Thanks to Harry for providing more information on Annette Lareau’s book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life
Part of this on-going conversation is about how middle class kids have an edge later in life when dealing with bureaucracy and institutions, because they have been enrolled in a ton of activities. This morning, as I printed out the weekly schedule, made my list of chores, and packed lunches for everyone, I thought about how really sucky the whole business is.
Until a couple of weeks ago, I had kept my kids’ lives pretty simple. Jonah had one Saturday sport half the year and CCD on Tuesdays. Ian just had pre-school. The lack of outside activities wasn’t really driven by any philosophy or informed choice. It was more inertia than anything. And the fact that Ian is a pain, if he’s carted around on too many trips.
Half the time he falls asleep in the car and then I’m carrying around 40 pounds of dead weight. If he’s awake, he either walks too slow or races off in the wrong direction. He hollers because he thought that we were going to Auntie Mia’s house and is sorely disappointed. Ian also hates it when Jonah leaves him. Last week, Ian bawled for half an hour outside of Jonah’s karate school. “Sob. Jonah. Jonie. Come back here. Ian karate class. Ian karate class.”
Today, Ian was supposed to go to an exercise class after school. Half way there, he fell asleep. We turned around, came home, and now he’s passed out on the sofa. Oh well. Packed that lunch for nothing. And one of the other mothers is going to kill me for leaving her alone.
Other parents deal with this by getting mini-vans, so that they can carpool. They put TVs in the car for the younger ones. They have tinted windows, so the kids can change for their sports in the car. They don’t have special needs kids.
Little boy is going to have to get used to all these ins and outs of the car. I’ve added swimming, toddler gym time, and karate class to our lives. We’re not in these activities because it’s going to help our social standing. Jonah wants them to have fun, and Ian needs them to talk. I need a valium.
Apt. 11d 
I have a friend whose three children are in so many activities that it makes my head spin, and the kids complain, but Mom insists it will make them successful adults because they can juggle. Right now the oldest is in Irish Dance, choir, bells, ski team, violin lessons, basketball,church youth group and will soon trade ski team for baseball and track. She goes to a month long summer camp and is expected to attend all her sibling’s activities. I see this kid hitting college and going “enough” and spending a lot of time with bowls of Cap’n Crunch watching Sponge Bob.
My kids all have one activity a week. Once in awhile two, but rarely. We used to be more active, but they weren’t enjoying it, I was stressed, and homework started being more demanding. During the summer they can have one camp and one ongoing lesson each. That’s it. And that is plenty.
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I am determined not to overschedule. If my kid is the last middle-class kid on earth who just has time to sit around and goof off, so be it. She’s done a few things, like a ballet class, and liked it, but I’m not going to push her to do anything, and I’m also going to limit how much she does even if she asks to do a lot of things.
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It’s a smart thing to limit these activities. I’m a bit skeptical about their benefits for brains or status. It cuts into free imagination time. And it really makes the parents’ lives insane. Younger brothers aren’t that fond of it, either. Maybe some parents like it, because they get to socialize with other parents and get out of the house. I’m not sure.
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I pushed myself academically and extracurricularly and did just what Lisa V. said when I got to college—well not that bad, but I did skip class and didn’t put much effort into the academics. I managed to pull a B average, but now I wistfully surmise what my GPA would have been if I had put in an ounce of effort. I was just too burned out by high school that I needed a break when I got to college. I hope that my daughter slacks more when she is younger and thrives in higher education, when there are far more appealing topics to debate and learn about.
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One other downside is that the activities get so serious so fast. If your child is OK at soccer, why then he must want to join the (competitive, travelling, expensive) year round soccer league. If he enrolls in an after school program to learn chess (which he showed zero aptitude for) you must want to have him play weekend tournaments.
I know that the instructors and coaches are just responding to what they must believe parents want, but why does it all have to lead to something at age 7?
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I’m of several minds about this. On one hand, I absolutely feel that kids need to be left alone to play, think, rest, and recharge. Too many kids come into school overtired and cranky because they got home from practice late and didn’t finish their homework, and didn’t get enough sleep. I was always irritated growing up about having to spend two afternoons a week in Hebrew School when I could think of much better uses of my time. (On the other hand, I then voluntarily took Hebrew as a language in college. No language requirement to graduate, even. I took piano lessons too. Something was sinking in all those years!)
On the other hand, I think we run the risk of romanticizing childhood, as if children have run carefree through the millenia and only recently been conscripted into ballet lessons and karate class. The fact is that in Western societies, working class kids, until very recently, have always worked alongside their parents or under some other management, while rich kids have always had tutors and lessons (whether they took advantage of these is another story). Kids have been left to their own devices either when the family couldn’t afford to do anything for them, or when they didn’t have any work or chores to do. It really isn’t so different today than it’s always been.
I think it’s helpful for kids to have an outside source of accomplishment or amusement other than school. Kids in my class over the years have been champion skiers and snowboarders, swim team stars, vocal and musical performers, chess team members, etc. But of course, no one child was all of these things, nor would we push him or her to be. Some more extroverted, fast processing kids might do a few activities very well, but most of them seem to have a psychological need to at do SOMETHING. Especially since their strengths may not be as obvious to the world as their weaknesses.
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I’ve learned to keep our family schedule simple–if it’s too complicated and rush, rush, rush than nobody is having fun.
As my kids get older, I know this will be harder, but we’re learning to say no to some things in order to save our sanity.
Neighborhood meeting last night instead of family dinner? No thanks. Bad timing (7pm) for us.
Swimming lessons for the spring on Saturday mornings? Our Saturdays are really hectic right now. We’re delaying lessons until summer.
Balancing our schedules is hard work. Hard!
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Seems to me that it’s trendy right now to decry overscheduling, but that it’s just not as simple as it looks. Yes, there is a middle ground between the hypercompetitive kids Lisa V. knows and the complete lack of structure Lareau mentions in her book. But when your kids are the only kids in the neighborhood, when it’s not safe to let your kids play outside unsupervised, when you’re constantly battling the siren call of video games and TV, when schools do not even offer music, or gym, or swim class … well then I don’t think you can simply condemn scheduled activities.
IMHO part of the allure of the working class kids in Lareau’s book has more to do with parents perceiving them as “user-friendly”. They do not whine; they do not talk back; their parents refuse to play with them and the kids accept this. Combine that with the fact that an unstructured childhood is what most of us remember from our own youth, and it’s powerful stuff.
I just hate to see the power of this sort of nostalgia and kid user-friendliness make us discard or condemn others’ choices out of hand. Parents are working so hard; why can’t we be supportive of everyone’s efforts to combat, for example, the obesity epidemic? And instead put more pressure on school districts to handle some of this stuff at school? Or encourage coaches and teachers to be less focused on winning medals and competing?
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nicely put, jen.
I like it when people explain that women and families are not irrational or ruthless or backwards. Sometimes there are real reasons for their behavior that don’t fit into neat little packages. As you said, families are arranging for outside activiites for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with keeping their foot in the middle class.
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I read the “unequal childhoods” book. It is very good. I am convinced that she accurately describes what is going on with middle class versus working class and poor child raising. The detailed description of the families is facinating.
I am still not convinced that the “concerted cultivation” middle class childraising has the benefits she, and Brooks, suggests. For one it is pretty new. None of the middle class parents were raised that way.
It also is tenuously linked with the work world. Soccer skills don’t really help out that much at my work. And, not many people work in sport teams, ballet, circuses or orchestras. It looks more like conspicuous consumption to me.
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