Part 7; Chapter 3: “The American Dream: Myths and Realities”
– Stress and Parenting
Putnam begins “Parenting,” the third chapter of Our Kids, with eighteen pages devoted to
profiling African American families from different socioeconomic strata in
Atlanta, Georgia. He chooses Atlanta because it has the “largest, most rapidly
growing gap between rich and poor of any American city” (81). He admits the gap
deserves studying along racial lines, but notes “within the black community
itself, class and income differences have also grown” (81), and the black
community as a whole is becoming “increasingly polarized along economic lines”
(82). Combined racial and economic
segregation means that in Atlanta, as in many American cities and towns, “the
black upper class and middle class…are increasingly separated from their white
counterparts and from poor blacks” (82).
While Putnam never treats racial segregation and subjugation with disbelief,
he works to reveal that “class disparities within each race” and across races
re important to acknowledge as well (83).
The different affordances of wealth regarding parenting
spring from this racially-charged backdrop, though, and the chapter’s conversation
gets more disconcerting as it develops. Explaining serve-and-return cognition,
a construct in which a preverbal child sends forth a signal and learns or gains
impressions via adult response, Putnam reaffirms what many early childhood
experts and educators have known for years: “Cognitive stimulation by parents
is essential for optimal learning” (110). What contingent construct makes a
difference in cognitive stimulation? Stress. Or the type and amount of stresses
parents face and to which kids are subjected, anyway.
As one might figure, homes in which parents are struggling
to get ahead are homes in which levels of “toxic stress” may be elevated. Toxic
stress may “impede successful development” of children and can include physical
abuse and neglect, the failure to send any
signal to a young serve-and-returner. This kind of toxicity, perhaps the result
of worn-out parents who cannot move forward despite their efforts, might be
worse than physical mistreatment (111). Deficits from neglect impair brain
development, says Putnam, and are difficult to repair (112).
So many adverse childhood experiences can affect the neural
pathways and emotional development of children that scientists have created a
scale in their name (though Putnam doesn’t distinguish what kinds of
scientists, presenting a rare moment of the sophomoric): The Adverse Childhood
Experiences Scale lists ten realities which correlate with some form of
damaging stress.
 |
| From page 113. And to think: Some think rigor is the most important thing teachers can provide for their poor students and students dealing with major stresses. |
Even for resilient children – those who seem to thrive
regardless of the many stresses in their lives – the “wear and tear of chronic
stress” may create situations in which they are “living on borrowed time”
(113). Putnam explains that even for resilient kids, the “John Henry effect” is
hard to escape. That is to say even if kids seem to do well in escaping poverty
and hardship early on, research suggests it is only a matter of time until the
piling on, the cumulative affect catches up to them and negatively influences
their lives.
 |
| Except that it caught up to you, John. That ended badly for you. |
If such children run forward early on, the monsters chasing them
eventually overtake them, and they too become rhizomed into the cycle of moving
backwards even as they attempt to move ahead. The specters of poverty may be
more difficult to escape than poverty itself, and once the ghosts have caught
up, the hopeful striver may not be able to stave off the haunting any longer
and tumble back into that from which he or she strove toward liberation. Toxic
stresses linger like absent presences, part of one’s history eager to make
themselves known. And lived. Now.
As someone who experienced several stresses on the scale as
a kid and who has found himself dealing with career and familial burn-out, having
reached a nadir of trying to balance financial, family, and especially toxic
working conditions in my field and in the English departments at UTEP and
Washington State University, Pullman, (and at the University of Southern
Mississippi before that), Putnam’s chapter speaks to me. As I look back on all
the accomplishments for my family and myself I’d hoped for versus the resources
– fiscal, physical, mental, political, emotional; support systems and fallbacks
– I had or didn’t have to actualize them, I
think it is little wonder I have felt and still feel spent.
At twelve and sixteen and eighteen and twenty-four and
twenty-eight, I was one of those resilient
 |
| Do mobility studies and rhizome theory intersect? When it comes to improving one's socioeconomic status, escaping one's roots is more difficult than many Americans want to acknowledge. |
Adding on a K12 and higher
education system steeped in neoliberal values, policy-making, and counterintuities
regarding helping kids and producing valued work, and interlacing them with the
peculiar “gold” that is departmental dysfunction, I reflect and wonder why I’m
still standing. Given the financial stresses in place as we struggled (and
struggle) with student loans (Yes, I was on fellowship at UVa, but…), preschool
costs, medical bills, and basic costs-of-living as a family with two parents
from poverty (though more so for me than for my wife) still running from their
own specters and that all of this was happening in what should have been my
formative tenure-“earning” (academia is no meritocracy, though surviving its bureaucracy
entails pretending like it is. Hence my quotation marks) years, perhaps I
should be surprised I lasted as long as I did in academia.
And, let’s face it:
By the time one nears his or her 40s, the cheering crowds of supporters eager
to see a young person like me make good dwindle away with the addition of years
which themselves strip one from title of “young person.”
Surely there are those
who experienced worse than I did growing up and who have earned tenure and have
happy, content lives. I think of them and remind myself that part of the
problem with having Americans acknowledge mobility inequality is American’s penchant
for letting exceptions act as the rules.
 |
| "Check your economic privilege, Scrooge!"/"I'll not take that from someone literally as white as a ghost, Marley!" |
As a father, the chapter makes me more cognizant of my
failings or potential failings as well.
Those who are considering divorce, have a tendency to yell, and are still
battling the ghosts of the past in the present are not offered much hope beyond
Jacob Marley-like, forewarning knowledge, however. Marley helped transform Scrooge
into a more sympathetic person, though, right?
With that tinge of hope in mind, I continue my reflections
on “Parenting” soon.
Next: Parenting, Income and Class: Explaining the Specters
of Poverty
No comments:
Post a Comment