Documenting productive-reproductive processes in children's lives: Transition narratives of a black family living in poverty

Transition narratives from a black family living in poverty illustrate k e y concepts of the interpretive approach to socialization and demonstrate the need for longitudinal ethnographic studies of productive-reproductive processes in children’s lives.

Documenting Productive-Reproductive Processes in Children’s Lives: Transition Narratives of a Black Family Living in Poverty William A. Corsaro, Katherine Brown Rosier

Recently, we have seen the beginnings of a movement away from theories that view development as the solo child’s mastery of the world on his or her own terms to a view of socialization as a collective process that occurs in a public rather than a private realm (see Bruner, 1986; Corsaro, 1992). From this view, the child is not only active but socially active, a participant in negotiations with others (adults and other children) in the communal events that are the basis of shared culture. As noted in Gaskins, Miller, and Corsaro (this volume), this interpretive approach differs from traditional theories of human development and socialization in a number of important respects. In this chapter, we elaborate on that earlier discussion by, first, examining key conceptual assumptions of the interpretive approach and then, to illustrate the concepts, presenting “transition narratives” of a mother and her daughter drawn from our ongoing ethnographic research of families living in poverty.

Basic Concepts of an Interpretive Approach to Childhood Socialization

We discuss here several basic concepts of the interpretive approach that are pertinent to the study of childhood socialization. First, we look at the

Work on this chapter was supported by grants from the Spencer and the William T. Grant Foundations.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT, no. 58, Winter 1992 @ Jossey-Bass Publishers 67

68 INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES TO CHILDREN’S SOCIALIZATION

critical importance of language and cultural routines in children’s socialization. We then examine the collective, productive-reproductive nature of children’s development and learning, contrasting this view with traditional models that see development as an individual and linear process. Finally, we outline features of an “orb-web” model of development, stress- ing its utility for understanding key transitions in young children’s lives.

Language and Cultural Routines. As Ochs (1988, p. 210) has argued, language is central to socialization both as a “symbolic system that en- codes local social and cultural structure” and as a “tool for establishing (i.e., maintaining, creating) social and psychological realities.” These in- terrelated features of language and language use are “deeply embedded and instrumental in the accomplishment of the concrete routines of social life” (Schieffelin, 1990, p. 19). Children’s participation in cultural routines is a key element of the interpretive approach. The habitual, taken- for-granted character of routines provides actors with the security and shared understanding of belonging to a social group. On the other hand, this very predictability empowers routines, providing frames within which a wide range of sociocultural knowledge can be produced, displayed, and interpreted (Corsaro, 1992). In this way, cultural routines serve as anchors that allow social actors to deal with ambiguities, the unexpected, and the problematic while comfortably within the friendly confines of everyday life.

Learning and Development as a Productive-Reproductive Process. The emphasis on the importance of language and the accompIishment of everyday cultural routines in the interpretive approach provides an alter- native to traditional views of learning and development. Traditional views assume that children pass through a transition from purely biological beings during a period of childhood into socially competent membership in an adult social group and set of social institutions, The emphasis in this linear view is on the endpoint of development, or the movement from immaturity to adult competence (see Cook-Gumperz and Corsaro, 1986,

The interpretive approach views development as reproductive rather than linear. From this perspective, children enter into a social nexus and through involvement in communally produced cultural routines establish social understandings that become fundamental social knowledge on which they build continuously. Here, the interpretive view goes beyond the often-heard claim that development occurs in and is affected by social or cultural context. In line with social theorists such as Bourdieu (1991) and Giddens (19841, the interpretive model maintains that the structural properties of social context are “both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organize” (Giddens, 1984, p. 25). Children, through their participation in cultural routines, acquire social skills and knowledge, creatively contribute to the production of local scenes and culture,

pp. 8-10).

DOCUMENTING PRODUCTIVE-REPRODUCTIVE PROCESSES 69

and unwittingly support the reproduction of (and in some cases extend) the wider adult culture (Corsaro, 1992).

From the interpretive perspective, children do not merely internalize individually the external adult culture. Rather, they become part of adult culture-that is, they contribute to its reproduction-through their negotiations with adults and their creative production of a series of peer cultures with other children. Thus, the interpretive model extends traditional views of individual linear progression through a series of increasingly complex stages to a view in which individual development is embedded in children’s collective weaving of their places in the “webs of significance” (Geertz, 1973, p. 5) that constitute their culture.

Transitions in the Orb Web. We have expanded on Geertz’s notion of culture as webs of significance by introducing the “orb web” as a heuristic device or metaphor for conceptualizing the reproductive view of socialization (see Corsaro, in press). Figure 4.1 depicts the orb-web model. There are a number of features of the model that merit careful attention. First, the radii or spokes of the model represent cultural institutions that are an- chored in a range of social fields or locales along which flow cultural information and capital (Bourdieu, 1991). Second, the family is the hub or center of the web and serves as a nexus of all cultural institutions. Children are both introduced to their culture and prepared for entry into the world of peers and other institutions through their participation in basic interactive routines in the family (Ochs, 1988; Schieffelin, 1990; Watson-Gegeo, this volume). Third, the differently shaded spirals represent distinct peer cultures. The particular peer cultures depicted in the figure (preschool, pre- adolescent, adolescent, and adult) are suggestive and based on research in Western societies. Fourth, the basic features of spiraling and embedded peer cultures spun on the frame of cultural institutions are central to the conceptual power of the model. Therefore, we can see that although development is basically continuous in this model, it occurs on the foundation of earlier peer cultural experiences and does not replace them. This idea is in line with Giddens’s (1991, p. 15) notion that self-identity forms a trajectory across the different institutional settings over the life cycle. Finally, we must not forget the importance of certain features of institutional structure for the transition points in the model. There are numerous routines within various institutions that expose children to (and in some cases explicitly instruct them about) cultural practices such as age grading.

Figure 4.2 depicts important transitions in early childhood socialization. Note that the individual child (shaded inner circle) is represented as a member of a collective or cohort (white outer circle) of similar-age peers. In this way the figure depicts the children’s growing independence from the family, participation in an initial peer culture, and transition to formal schooling and a new peer culture.

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In most contemporary Western societies, children’s gradual movement outside the family begins during the second or third year of their lives, when they begin to spend more and more time in preschool and other types of nonmaternal care settings (Lamb, Sternberg, Hwang, and Broberg, 1992).’ During this important transition, children are still continually influenced by adults (particularly parents and adult caretakers and teachers in preschool settings), as is illustrated by the numerous contacts with and crossings of the radii (institutional fields) in the orb-web model. However, the production of an initial peer culture in this transition period also involves the growing independence of children (Clarke-Stewart, 1989) and the evolution of a peer group identity (Corsaro, 1985,1988). It is normally during the sixth year in Western societies that children make the transition into formal educational institutions. This transition builds on earlier experiences in the family, preschool, and initial peer culture and is crucial to children’s later life opportunities.

Documenting Productive-Reproductive Processes in Children’s Transition from the Family to Formal Schooling

We now turn to our study of children’s transition from the family to formal schooling as a way of documenting the productive-reproductive processes that characterize children’s socialization. First, we contextualize the study by briefly discussing our earlier ethnographic research in an inner-city Head Start center, which preceded and laid the foundation for the current investigation. We then move to a description of our ongoing study of low- income, black families and their children’s movement into early elementary school settings.

Context of the Current Study. Our current ethnographic research demonstrates the value of utilizing an interpretive approach for the examination of key transitions in the lives of young children. It is an outgrowth of nearly twenty years of ethnographic study of preschool children (Corsaro, 1985, 1988, 1992). The present research began as one component of a larger, comparative study that examines preschool children’s peer cultures in three settings: an Italian nursery school, a private upper-middle-class American developmental learning center, and an American Head Start center.

The current research originated from our earlier ethnography of peer culture in the Head Start center. This study, like our earlier work (Corsaro, 1985, 1988; Corsaro and Rizzo, 19881, involved careful field entry and acceptance by the children and teachers, several months of participant observation, and the collection of field notes and audiovisual recordings of representative episodes of peer and teacher-student interaction.

The Head Start center was located in a large midwestern city. Head


Start income eligibility regulations require that the great majority of par- ticipants be from low-income homes. In the classrooms that we studied, all of the teachers and all but one of the children were black, reflecting the population of their inner-city environment.2

During participant observation at the center, we were often fascinated by the children’s incorporation of many issues and themes relevant to their families’ economic status into their play and peer interaction. For example, we observed role play in which children pretended to be employees in fast- food establishments, harried single mothers frustrated by their children’s constant demands and misbehavior, parents taking sick baby dolls to the clinic, and police ordering suspected drug dealers against the wall to be searched. We also noted that when the Head Start classes went into the community on field trips, many of the children recognized public buildings such as the welfare office, banks, and the city jail, making comments to their teachers and peers such as “My mom goes here, and then we get to go shopping,” “My mom comes here to cash her check,“ and “My dads been in here for drinking too much.”

These and other observations convinced us that our understanding of the social worlds of the children would be greatly enhanced by completing interviews with their parents and observing in their homes and communities. We also felt that our research in the center had provided us with a strong and unique foundation on which to begin a longitudinal study of family socialization processes (see Rosier and Corsaro, in press). Thus, we initiated an intensive study of a small sample of families whose children attended the Head Start center. The purpose of this study was to examine the strategies that these low-income families employ, and the obstacles that they face, as their children make the transition from the home, to preschool, and on to elementary school.

This three-year study of nine families from the Head Start center expands our earlier work both longitudinally by covering the crucial years in children’s transition from home to school, and ethnohistorically by documenting important changes in the lives of the families (employment history, family structure and kin networks, and community and residential patterns), and in the curricula, staffing, and administrative policies of the schools. The study builds on work by Boggs (1985), Heath (1983), and Watson-Gegeo (this volume), who have demonstrated the value of multi- level, longitudinal ethnography for linking the home, community, and school when documenting children’s transition from the family to formal schooling. Our ultimate goal in the present work is to extend the current research cross-culturally to study children’s transition from home to school in three cultures.

Current Study. Nine of the ten Head Start mothers that we contacted agreed to tape-recorded interviews that were conducted in their homes


during summer 1990. Each session typically lasted ninety minutes to two hours. At that time, each of the mothers had a five-year-old child expected to begin kindergarten in the fall. Our small sample contains mothers who vary greatly in their age, education, and employment history. Although all but one have a history of welfare receipt, only one mother is a young, single parent with no employment history, and she has received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) since the birth of her oldest child. There are a variety of family types in the sample: Currently, there is one nuclear family household, one step-family , four households composed of a single or separated mother and her children, and three other homes in which unmarried mothers and their children live with other adults, both relatives and n ~ n k i n . ~

In addition to requesting demographic information, our open-ended interviews encouraged the respondents to talk extensively about their families’ circumstances and their children’s daily lives. The mothers were gracious and candid in response to our inquiries, and the first set of interviews provided us with a wealth of information about the families. Encouraged by the mothers’ willingness to share their experiences, we have maintained regular contact with these families as the children have moved into the early elementary grades. Since the end of the children’s Head Start year, we have completed three sets of intensive, open-ended interviews with the mothers (June-July 1990, February 1991, November-December 1991). We have also made informal observations in their homes, joining them for dinner or spending time with the children as they have gone about their daily activities. We have attended a variety of church- and school- related activities with the families: songfests and holiday programs, as well as regular services in local churches, “graduation” ceremonies in the children’s classrooms, and evening programs in the schools. Finally, we interviewed the children’s kindergarten teachers in spring 1991 and their first-grade teachers one year later. We also were able to carry out limited observations in several of the children’s first-grade classrooms. Our relationships with these families are ongoing through phone calls, informal visits and conversations, and an annual picnic. A fourth set of interviews was completed in autumn 1992.

We now have a unique set of longitudinal data that captures the complexity of the day-to-day lives of these low-income families. While we do not have space here to develop fully the major themes in the data, we are able to highlight key features of these themes through discussion of the detailed transition narratives of one mother, Marissa, and her daughter, Zena (to protect their privacy, respondents’ have been given pseud- onyms). At a more concrete level, these narratives capture the complexity of Marissa and Zena’s conscious and unconscious attempts to link the routines, experiences, and values in their family to the objective demands


that they face as parent and child in this crucial transition period in their lives.

Transition Narratives of a Black Family Living in Poverty

In this section, we present Marissa’s narrative, which illustrates the many obstacles that this young mother faced in her attempt to provide a stable, nurturing home for her children. In the course of presenting Marissa’s story, we provide the family context for a second narrative, which details Zena’s transition into early education settings.

Marissa’s Narrative. When we first interviewed Marissa in July 1990, she was twenty-three years old and had three children (Zena, five; Duane, Jr., four; and Dominique, three years of age). In one of a series of moves since Zena’s birth, Marissa had just left her grandmother’s home to stay temporarily in the home of her children’s paternal grandmother. Over the course of several interviews, Marissa provided us with a brief history of her adult life. She dropped out of high school in her junior year, and Zena was born shortly thereafter. After Zena’s birth, Marissa worked to support her family but relied on AFDC for brief periods after the birth of each child. Marissa had worked as a full-time housekeeper for a large national hotel chain for two years, but she had lost this position after a change in management-for reasons that Marissa felt were never made clear but seemed to her to be a “black on white thing”-just a few days before the first of our interviews. In the past, she had been employed at a major fast-food franchise, at one point holding down both jobs before working full-time as a housekeeper. Marissa had also entered a nursing assistant training program while working the full-time job. However, she was so exhausted after three months that she quit before receiving her certificate.

From Zena’s birth to the present, Marissa has had to move about among relatives’ and friends’ homes. Marissa described living at various times with her mother, which was “just a lot of trouble so I moved out,” her older brother and his family, who “got money hungry so I had to leave,” and an unrelated woman whose unclean housekeeping habits drove Marissa from the home. When Zena entered the Head Start Program (fall 19891, Marissa was maintaining her own separate household. However, midway through the Head Start school year, Marissa could no longer afford the rent on the home. Reluctantly, she moved her family into a shelter for homeless women and their children. This move resulted in Zena’s temporary depar- ture from the Head Start classroom that we observed to a Head Start center in another area in the city. Determined to escape the shelter, Marissa shortly thereafter moved with the children into her grandmother’s house, enabling Zena to move back to her original classroom. However, this


arrangement also became problematic; the children “got on [their great- grandmother’s] nerves” and the elderly woman complained that there “wasn’t enough room.” It was at this point that we first interviewed Marissa, temporarily staying with her children’s father (Duane) and several of his brothers at Duane’s mother’s house.

Duane also quit school before graduating and has had difficulty finding employment ever since. Until recently, Duane has only been able to find part-time, low-wage employment. Despite his inability to make significant financial contributions to Marissa and their children, Duane has always provided child care when Marissa worked. Our first interview with Zena’s parents was unusual because this was the only family in our sample where the father was present and participated (Duane was also present for the second interview, but not the third). His participation was fortunate because we were interested in learning about Zena’s routine activities and interactions with others, and Marissa was unable to provide much detail and was also noticeably uncomfortable with these questions.

In fact, as we concluded the first interview, Marissa admitted that she was embarrassed by her inability to respond to the questions. She reported that she had experienced similar feelings when others (such as her children’s teachers and people at the clinic where she took them for medical care) questioned her about her children. She described mixed feelings about her circumstances at the time of the first interview. Although she was concerned about her family’s financial well-being now that she was unemployed, she looked forward to spending more time with her children and getting to know them better (something that she felt she had never been able to do in the past). She had applied for AFDC and hoped to be able to move into her own place again soon.

Shortly after our first interview, Marissa and her children moved into another shelter, where they remained for several months. When we interviewed Marissa and Duane for the second time at Marissa’s new home in February 1991, they did not give us many details about the time that she and the children had spent in this shelter. However, during the third interview with Marissa in November 1991 (with Duane not present), Marissa related that this period (August-November 1990) was a very difficult time for the family. Like earlier times that the family spent in shelters, the children were separated from their father. However, things were especially difficult in this instance because the move to the shelter was part of an attempt by Marissa to break off her relationship with Duane. Marissa described the children’s confusion and desire to see their father during this period: “It was just them and me. And they was goin’ through a lot of changes, ‘cause it was like always ‘Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy?’ . . . It affected them a lot.” Marissa also communicated her own unhappiness: “I never let them see me cry, but I cried a many times, many times. ”


All of the members of the family seem to have experienced emotional turmoil during this period, and the children suffered in other ways as well. Although Marissa and Duane expressed their high valuation of education during the first interview, Marissa did not enroll Zena in kindergarten (which is not mandatory in this state) when school began in fall 1990. Instead, she concentrated on finding a place to live. Marissa had been on a waiting list for Section 8 housing funds for nearly six years. Once approval finally was granted, Marissa spent weeks searching for an apartment. With her children in tow, she took bus after bus to prospective areas in the city and then combed neighborhoods on foot trying to find a place that would accept a Section 8 renter. The family finally moved into a large duplex in an overwhelmingly black, low-income neighborhood after being homeless for nearly a year.

Now settled in a new home, Marissa was able to enroll Zena in kindergarten at a neighborhood school, even though it was two months into the term (November 1990). She had also planned to enroll her two younger children in Head Start, but there were no longer vacancies in the program. At this point, Marissa reconsidered her decision to “just break away [from Duane] and make a new life for the kids and [herself].” Responding to pressure from both the children and their father, Marissa agreed to a reconciliation. She then began a job working as a housekeeper in a nursing home, and Duane returned to his practice of caring for the children while Marissa worked. While Duane was in the home on a nearly daily basis, Marissa stressed that he did not live with them. In part, this was because of the family’s precarious economic circumstances. Marissa wanted to work outside the home: “I’m the type of person, I like to be on the run, I’m workin’, that’s all I know is work, work, work, work. I can’t stay around the house.” But she had been unable to find employment that paid enough to support her family. She nearly always received Medicaid and food stamps, and she occasionally collected AFDC. Welfare regulations penal- ize intact families, whether the parents are married or living together, although there has been recent welfare reform requiring states to extend some benefits to unemployed two-parent families (Stoesz and Karger, 1990).

In addition to her concerns about maintaining welfare eligibility, Marissa’s religious beliefs clearly influenced her decision not to allow Duane to move in with her and the children. She noted in one interview that “livin’ with a person you’re not married [to] is a big sin,” but “he don’t understand that.” And while Marissa said that she and Duane frequently considered marriage, she had not yet felt confident enough to take that step. In fall 1991, Duane found a good job working for the city, was “makin’ enough to support” them all, and felt that the time was right for them to get married. However, Marissa described herself as “a determined person” who “likes to do things myself,” and she preferred to wait until she found


secure employment. She also continued to have doubts about whether she was prepared for marriage: “I don’t know if I’m ready. I say it, but I don’t think I’m ready.”

We see here a pattern in many of our interviews: a woman who, in the process of working hard to do the best for her children, acquires a great deal of independence and self-confidence as a provider. In this case, Marissa expresses hesitance in giving up her job and moving to a position of dependence on the father of her children. Although such a family structure fits the stereotyped middle-class norm, even this brief narrative of Marissa’s experiences illuminates why she would not readily embrace such an arrangement.

Finally, Marissa in particular was mindful of how the everyday pres- sures that she and Duane faced as a poor, struggling couple affected both their relationship and their children. In one of the interviews, Marissa told us that uwe argue a great deal because we’re under pressure, wetre under pressure. He’s workin’, I’m workin’, we’re barely seein’ each other. And all‘s we can do when we see each other is argue. We talk about, we’re not gonna argue in front of the kids no more. Because they’re pickin’ up our habits. They fightin’ one another. When it comes down to somethin’ like this we should like send them outside, or to bed, and let’s keep it down a little. We’re working on it.” This insightful reflection paints a portrait of a caring mother who is realistic about the magnitude of the demands of parenting in poverty. This pattern of realistic striving to do the best for their children contrasts with the depictions of poor families as conformist or fatalistic (see Gecas, 1979). It is also manifested in the number of specific actions that Marissa and Duane have taken to support Zena’s transition from the family to formal schooling.

In the interviews, Zena’s parents told us that she is “really smart,“ “willing to learn,” and anxious to “experience a lot of different things,“ and they expressed high hopes that she will stay in school and do well. Marissa told us that she enrolled Zena in Head Start so that “when she do go to the public schools, she’ll know something. You know, because I couldn’t take the time now, to sit down with her, ’cause I was like, at work.” Both Marissa and Duane felt that Head Start helped Zena to learn more things and that she, in turn, passed on things that she learned to her younger siblings. Both parents visited the Head Start classroom and also talked with the teachers on several occasions. They reported that the teachers believed that Zena was a good student and well behaved, an evaluation that fits with our observations in the Head Start classroom and conversations with the teachers. Overall, Zena’s parents praised the Head Start Program but did report that the teachers, at times, overstressed discipline and raised their voices with the children. These are interesting observations because Zena’s parents believe in stem discipline for young children in the home, but this type of discipline did not seem to fit their image of a teacher.


As we noted above, Zena entered kindergarten two months into the school term because of her family’s problems in finding housing. Her parents were very concerned with how this late entry might affect Zena’s performance in school, and they worked with her throughout the year to help her catch up on what she had missed. They oversaw her daily homework and also worked with her using remedial materials that Zena’s kindergarten teacher had given Marissa when she visited the classroom. Marissa felt that their efforts were paying off, and in February 1991 she told us that Zena’s school work had improved a great deal between her first and second report cards.

As mentioned above, Zena attended kindergarten in her neighborhood, and each day she and her father walked the four blocks to and from school. Marissa and Duane were surprised to learn that for first grade, Zena would be bused to another school-located in a largely white, low- income section of the city-quite a distance from their home. At this new school, the first-grade teacher’s evaluation of Zena contrasted in several ways with that of her kindergarten teacher. Although her parents seem to have expected much better grades, Zena continued to receive average marks (mostly C‘s, some Bs), and each marking period the teacher made a written comment on Zena’s report card decrying her “attitude.” She wrote, for example, that Zena was “grouchy,” “moody,” needed to be “kinder” to the other children, and asked, “Is she getting enough sleep?” Marissa said that the teacher had also phoned her about Zena ”messin’ with” other kids.

Without a car, Marissa told us that “I can’t get out to Zena’s school to talk to her teacher, it’s so far out.” However, during our November 1991 interview, and in later telephone conversations, she did express concern about the teacher’s reports of Zena’s problems. Unfortunately, the teacher interpreted the fact that she had never met Marissa as an indication of parental lack of caring, and she felt that Marissa had sounded indifferent when she spoke with her on the telephone. In fact, Marissa had given the teacher’s remarks much thought and was actively taking steps to deal with the reported problems. She told us that Zena was a lot like her and needed to learn to control her temper. She also told of racial slurs that she had withstood a t work, and she related her experiences to the problems that Zena was having at school: “You have to learn how to control your temper. Walk on off. Forget it. Words ain’t hurt nobody. Just go ahead about your business. Yes, I’m teachin’ her that. I don’t want her to have a habit that I had. No self-control.”

We asked if this was something that she had just started emphasizing with Zena, and her response was “yes, ever since her teacher sent me a note [about] her attitude. I’m glad she did write that down, so I know what’s goin’ on.” Marissa also began enforcing an earlier bedtime, and she wrote a note back to the teacher asking that she be notified whenever her

80 INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES TO CHILDREN'S SOCIALIZATION

daughter got into trouble at school. At the end of the school year, Marissa was frustrated with the, teacher's continuing complaints, and she also felt that Zena's final grades did not reflect the marks that she brought home on papers or the teacher's other comments that Zena was "improving" and a "good student."

Zena's Narrative. Since we observed regularly in Zena's Head Start classroom and had numerous informal conversations with Zena and her teachers, we have much more data on Zena's life in this education setting than in either kindergarten or first grade. As noted in our discussion of Marissa's narrative, Zena was temporarily moved from the Head Start classroom that we observed to another center for nearly three months (from early February 1990 to the end of April). While we do not have data on Zena at the other center, her return to her original classroom was smooth as she quickly plugged back into the classroom routine and peer culture.

Zena's classroom reflected the general communal atmosphere of the Head Start center and exhibited the type of collective ethos that has been observed in other ethnographic studies of lower-class child care programs (see Lubeck, 1985; Suransky, 1982). The teachers and children spent a good portion of every school day in required activities in line with the Head Start curriculum. These activities included having a snack and a full lunch; engaging in formal exercises to enhance language, reading, and cognitive skills; and reading stones or having discussions on weekly themes during circle time. The rest of the day normally involved free play in one of the activity centers in the classroom and in the gym or outside playground.

Overall, the teachers' interactive and language styles with the children encouraged the development of self-esteem through individual contributions to and support of the group. The teachers' discourse styles included a number of direct and indirect methods of social control, teasing and challenging, and displays of affection. While the teachers did not hesitate to issue direct commands or raise their voices, discipline was more commonly enforced through a wide variety of indirect strategies to encour- age proper behavior.

Zena attended on a regular basis, settled in well to the school routine, and developed a good rapport with the teachers. Her academic performance could best be rated as slightly above average. She did well in language drills and other structured lessons but always seemed a bit nervous and seldom volunteered answers. However, Zena was very active and talkative in free play, during meals, and on field trips. Like a number of the other children, she was, at times, corrected for talking too loud, for not following directions, or for arguing. Overall, Zena developed reading, language, and attention skills that would serve her well in kindergarten and first grade.

DOCUMENTING PRODUCTIVE-REPRODUCTIVE PROCESSES 8 1

The Head Start children produced a rich and varied peer culture in which Zena was an active participant. All of the fourteen children in Zena’s classroom who attended on a regular basis formed stable relations with several peers rather than exclusive “best-friend” relations. While the children were concerned about establishing friendships and often referred to each other as friends, they seldom used the verbal denial of friendship as a strategy of social control or exclusion. Rather, friends were expected both to compete and to support each other in the peer culture. Like the somewhat older inner-city black children studied by Goodwin (1990), the Head Start children constructed social identities, cultivated and refined friendships, and both maintained and transformed the social order of the peer culture through opposition and confrontation. Peer interaction and play routines often contained oppositional talk such as “What you think you’re doing boy?” and “Get that block out the way!” On most occasions, such talk was not taken as insulting and was accepted as part of the verbal enrichment of everyday play routines. Consider the following exchange that took place between Zena and her classmate Pam while they played at the sandbox.

PAM: Hey, girl, don’t use that little ol’ thing [scoop], use this big one. ZENA: [Takes the bigger scoop] Okay. What’s a matter with you, girl, that’s

PAM: No it ain’t. ZENA: I said i t is, girl.

too much sugar in that cake!

Zena not only held her own in, but actually relished, such banter with both girls and boys. In fact, she was widely respected for her dramatic flair in peer disputes and play routines, most especially in role play.

Zena stood out among her peers for organizing and playing a leader- ship role in complex dramatic role-play episodes. Many of these episodes involved activities and themes reflective of Zena’s family experiences. For example, in one episode, Zena was pretending to be a mother caring for her baby (a doll) and trying to control the disruptive behavior of two boys who had taken the roles of older siblings. At one point, Zena placed the baby in a pretend car and instructed the boys that she was taking the “baby to the clinic” and that they must hurry and join her. The boys paid little attention at first and then told her to wait as they pretended to change clothes. A short while later, Zena came back into the playhouse and said, “Come on! You’re gonna get left in a minute, you hear me!”

This theme of a mother caring for demanding children was also present in several other role-play episodes. In one highly complex episode that we recorded on videotape, Zena and another girl, Debra, pretend to be mothers talking on the telephone in the family living area of the classroom. The telephone taik is impressive because it is doubly metacommunicative


in nature. The children are producing their own interpretation of their mothers’ telephone conversations about their (the mothers’) parenting demands and problems.

Telephone narratives of this type are especially rich in reflecting processes of cultural production and reproduction because they often involve both the reconstruction of past events and interpretations of these events by both the tellers and the audience. In one segment of the videotaped episode, Debra dials the phone and asks Zena what she is doing.

ZENA: Hah. Cookin’. Now I need to go to the grocery store. DEBRA: I got to take my kids to the party store, they told m e 4 said- ZENA: My kids-my kids want me to take them to the park. DEBRA: What? ZENA: My kids told me to take them to the park, and then, and then the bus

had to come and get ’em. That’s gonna be a long walk for to here! And then the bus would have to come and get us!

DEBRA: Well, we have to wait for transfers, then I have to buy groceries, we have to buy some groceries. And um-

ZENA: Guess where my kids told me to take them? To the store. When the bus comes by-my kids waitin’ for it. I don’t got time to do that.

Miller and Moore (1989, p. 444) argue that when “caregivers habitu- ally tell and retell personal stones, they are constantly reminding themselves of the experiences that are meaningful to them and relevant to their child-rearing beliefs and practices.” While we do not have actual data on Marissa’s discussions about parenting with others, she did report to us that “my brother’s girlfriend, we discuss our kids. All the time, ’cause she just had a little baby.” In the above exchange, Zena is not simply reproducing an actual conversation that she may have heard. She is, rather, appropri- ating the general theme of problems in parenting. Debra and Zena’s role play in this instance is striking in their ability to capture the frustrations of trying to meet the demands of one’s children when one does not have a car and must deal with a limited and time-consuming bus service. These are problems that Zena’s mother faces every day. Through participation in such role play, Zena gains insight into both her own and her mother’s perceptions and feelings about parenting.

Later in this role-play episode, the girls continue to talk about the constant need to watch out for and discipline their children. Near the end of the episode, an exchange occurs that poignantly displays the complex nature of these girls’ family lives and their keen awareness of the stark realities of parenting in poverty.

DEBRA: My man start in on me. ZENA: [Jumps up] I don’t have one!


DEBRA: He’s been hittin’ on me, he’s been hittin’ on me for ten minutes. ZENA: You got one and I don’t have one. My kids been askin’ for “my

Daddy.” I say-they say “I want my Daddy, I want my Daddy,”’all day.

While we have no data on spouse or mate abuse in Debra’s or Zena’s families, several other children in the Head Start center volunteered descriptions of such abuse to the teachers and us over the course of the school year. Zena’s response in the role play that Debra at least has a man while her children constantly ask for their father is striking because we know from interviews that Zena and her younger siblings have been separated from their father for long periods while they stayed in shelters with their mother both before and after this particular role-play episode occurred. In fact, as we noted above, Marissa used almost the same exact phrasing (“Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy”) when reporting the effects of her children’s separation from their father during a period when they stayed in a shelter. Zena’s response to Debra clearly demonstrates her understanding of the extent of her mother’s (and other single parents’) problems in such demanding situations. The challenge of facing such family circumstances alone can, at times, be so intolerable that even a mate who is physically abusive may be seen as better than having no one at all.

Overall, Zena’s transition from her family into the Head Start Program was smooth. In fact, Zena thrived in Head Start. Over the year, she formed close relationships with her teachers and gained confidence in her own ability to follow directions, to adapt to a routine academic schedule, and to participate in teacher-directed activities aimed at improving language and cognitive skills. Zena also was an active member of a rich peer culture. As the above examples show, Zena’s participation in the routines of the peer culture provided her with a sense of group identity and served, at times, as a secure base for confronting concerns and fears arising from her experiences in the family.

Several factors offset the potentially disruptive factor of Zena’s late entry into kindergarten. First, her family situation had stabilized: They had settled into their own residence after a long period of homelessness, Zena’s mother and father had reconciled after a brief separation, and they had now returned to the pattern of the mother working and the father, while not living in the home, providing child care during the day. Second, Zena’s daily schedule remained very similar to the time she was at Head Start in that she attended afternoon sessions, with her father taking her to and picking her up from school. Third, Zena’s teacher was black and had several years of experience working with children in kindergarten and first grade with a background similar to that of Zena. Finally, the majority of the children in the school and in Zena’s kindergarten classroom were also black and were very similar to Zena in terms of economic circumstances and cultural background.


From our interview with Zena’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Hill, it was clear she was a dedicated and highly professional educator. She had worked for eight years with economically disadvantaged children and had been a major contributor to a new program called Early Prevention of School Failure, which involved a prescreening of children to identify possible language problems. Mrs. Hill, like Zena’s earlier Head Start teachers, was a stem disciplinarian who expected children to follow instructions and to concentrate on educational tasks during structured lessons. However, Mrs. Hill’s cumculum plan gave little time for free play as compared to Head Start because she believed that she needed to use all of the minimal time available in the half-day program to prepare children for first grade.

Mrs. Hill described Zena as one of the quieter students in her class, who listened and followed directions well. She was generally quite satisfied with Zena’s progress. Overall, the teacher felt that, given Zena’s late start, she was very capable, with guidance, of doing above-average work. The teacher also described Marissa as a “very concerned” and “very supportive” parent who continually asks how her daughter is doing and how she can help her.

Since we were not able to collect observational data on Zena’s classroom, we can say very little about her involvement in peer culture in this setting. Mrs. Hill reported no behavioral problems. Her characterization of Zena as “quiet” in a class with limited peer play and interaction fit with our earlier observations of Zena’s behavior during teacher-directed activities in the Head Start classroom.

Zena had to contend with several important changes when she entered first grade. First, although she could begin her day at a leisurely pace during her Head Start and kindergarten years since she attended afternoon sessions, in first grade she had to get up to catch a 7:45 A.M. bus each day and arrived home at 4:OO P.M., spending over an hour each day in transit. Second, there were twenty-two children in her first-grade class, a considerable increase in size over the Head Start and kindergarten classrooms. Third, Zena had to adjust to a mostly white student population in the school and in her classroom. Her teacher and all but six of her classmates were white. Only two other girls were black, and same-sex friendships seemed to be the rule among the children, so Zena had few options for playmates. Finally, the philosophy and style of Zena’s first-grade teacher, Mrs. Majors, was considerably more flexible and tolerant than the “no- nonsensen style of her kindergarten and Head Start teachers. While she gave students considerable freedom in the classroom, Mrs. Majors also had high expectations regarding their use of that freedom. She desired coopera- tive, appreciative, and respectful behavior and hoped the children would share her conviction that “we’re a family here.” While the children seemed to benefit from the opportunities for independent activity that the teacher’s


flexible style provided, many of them also, at times, exploited their freedom to engage in a number of types of horseplay and off-task behaviors that often led to peer disputes and conflict.

Zena’s frequent participation in disputes and conflicts affected both her academic performance and her standing in the peer culture. She had difficulty interacting with the other girls, who did not respond well to the aggressive, oppositional style that had served her well in her previous peer groups. Mrs. Majors described Zena as an “outsider” who did not fit in with the “sweet and innocent” group of girls who were “just cutey-cute.” This clique of around seven girls often complained to the teacher about Zena’s bossiness and offensive manner. In fact, two of the girls approached us on the day that we observed, bemoaning the fact that Zena “thinks she knows it all” and is “always telling us what to do.” While our observations on peer interaction in this setting are limited, it is clear that Zena faced a new set of challenges in relating to peers in first grade and that these problems negatively affected her social adjustment and academic performance.

Mrs. Majors felt that such misbehavior, conflict, and attitudinal problems among the children were serious matters that needed to be reported to parents. She wrote to Zena’s mother about her conflicts with peers, noting that Zena had a bad attitude and was often moody. She also asked if Zena was getting enough sleep, a possible explanation that certainly could be related to Zena’s new schedule. Prior to first grade, Zena’s teachers did not seem to attach much importance to her misbehavior. Children in Head Start also often misbehaved, but only the most extreme incidents were reported to parents. In kindergarten, the highly structured routine limited opportunities for sych misconduct, and the teacher did not empha- size behavioral problems in her interview with us.

Academically, Zena’s marks in first grade did not meet the expectations of her parents, who considered her an “excellent” student. While her parents and teacher agreed that Zena’s behavior influenced her academic achievement, they seemed to differ in their perceptions of the magnitude and the directness of the relationship. Marissa said that she did not understand why Zena did not make the Honor Roll, but noted that the teacher “had a remark on the back [of her report card] about Zena’s behavior, [and] it coulda been that.” She concluded that “if you’re gonna make Honor Roll, it’s got somethin’ to do with your personality, how you act toward other kids.” We shared Marissa’s perception with Mrs. Majors, and she acknowledged that “some o f Zena’s failure to achieve academic honors may have been related to her behavior, but the relationship she described was indirect. Mrs. Majors said that Zena was a ”good, solid student,” but her grades were marked down because she often did not finish assignments on time. Although Zena completed her work “beauti- fully” when she was not distracted, Mrs. Majors felt her moodiness and

86 INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES TO CHILDREN’S SOCIALIZATlON

quick temper interfered with her ability to complete her work because she was “always fussing with somebody.” Mrs. Majors also said that other students were simply superior to Zena, “and those are the ones that are on the Honor Roll.”

Since Zena completed first grade, we have learned through informal conversations with Marissa of two changes in Zena’s life: one disruptive, the other clearly positive. First, her parents have again separated. Marissa has gone back on AFDC, is enrolled in a mandatory training program, and plans to again seek full-time employment once the program is completed. Marissa claims and appears to be happy with these developments. No doubt the children once again miss their father. Second, a woman who runs a small day-care home not far from their house is now caring for the children five days per week while Marissa attends her classes. Because of the location of this day-care provider’s home on the other side of the school district line, Zena will return to the neighborhood school where she attended kindergarten for second grade. Both Zena and Marissa think that this is wonderful.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have presented an interpretive approach to childhood socialization in which individual development is seen as embedded in children’s collective weaving of their places in the “webs of significance” that constitute their culture. This collective weaving is the product of children’s interactions with adults and other children in the various institutional locales or fields making up their culture. Through the examination of Marissa and Zena’s narratives, we get a glimpse of the intricacy of Zena’s life as she moves from the family (the hub of her developing web) to formal schooling. While we do not have space to capture the complex implications of these narratives, there are a number of patterns or themes that we have identified both in these materials and in our observations and interviews of the other eight families in our study.

The stability and well-being of the families in our sample is continuously threatened by the obstacles and challenges faced in their everyday lives. For example, we see running through Marissa’s narrative a pattern of recurrent difficulties with housing, employment, income, and family relationships that have compromised her desire and ability to do the best for her children. While specific problems are difficult to anticipate, the overall pattern is cyclical in that whenever one challenge is met and resolved, a new problem arises. Most recently, two events have shattered the relative tranquility of the family: the violent murder of a favorite aunt, and Marissa and Duane’s decision to separate. The first event was traumatic for both Marissa and Zena and it also sparked serious conflicts among Marissa’s


extended family. The second was even more seriously disruptive to the family and it, once again, has left Marissa and her children with serious financial problems.

Zena has also faced a complex array of obstacles in her path as she moved from Head Start to kindergarten and then on to first grade. While many of these problems are related to her family’s circumstances, others pertain to the school system and features of her classroom environments. Clearly, Zena has been affected by her family’s many moves, her late start in kindergarten, and the unstable relationship between her parents. In addition, the transition was made more difficult by school policies such as court-ordered busing to achieve racial desegregation and half-day kindergarten. Zena has had to begin each school year with the task of accustoming herself to new schedules and locales. Furthermore, her movement into first grade presented her with culturally dissimilar classmates. While peer relations was an area in which Zena excelled in Head Start, her attempts to cope with the demands of a new and unfamiliar peer culture appear to have been largely unsuccessful and possibly disruptive to her academic performance in first grade.

Like Marissa’s, Zena’s problems have been somewhat cyclical. When her family’s situation was the most difficult, the potentially disruptive effect of their circumstances seems to have been offset somewhat by the culturally familiar Head Start and kindergarten settings. Later, when family matters were going well, the demands of a new routine, school, and peer culture in first grade detracted from Zena’s ability to concentrate on academics. Now, as Zena happily prepares to return to her neighborhood school to begin second grade, her family situation once again threatens to interfere with her progress.

Despite the difficult circumstances of the family, Marissa sets very high standards for herself. She always tries to do what is best for her children, strongly believing that she must protect them from negative family circumstances. However, such high self-expectations would be difficult to meet even in the best of circumstances. Given the many obstacles that this family faces, these expectations are unrealistic, and the inevitable failure to live up to them may contribute to “creeping fatalism.”

Like other mothers in this study, Marissa also has high standards and expectations for her children. Zena, in turn, puts a great deal of pressure on herself to do well in school. We observed her hesitance to contribute in teacher-directed lessons and drills in Head Start and first grade, conceiv- ably because she did not want to risk being wrong. Zena also displayed considerable perfectionism in carrying out classroom assignments, which may have hindered her ability to complete work on time. We noted similar behavior in the classroom performance of other children in our study, and several of the teachers mentioned the problem in interviews, suggesting


that Zena’s incorporation of her mother’s high standards may be a common behavioral pattern of children in such circumstances.

Like many lower- and working-class parents, Marissa and Duane want a better life for their children than they had experienced for themselves. More impressively, the couple displayed an awareness of the many obstacles in the developmental paths of their children. Yet, we detected a creeping fatalism in their views. This fatalism was manifested in three ways.

First, although Marissa and Duane have worked very hard to encour- age Zena’s progress, they share with other parents in this study the belief that they do not have the skills necessary to be effective teachers of young children. As Marissa related to us in one of the interviews, we “sit down and help her [Zena] a lot,” but we “can’t really do it, it takes someone else to do it.” Thus, Zena’s parents feel that they must rely on teachers to recognize and cultivate their children’s talents. As we saw in Marissa’s narrative, their interpretation of Zena as an “excellent” student with unlimited potential (“no tellin’ what Zena might do”), which was established while Zena was in Head Start and kindergarten, has been shaken by the first-grade teacher’s evaluation of her academic performance and classroom comportment.

Second, Zena’s parents have frequently mentioned their belief that once children become teenagers, they make their own choices and there is little that parents can do. During the second interview, Duane described how his own parents had urged him and a brother to stay in school, but he said that he and his brother “got a certain age and just didn’t go no more, just quit goin’.” Marissa agreed, saying, “I want to see [my children] graduate . . . [but] when they get to a certain age, and they think they know it all, and they’re out of your control, you can’t really do nothin’ but sit down and tell ’em that school will help you get through life.” Like other parents whom we interviewed, they believed that you can only push children so hard, but if you failed to promote positive values when children were young, the lure of the streets and adolescent culture in poor neighborhoods would win out.

Finally, Marissa and Duane displayed considerable insight into culturally reproductive processes in their own lives, and they worried that Zena and her siblings will repeat the negative patterns. This concern is evident in their above-cited remarks on the early independence of teenagers. In addition, when Marissa described her experiences moving around “from shelter to homes to shelter to homes,” she said that she told her children, “One day, you never know, you’ll probably have to go through the same thing.” i t is noteworthy that she earlier told us that as a child she had “lived a lot of places,” with aunts and uncles and with her grandmother, because her mother was “goin’ through the same thing I have just went through.”

In sum, Zena’s parents appear to have incorporated many of the


negative experiences of their own childhoods into their prospective think- ing about Zena and their other children. These experiences, combined with their perception of Zena's most recent academic performance as unsatis- factory, were then used as a basis for predictions regarding her future.

While we have not to this point observed similar fatalistic attitudes in Zena, past research has indicated that by late elementary school disadvantaged black students are more likely than others to believe that their success or failure is primarily determined by luck rather than by their own efforts (Coleman, 1966; Webb, 1981). However, traditional quantitative research, by its very design, is not equipped to capture the complex productive-reproductive processes in children's homes, schools, and neighborhoods that constitute this often-cited fatalism of economically disadvantaged parents and children. Although we must be very cautious in generalizing findings from the current intensive study of a small sample of families, we believe that the interpretive approach and methods described in this chapter have much to contribute to a fuller understanding of young children's transition from home to school.

Notes 1. We by no means argue for universality in particulars of the orb-web model and realize, of course, that variations in values, social institutions, and economic systems have important effects on features of the life course across cultures and subcultures within societies. However, we believe that the transition from family to other social institutions occurs in all societies and that the collective production of peer (or childhood) cultures plays an important role in such transitions. 2. Throughout this chapter, we use "black" rather than African American or some other term. We recognize that there is controversy over this issue. However, our choice of terminology reflects our respondents' own usage and their self-identification. 3. Prior to participation in this study, these mothers had already shown their concern about their children's development and education by enrolling them in the Head Start Program. Therefore, they may be more motivated than others in similar circumstances. Although this potential bias exists, this sample is appropriate for capturing the enormity of the task that even resourceful poverty families face in helping their children in the important transition from home to formal schooling.

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DOCUMENTING PRODUCTIVE-REPRODUCTIVE PROCESSES 9 1

WILLIAM A. CORSARO is professor and chair, Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington.

KATHERINE BROW ROSIER is a National Institute of Mental Health predoctoral fellow and doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, Indiana Uni- versity.

Documents

Documenting productive-reproductive processes in children's lives: Transition narratives of a black family living in poverty