Most had not.

Some students bubbled-in the answer sheet immediately when it was handed to them as if to get it out of the way. Some students solved, perhaps correctly, the first problems and then left the remaining problems blank, as the tutored students had done. Others solved some problems and then randomly filled in answers to the remaining ones. The machine could not distinguish among genuine, fabricated, and blank answers but it could produce scores to record in a grade book.4 Both the students and the teacher knew that the scores were not evaluations of what students knew. Nevertheless, throughout the year, the charade was repeated again and again.

Homework Homework was assigned almost every day, although it was not always collected. Students routinely copied one another’s homework: As she came into the room Sally greeted the teacher by telling him that she had done her homework. Rudy came in and asked the teacher if he could go next door. The teacher did not acknowledge him and, after waiting a bit, he left after giving his homework to Sally with instructions to turn it in for him. Sally and another girl copied Rudy’s homework. Each of the three (Rudy had returned.) reported a score of 78.

When homework was checked in class, students were to exchange papers and mark them as the teacher read the answers. Many students wrote down the correct

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answers as they were read. Other students did not bother and, when their names were called, reported grades of zero: The teacher asked the students to exchange their homework assignments and then he read the answers to the problems. In one group, Theresa copied the answers onto her paper as he read them. Helen had done the homework assignment. Luke sat next to Helen and corrected hers while she looked on. Luke did not have a homework paper. When they reported their scores, Theresa claimed to have gotten 100% (The teacher said, “Excellent!”); Helen reported 88%; Luke reported 0 and said, “I left it on the bus.”

Note that Luke responded with an excuse rather than saying that he had not done the assignment. When homework was checked in class, the teacher focused his attention exclusively on the teacher’s manual that he placed on the desk in front of him. He did not look around to see whether and how students were marking one another’s papers. In addition, he typically sat at a student desk rather than sitting at his own or standing in front of the class. As a result, even when he occasionally looked up, he had his back to at least some portion of the class. This practice made it easy for the students to write down the answers as they were read without fear of detection. Whether to write the answers as they were read or to report a score of zero was often a decision made among a foursome who all reported the same or very similar scores. The teacher sometimes commented, without any hint of sarcasm, “That table did very well.” Adding to the sham was his accepting at face value and with apparent sincerity the high scores that students reported. In the following incident, the lengths to which the teacher was willing to go to maintain the pretense awareness context is especially telling: The teacher told the students to exchange papers and he began to read answers. Students wrote the answers as he read them. The teacher had some trouble keeping his place so several times he said, “Let’s go back and redo that.” Students then had to erase the answer they had written or, if they were using a pen which some students were, cross it out to replace it with his second answer. The teacher said, “I’ll have to collect your homework papers to take a look at your graphs.” Near the end of the period, the teacher said, “No papers that were turned in showed graphs.” He reassigned the graphs for homework.

That the students had “redone” their answers when he “redid” his is something he also should have noted. Those done in ink certainly provided a clue. No answers for the problems that required graphs was another. His only complaint, however, was that the students had failed to draw graphs. The teacher occasionally acknowledged that cheating was a possibility: At one point during the class the teacher looked up from his desk and said to a table of girls, “Are you copying? If you are copying don’t bother to do the exam. Just put your name and the other person’s name on the paper.” He repeated this. The girls continued copying and the teacher paid no more attention to them.

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Rachel went next door to run the answer sheets through the machine. The teacher then read the scores. The teacher asked Patricia, who had 94%, if she had copied Diana, who had 100%. Patricia denied copying.

Although the teacher’s attending to cheating was both unpredictable and unusual, mentioning it occasionally lent credence to his role. The students’ practices were so flagrant that it was impossible for the teacher not to know that the students were cheating. Rather than calling them on it, however, he pretended not to know. The students, of course, knew both that they were cheating and that the teacher knew. Together, however, they cooperated to construct scores to fill his grade book that in the end would become grades on their report cards that would justify their passing into the next grade.5

Attempts to Move to an Open Awareness Context Closed, suspicion, and pretense awareness contexts are inherently at risk of becoming open awareness contexts because of the ever-present possibility that the “true identities” of the interactants may be revealed (Glaser & Strauss, 1964). Occasionally students attempted to move the awareness context from pretense to open by noting the teacher’s failure to teach: The in-class assignment was to copy problems from a worksheet on to a sheet of paper but not to solve them. The students spent the entire period doing this. At the end of the class, the teacher told them for the homework assignment to do the even-numbered problems. Truman said, “So why did we copy them all?” The bell rang. The teacher assigned homework and said something to Rose, who responded, “We don’t even know what we’re doing.” When practice proficiency tests were passed out, June looked at it and said loudly, “You didn’t teach us number one.” During the test, Mary said, “What if we don’t finish this today?” The teacher said, “You only have today.” June said loudly, “You wasted our time taking in our books.” The teacher had just spent the first part of the class collecting textbooks. The teacher, sitting at a student desk, nodded off briefly. When Brian noticed he said, “We’re not babysitters. You fall asleep ever day.” [In fact, the teacher only fell asleep in class occasionally.] Peter said, “When you fall asleep like that you know it’s time to retire.” The teacher, awake to hear at least the latter comment, made no reply. Early in the year Larry asked the teacher as he was passing out a work sheet, “Are you going to collect our homework?” The teacher said, “No.” The student said, “We do all this work, and then you don’t even collect it.” The teacher said, “You know something, Smith? You’re a constant complainer. I’ll make a special exception for you. You can turn in your homework.” Smith kept his homework.

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Fellow students rather than the teacher quelled attempts by students to move from a pretense to an open awareness context: The teacher came back into the room and said, “Do your work.” Penny said to him, “Can I ask you a question? How come you’re never in class and you expect us to know how to do this?” Danielle said, “Shut up.” The teacher gave no indication that he had heard Penny’s question or Danielle’s injunction. A student, who was working on the assignment, called out to the teacher, “Tell them to be quiet.” A student responded, “You ain’t nobody.” The teacher did not respond.

Such incidents, however, appear infrequently in the fieldnotes. Most of the time students were willing to pretend that they were students who were being taught. The teacher, on the other hand, never acknowledged that the classroom was counterfeit. His complaints were that the students were not good students. He viewed them as undisciplined and blamed their parents. He told me half a dozen times during the year how he had been whipped not only by his parents but also by the teacher at his mother’s insistence when he had misbehaved in elementary school. He regretted that corporeal punishment was no longer permitted. Throughout the year he continued to act as if the classroom were one in which education was taking place: The teacher asked the students to open their books to a page and he began to read. A teacher came in and interrupted him and they discussed something briefly. The teacher then continued to read from the book. He asked questions which one student answered. Then he asked, “Does everyone understand? If you don’t understand, raise your hand.” No hands were raised. He said, “This means everyone understands.”

The fact that with one exception students were not paying attention was simply glossed over with his assertion that the class had learned the material. In the following incident, the teacher spoke as if the grades he recorded actually matched some reality: Rachel turned in her worksheet. The teacher said, “Since you’re finished, why don’t you go around and pick up the homework? Jessica called out, “Who did homework?” The teacher said, “ ‘A’ students do their homework. They don’t forget to do their homework. Now ‘D’ and ‘F’ students . . .”.

In the following incident the teacher attended to homework grades reported by students: Theresa said to the teacher, “The only time I do my homework you don’t check it.” He said, “Okay, we’ll check. Exchange papers.” With the exception of Lana who had done some of the problems on Friday and finished or changed answers as the teacher read them, Theresa was the only student who had homework. No one else was participating. Lana copied her paper for Frank. The teacher watched as Antonio collected the homework papers. The teacher questioned those students who had no paper to give to Antonio and changed three students’ scores to zeros.

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This last incident was very unusual in that the teacher noted the relationship between the grades students reported and their homework papers. The purpose, however, seemed to be to assert his authority rather than to stamp out cheating.

DISCUSSION Day in and day out the teacher and the students described here participated in a sham. Theirs was an imitation of a genuine classroom, one in which, however imperfectly, teacher and students cooperate to increase students’ knowledge of a particular subject. Instead, they operated within a pretense awareness context in which they colluded to create the appearance of a teacher teaching and students learning. There was very little in the social arrangements described above that could pass for formal education unless education is simply equated with anything that happens to children in a classroom. Most school reforms are predicated on the assumption that schools are organized to impart reified knowledge to students. Raising teachers’ salaries, distributing larger amounts of money more equitably among school districts, extending the school day or the school year, reducing class size, requiring teachers to have advanced degrees in the subjects they teach, and requiring students to pass proficiency tests before being promoted or earning a diploma, are examples. Any or all of these reforms might improve the quality of education in open awareness contexts but they are less likely to change schools that are counterfeit because they leave intact the pretense awareness context. If this chapter were only about one math teacher with exceptionally poor management skills, it might be used to justify monitoring teachers more closely or teaching classroom management more effectively. Space prohibits making a case that the counterfeit classroom described here was part of a counterfeit school.6 But what if the daily school life of the children described here is typical of their school and of inner city schools more generally? What if being an inner city student means living each day in a pretense awareness context? What effect does living within such a context have on children and adults? Gelles (1996) argues that focusing on family as an institution to account for child abuse is a mistake. He argues that by conceptualizing the problem as inherent in the parent-child relationship the net is cast too wide to concentrate social policies on the small portion of the adult population that actually poses a threat to children. The same argument holds here. By focusing on education as an institution, proposed solutions are intended to encompass all public schools even though there are vast differences among them that are hidden in familiarity (Jackson, 1990). Recent ethnographic research on school children reveals that schools are not necessarily

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pleasant places for children. Being constantly judged by classmates can be very painful even for those who have high status (Adler & Adler, 1998). In schools in which children and teachers cooperate to produce educated children, whether reforms intended to improve education are likely to have the desired effect are worth debating. Counterfeit schools, however, require policies directed at changing a pretense awareness context to an open awareness context. Acknowledging the “true identities” of classroom interactants may make change possible.

NOTES 1. School ethnographers often choose to stay far away from adults to avoid being tainted. Eckert (1989), for example, described how she collected data on student culture in a high school: The one part of the school that I assiduously avoided was just that part that most school studies focus on – the classroom. I did this in order to avoid being associated with the official functions of the school or with the authority of teachers or administrators. I also preferred to limit my interaction as much as possible to students, so as not to raise questions about my allegiances. I spent most of my time in the “public” areas of the school, such as the halls, the cafeteria, the library, the courtyard, the stairways. There are clearly things that I did not observe about the social dynamics of this cohort because I did not attend classes, but there is no question that the disadvantages of involving myself in any way with the formal educational process would have far outweighed the advantages (pp. 29–30).

The drawback to this strategy is that the researcher’s taken-for-granted assumptions about what occurs in the classroom are never challenged. 2. “School” is substituted for “gender” in this excerpt from Thorne (1993). 3. All names in the chapter are pseudonyms. 4. There are some obvious lessons here for sociologists who rely on measures produced by schools to study school children. One is whether grades and standardized tests are an appropriate measure of anything across students and schools. O’Connor (1999), for example, used GPA to define high achievers and low achievers in the two inner-city Chicago Public High Schools in which she explored “narratives of opportunity” among African American students: The high achievers at Burnside ranked within the top 18 of their class of 335 students and had GPAs that ranged from 2.5 to 3.33, with a mean of 2.90. The lower achievers ranked between 141 and 314 and had GPAs that ranged from 0.00 to 1.01, with a mean of 0.47 (p. 155).

If the schools that these students attended were anything like the one described here, what GPA measures is difficult to know. Although the students in the math classroom were given grades and could have been ranked from high to low, their scores were fabricated. One of O’Connor’s informants seemed well aware of this: [L]ike one teacher that I had . . . it seemed like the boys, I don’t care if they did nothing in class, they always got the As and Bs. And girls got the Cs and the Ds. One time, on my report card

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she put all Cs, and then she put slash As . . . She said something about I could do “A” work, but she feel I’m a C student (p. 151).

Assigned grades are an index to something in these schools, but to what is not clear. Note that my intention here is not to criticize O’Connor’s research, which I regard as an important contribution to the literature. Her work is especially useful here because she includes students’ words. 5. Two students did not pass eighth grade, both because of their failure to be appropriately contrite about missing school in their dealings with the counselor. The counselor said that she had thought about not passing another student but that her “attitude” was better than the students she chose not to promote. 6. Evidence to make the case that the school itself was counterfeit includes the fact that cheating was not behavior that students adopted gradually as they tuned into the fact that the teacher ignored it. Observations of cheating on homework and in-class assignments appear in the fieldnotes from my first days in the field. Students clearly had had teachers with whom they had made a similar bargain. The difficulty many of the children had with addition and with reading aloud from the textbook is further evidence. That they copied one another’s papers for other classes, mistakes and all, without any concern that teachers would accuse them of cheating also indicates that other teachers were only going through the motions of teaching. A student shared an English paper with me on which she was given an “A.” That she had used the word “Foredom” [sic] in a sentence received no comment. A girl sitting next to her said to me, “I don’t think the teacher even reads them.” That the nonsense on the paper drew no comment from the teacher suggests that she was right. Other evidence is the dismal scores on proficiency tests that inner city students receive. Ten percent of the previous class of eighth graders from this school passed the required 9th proficiency test in math. The 607 school districts in Ohio were recently rated on a 27-point scale. The school district of the school described here scored 3 (State of Ohio, 2000).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Research was supported by grants from Research and Creative Activities and the Urban Child Research Center, Cleveland State University. I am indebted to my colleague Philip D. Manning for his contributions to the project.

REFERENCES Adler, P. A., & Adler, P. (1998). Peer power: Preadolescent culture and identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Best, R. (1983). We’ve all got scars. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and burnouts: Social categories and identity in the high school. New York: Teachers College Press. Eder, D., with Evans, C. C., & Parker, S. (1995). School talk: Gender and adolescent culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

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Everhart, R. B. (1983). Reading, writing, and resistance: Adolescence and labor in a junior high school. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fine, G. A. (1987). With the boys. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fine, G. A., & Sandstrom, K. L. (1988). Knowing children. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Gelles, R. J. (1996). The book of David: How preserving families can cost children’s lives. New York: Basic Books. Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1964). Awareness contexts and social interaction. American Sociological Review, 29, 669–678. Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor. Hurst, L. (1991). Mr. Henry makes a deal: Negotiated teaching in a junior high school. In: M. Burroway et al. (Eds), Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis (pp. 183–202). Berkeley: University of California Press. Jackall, R. (1988). Moral mazes: The world of corporate managers. New York: Oxford University Press. Jackson, P. W. (1990 [1968]). Life in classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Lofland, J., & Lofland, L. H. (1995). Analyzing social settings. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. MacLeod, J. (1995). Ain’t no makin’ it: Aspirations and attainment in a low-income neighborhood (2nd ed.). Boulder: Westview Press. Miethe, T. D. (1999). Whistleblowing at work: Tough choices in exposing fraud, waste, and abuse on the job. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. O’Connor, C. (1999). Race, class, and gender in America: Narratives of opportunity among low-income African American youths. Sociology of Education, 72, 137–157. Simmel, G. (1959). The problem of sociology. In: K. Wolff (Ed.), George Simmel: 1858–1918 (pp. 310–336). Columbus: Ohio University Press. State of Ohio, Department of Education (2000). http://www.ode.state.oh.us/reportcard/ratings/ fy00 std seq.htm Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York: Columbia University Press. Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Loretta Bass, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma, earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Connecticut in 1998. Dr. Bass focuses her research on children and stratification issues in West Africa and the U.S. For her dissertation, Working for Peanuts: Children’s Work in Open-Air Markets in Senegal, she collected and examined both qualitative and quantitative data of child workers and their families. Dr. Bass lived in Senegal from 1994 to 1996, and completed follow-up research in Senegal during the summer of 2000. Her chapter in this collection draws on this research. Her research has appeared in the Population Research and Policy Review, Political Behavior, Anthropology of Work Review, and the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. Marilou C. Legazpi Blair is the Assistant Director of Institutional Research at Erie Community College. She received her Ph.D. from Penn State, and has performed a substantial amount of research on issues of child development. Aside from her interests in adolescent status attainment, she has also studied the impact of immigration on both adults and children in the United States. She is currently involved in an examination of adults who return to school for the continuation of uncompleted degree work. Sampson Lee Blair is an Associate Professor at The State University of New York at Buffalo. As a family sociologist, most of his research to date has focused on family relationships, and particularly those between parents and children. More recently, he has been involved in studies of justice issues within the familial context. He recently completed his term as editor of Sociological Inquiry, and is scheduled to be a co-editor of Social Justice Research next year. Sally Bould is Professor of Sociology at the University of Delaware with a joint appointment in the department of Individual and Family Studies. She has published numerous articles in the area of the family, family policy and poverty policy. Another article on this research concerning families and neighborhoods will appear in the 2003 Journal of Family Issues. She is the author of the book, Eighty-five Plus, which examines issues of state and family responsibilities for 225

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the oldest old and several articles on the oldest old population in the United States, including disability, caregiving and living arrangements. Currently she is a member of the board of The Carework Network. Tiffani Chin recently finished her Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA. Her dissertation examined how children’s peer cultures intersect with the schools’ social, academic, and evaluative objectives to influence children’s educational experiences. She is currently a Post-Doctoral Scholar with the Middle School Transition Study, studying oppositional culture and students’ transition from elementary school to middle school. Chin is the author of “ ‘Sixth Grade Madness’: Parental emotion work in the private high school application process” (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, April 2000) and a co-author of Tutoring Matters: Everything you ever wanted to know about how to tutor (Temple 1999). Amitai Etzioni is the first University Professor of The George Washington University. He served as president of the American Sociological Association from 1994 to 1995, was Senior Advisor to the White House from 1979 to 1980, and was guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1978–1979. From 1958 to 1978, he served as Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the editor of The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, a Communitarian quarterly. He is the author of twenty-one books, including The Monochrome Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), Next: The Road to the Good Society (New York: Basic Books, 2001), The Limits of Privacy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), and The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996), which received the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 1997 Tolerance Book Award. David A. Kinney received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Indiana UniversityBloomington and did post-doctoral work at the University of Chicago. He is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at Central Michigan University and a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life at the University of Michigan. His publications have appeared in Sociology of Education, Youth and Society, Personal Relationships During Adolescence (Sage), and New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (Jossey-Bass). He is currently conducting ethnographic research with children and their parents in a study of how families manage work, home life, and children’s activity involvement in a fast-paced society. Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Arizona State University. She holds a doctorate (1976) and a master’s (1973) in sociology from Brown University and a B.A. (1971) in sociology and history from the University of North Carolina. She has published over ninety articles and book chapters

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in medical sociology, public health, medicine, and health services research. She has authored or co-authored fifteen books, on topics such as the social and economic impact of coronary artery bypass surgery, the federal role in health policy, public versus private models of service delivery in several different human services areas, controversial issues in health care policy and schools and child health services. Her current research interests include health policy issues, especially access to health care and child health care issues, and research on preventive aspects of health care. Yun-Suk Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is completing his doctoral dissertation on the role of familial relationship in the effect of performance of household tasks on subjective outcomes for children and married people. His research includes comparing several measures of time spent on housework, and studying about changes in working time. In the fall of 2002, he became a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Cornell Employment and Family Careers Institute. Anna B. V. Madamba is a Research Associate at TIAA-CREF in New York City. With a doctorate in demography, most of her research interests are in the field of educational attainment and performance. Her current research involves the examination of the academic performance of children of single mothers. Kimberly A. Mahaffy is Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research interests are gender, transitions to adulthood, and adolescent sexual risk taking. She recently edited a special issue for the Journal of Mundane Behavior entitled Mundane Sex. She teaches statistics, research methods, social psychology, social problems, and a senior seminar in gender and adolescence at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Sarah H. Matthews is Professor of Sociology at Cleveland State University. Her current research focuses on the everyday lives of children whose mothers are in a drug treatment program. Her earlier research in the sociology of aging has appeared in gerontology and family journals. Her research on relationships among members of older families is reported in a forthcoming book, Sisters and Brothers/Daughters and Sons: Meeting the Needs of Old Parents. Kathleen M. Mathieson is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, Arizona State University. She holds a master’s degree in Sociology from ASU. Her research interests focus on medical sociology, including concerns of aging, child health and mental health as impacted by work and family conflicts. She has published on the maintenance of functional independence for the elderly, and has presented papers on this topic as well as on child health and child health policy issues.

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Meredith Phillips is Assistant Professor of Policy Studies and Sociology at UCLA. Phillips’s research focuses on the relationship between social inequality and academic success. Her current projects include a mixed-method study of the academic achievement of college students at a highly-selective university, an ethnographic study of the development of oppositional culture during students’ transition from elementary to middle school, and a statistical study of the distribution of school quality nationally. Phillips is the co-editor of The Black-White Test Score Gap (Brookings, 1998). Katherine Brown Rosier is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at Central Michigan University. Her recent book, Mothering Inner-city Children. The Early School Years, was published in 2000 by Rutgers University Press. Other publications have appeared in The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Human Development, The Journal of Comparative Family Studies, and several other journals and edited volumes. While continuing to write on experiences of low-income African American children and families, she is also conducting research and writing a book with colleague Scott L. Feld on Louisiana’s Covenant Marriage. Barbara Schneider is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and the Co-Director of the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work. Author of several books, articles and monographs, Dr. Schneider is concerned with encouraging the cognitive and social development of America’s children by reshaping the responsibilities of families, schools, and society. Most recently Dr. Schneider has completed two books, The Ambitious Generation: America’s Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless, and Becoming Adult: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work. In both works she discusses how adolescents develop attitudes, skills and expectations about their adult careers. Kimberly A. Scott, Ed.D. is Assistant Professor in Hofstra University’s Foundations, Leadership, and Policy Studies department. She specializes in sociology of education, sociology of childhood, and qualitative research methods. Her research interests include examinations of race, class, and gender influences on the social and academic self-development of elementary school students. She has publications in Equity and Excellence, Journal of Negro Education, and Childhood: A Global Journal of Childhood Research. Currently, she is co-authoring a Rowmann and Littlefield book with Sarane Book entitled, Sociology of Children and Childhood. Linda J. Waite, Ph.D. is the Lucy Flower Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work at the University of Chicago, where she also directs the Center on Aging. She is past Chair of the Family Section of the American Sociological Association and Past President of

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the Population Association of America. Her current research interests include the working family, especially dual-career couples with children and the impact of job characteristics on parenting. She is also interested in the role of the family at older ages in functioning of individuals, intergenerational transfers and exchanges, and employment. She has published widely on the family, including an award-winning book with Frances Goldscheider, New Families, No Families: The Transformation of the American Home. Her most recent book, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, with Maggie Gallagher, won the 2000 book award from the Coalition for Marriage, Family, and Couples Education.