Page 138 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

In search of a ‘good mix’ 131
It seemed to be confined largely to white middle-class mothers and involved
the recitation of classed and raced norms.
Teresa mentioned several times in her interviews that none of her son’s
friends will go to the school that he was most likely to get into, and this
appeared to be a central concern. The fear was about who would her son be
socialising with, or whether there would be enough appropriate children for
him to socialise with. Teresa cited the experience of a friend in contributing
to her decision not to send her son to the nearest school:

It is interesting because Harry goes to a private nursery now, ...and
this friend of mine, talking to her, it’s only gradually dawned on both of
us sort of the differences, and it wasn’t a conscious thing, it was just be-
cause it was a 5-minute walk and we got a place, ...but...my friend’s
son is the same age, similar age, there are no party invitations, there’s
no... the social infrastructure is very different, there is no sort of play
dates at people’s houses, you can go back to a house after lunch, and it
never even occurred to either of us that would or would not happen, it
just hadn’t entered our sight. It was first-time mothers experiencing our
children going to nursery. And that’s pretty depressing really. I mean,
very nice for Harry, but it hadn’t even dawned on me or her that that
might be absent.
(Interview 18)

Not only did the children miss out on particular kinds of social activities,
but so too did the mothers, as their home-based social life was intercon-
nected with their children’s. Deborah pointed out that much of her future,
mother-based, social life would depend on the people she met at her son’s
primary school. This concern with socialising meshed with that of cultural
identity. There was a concern, I believe, that, without sufficient white mid-
dle-class peers, the children would miss out on the learning process involved
in activities such as going to friends’ houses for tea, being taken out. Thus,
learning ‘race’ and class were central to being a ‘normal’ child at a ‘normal’
school.
Liz, a middle-class woman who lived in Camberwell and therefore was
not part of the Clapham group, had older children (aged between 7 and 10)
and, particularly as she worked part time, she was heavily involved in the
‘going home for tea scene’. In the following extracts, she made clear its raced
and classed nature:

Liz: I mean obviously there is quite a big social class difference be-
tween a family like ours and families that live very close by. And
there are certain differences, it is more difficult to have the level
of social contact that I imagine one might have in an area where
all the families came from a similar background. I mean one of
the things that happens is that we have children here and they