When asked about problems they faced, middle — and working-class parents discussed a very different set of issues than did their professional middle-class counterparts. Of course, not all middle-class and working-class parents find that the same issues cause problems. Some focus on the absence of sufficient
resources. As one parent responded, “most difficult is not having enough time or money.” And this issue of insufficient time and money is especially significant among single working — and middle-class parents. In addition, some among the small group of single parents who were interviewed mentioned that it is difficult to raise a child of a different gender. A white, middle-class mother of two was explicit about this issue: “Most difficult thing for me has been parenting by myself, especially raising a son without a father. . . . [My son] would be a better athlete if someone went out to play with him.” Similarly, a working-class, Hispanic, single father of two worried about what his daughters might be missing:
Being a single parent right now is very tough. It’s a lot of extra work, which I don’t mind doing, but I still think what bothers me is that I think that my children are being short-changed. They don’t get the mother side of it. I’m not a woman. I never have been. I try to nurture my children as much as I can, but I’m still a guy, and these are two girls. And I feel like sometimes they get short-changed, and I feel bad for that. But there’s nothing I can do to help that at this point.
If this father accepts the “extra work” of parenting on his own, other working — class and middle-class parents, including those with spouses, openly acknowledged that they resented just how much effort they had to put into raising children (a sentiment that was less evident among the professional middle — class parents). A married, white, middle-class mother of one child bemoaned the fact that as a parent she finds it difficult “not having the freedom… to be able to get up and go” and having to be aware of what she called “a pretty large responsibility that has to be dealt with.” Another married, white, middle-class mother was even more dissatisfied with her responsibilities as a parent: “I think the hardest thing about being a parent [is that] you have to be selfless. Your life seems to be put way in the back [for] kids’ schedules. If you have a hundred dollars, and they need school clothes and they need shoes, you’re more apt to worry about them than yoursell. I think that’s the hardest thing.” This woman also clearly believes that these burdens fall more heavily on her than on her husband, and although her switch from the first person to the second person might represent an attempt to minimize the resentment she feels, the conflicted feelings come through quite clearly: “[I am] a cook and a cleaner and a day care giver and a bus driver, and I just feel that sometimes you feel like, ‘What am I?’ You sometimes forget about yourself and that can affect marriage.”
It is not surprising to find that the middle — and working-class parents face significant challenges: how best to allocate scarce resources and how to find time for oneself while holding down a job and raising children loom large in their accounts. What is surprising is that these parents experience both challenges and satisfactions in a very different way than do their more privileged peers. The professional middle-class parents often find that their very style of parenting (intense closeness) leads them into difficulties (not being able to know how involved to be, not knowing when to say no, not knowing just how much they should trust their children). In contrast, the middle — and working-class parents do not find their satisfactions enmeshed with problems. They are able to find satisfaction in their children’s accomplishments without having those satisfactions themselves turn into ongoing difficulties.
Not surprisingly, the professional middle-class parents describe themselves as more permissive than authoritarian: they speak about allowing and encouraging their children to make choices as they find their way to fulfilling their potential and becoming the best that they can possibly be. These parents see their role as intense nurturers of children in the process of development. Professional middle-class parents also describe a style of care that relies on communication, negotiation, flexibility, trust, and being endlessly (and immediately) available. Partly as a result of this style, they find great pleasures in their open and close relationships with their children. They speak of their children as people they enjoy knowing, as people they want to hang out with, and sometimes as the people who are their best friends. And they take both pleasure and pride in being able to enact trust. Admixed with these satisfactions, however, are their greatest difficulties as parents: they worry whether they are engaging in too much negotiation with their children; they also worry about not having enough authority to say no. But this negotiation may be what they want: negotiation maintains connection and keeps them from appearing too authoritarian. As they enact the new approach to interacting with their adolescent children—what I have called parenting out of control—they face the distinctive challenge of how to parent those who have been identified as “friends.”
In contrast to the professional middle-class parents, both the working-class and middle-class parents are more likely to describe themselves as being strict: they talk about being role models for their children, about knowing the difference between being parents and being friends, and about having rules and imposing consequences for violations of these rules. They too want to nurture their children, but they are more likely to see their childrens personalities as set, as constituting the material with which they must work. They find their satisfaction in their children’s concrete accomplishments and achievements. And they find their difficulties in an array of different issues that include the material demands of trying to raise children on low incomes (and sometimes as single parents). In contrast to the professional middle class, neither the middle-class nor the working-class parents—who follow what I have called parenting with limits—encounter fundamental contradictions in the nature and content of their parenting: that is, they do not find that both their satisfactions and their difficulties as parents have the same source.
As we will see in part II, parenting out of control and parenting with limits become guiding principles for parental decisions concerning the implementation of new technologies of connection, constraint, and surveillance; in turn, these new technologies bring these principles to life and are a mechanism through which these principles are enacted.
PART II