RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2009)

These 2 chapters, unlike the first 2, really drew me in and brought up an array of emotion from me. I’ve read on many posts about how family life was growing up. I didn’t really have such a normal life growing up. I guess by normal I mean the typical American family. Neither of my parents even finished middle school. My home life was somewhat dysfunctional; my parents separated after I was grown but they didn’t get along when I was young, and my father didn’t help my mom out with us or financially either. She had the burden of being the emotional and material provider for me and my 2 much older siblings. Somehow in the midst of all that I became a good girl at school and managed to stay at the top of my class. I think I tried so hard because that made my mom proud of me, and since she didn’t have much time to give me it was a way to get attention and approval from her. I didn’t have much in the way of role models for reading and writing. My mother loved and still loves me and we have a close relationship, but I can really connect with some of Laurie’s issues. My mother was in her late 30s when she had me, so she wasn’t a young mother raising 3 kids but instead a mom who already had teenagers and wasn’t really planning on adding a new baby to an already tough situation. When a kid comes out of a less than ideal situation like that, one of two things can happen. They can be rebellious to show their anger at their situation, or they can strive and work hard to try to rise above it and make a better life for themselves than they had as children. It seems that what usually happens is the first.

Laurie was very much shaped by her caretakers. This is not a news flash for any of us. Kids pick up on the language, body language, habits, and values of those who are taking care of them daily. Parents are truly their child’s first teacher. Behaviors are learned from watching others. It just makes good sense that a child’s approach to literacy learning would be modeled after that of his parents or caregivers. I understand that Laurie’s mom and grandmother were in a bind so to speak with raising 3 young children, and they were doing the best they could. Still, I can’t help but be angry at situations like this. We have so many women out there (of all colors) who are single moms raising kids by themselves with no father around. I don’t want to anger anyone, my own dad was present but not involved in my life either. I just don’t understand how and why these women end up with 3 or more kids by the age of 25, no husband or father to help raise the kids, and no job or education to rely on. What do they think is going to happen to these kids? And why do they keep having more babies when they can’t care for the ones they have? I am in my late 30s and I have 2 girls. I am married, so I have a husband and 2 sets of grandparents to help out. I work and go to school, and it is HARD to manage things and be a good mother when I am so busy. Many of you are in the same boat and know what I mean. I just don’t understand how these ladies let themselves get into such difficult circumstances; it’s the kids who suffer because they are not getting the attention they need, as was Laurie’s problem in the story. I don’t think she had ADD; it sounds like she just needed somebody to be a good parent to her and give her the attention she needed. You can love your kids and still not be a good parent to them. Hicks even stated that she thought Laurie was reacting to stressful material and her emotions. I wonder how many kids we have on Ritalin that really are not ADD, but just come from a less than ideal home situation.

While I understand that being a single parent would be difficult, and in some cases things happen that we have no control over, it just seems to be so common these days for young women to be raising kids alone or with grandma’s help. That often creates a financially stressful situation in which the mother doesn’t have time to be a mother because she is too busy just trying to survive. Kids have to deal with so much emotional baggage, how can they be expected to behave at school and be engaged learners? There is a sentence on page 64 that says, “Amid the economic and child care stresses faced by the adults, Laurie’s needs and interests were sometimes lost.” And in addition to her, there are 2 other kids in the family who are going to be in the same situation as Laurie when they enter school!! Maybe what we need to work towards in our country is educating our young people about how difficult being a parent is. Maybe rather than trying to fix the problems of all these children we could do more parent educating and lessen the number of kids we see coming from situations like Laurie’s. It is a viscous cycle that just keeps repeating itself. Our children are our future-we have heard that so much but I don’t think some Americans really take it seriously. If we don’t do a good job raising our children, both academically and emotionally, we are headed for a big mess.

Lorie Hedrick