This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.
As a parent who just had to enroll her only kid in daycare during the pandemic, there is definitely a need for better publicly reported information around daycare. I haven't ever been inside my kid's school (so so weird) because of covid precautions. This means the only information available is what the school self-reports to me (the person who hands them a $1500 check every month) or basic info from the state (the school is licensed). It is hard to have conversations about equitable access to types of ECE on this micro-local level when I've never even met another parent or any of my daughter's classmates.
Thanks for resurfacing this, I missed it originally! An excellent companion piece to the Nice White Parents podcast and White Kids book that I've been reading recently.
This was a great read. I loved hearing from Dr. Stockstill and her work. I lived in Salt Lake City last year, and ended up driving 15 minutes across town to take my 2-year old to preschool. This was because the two preschools near my home were were 100% white (including the caregivers in one case). My child is black--so we drove across town to make sure she had some diversity at her school. I had never thought to call SLC "segregated" until that moment--but it absolutely is, and so are its schools.
One of the schools told me, "We would love to have more diversity at our school!" as a means of encouraging us to enroll our biracial daughter. I told them--that might be great for you and your students, but not for her or our family. I would be interested in hearing how to better integrate preschools. It seems like high-quality preschools that are paid for by the state would be ideal, but also seem unlikely across the U.S.
And also! This quote really stuck with me, and kind of captures what I'm constantly trying to create for my biracial child in choosing a place to live: "For white kids, the people of color they saw were mostly people who worked for them. For the kids of color, the people of color they saw were their family, friends, neighbors and teachers."
Living in a community that's mostly white, where people or color are working for them, is not a great community for anyone, imo, but esp not for raising a child of color.
Thank you for this discussion. I shared it with my local integrated schools group. We really need universal, public childcare and pre-K to solve this (and many other!) problems.
My younger child had a very atypical preschool experience because he was in public special education. It was a regional program (through the Intermediate Unit, for Pennsylvanians) meaning that unlike district classes it was not subject to residential segregation.
His first class was housed in a 99% Black/Latino, high poverty elementary school. His second class was an inclusion class based in a daycare in a middle class, 90%+ white neighborhood. There was some control within the class itself since the IU employed the teachers and therapists for the special education kids, but the atmosphere and physical infrastructure of the two schools was incredibly different. It was really striking to see it up close.
"They had real insights about society and inequality. Stuff like, “people from our neighborhood don’t take taxis, we ride the subway.”
Interesting. Here in the UK, we can judge the level of poverty by the frequency of taxis - and now Ubers - calling in a street. The poorer the street, the more often taxis appear. I've no idea how that can be, growing up with little spare cash and now at 55yo living on Universal Credit I use my bicycle and the train. Perhaps someone can explain.
The occasional taxi ride is faaaar cheaper than owning a car, and generally also cheaper than multiple train tickets if you are a family or group. The smaller your living space the more difficult it is to store (multiple) bicycles, and impoverished areas tend not to have secure outdoor bike storage either.
The occasional taxi ride is much more expensive than a bus ride, and my town has plentiful buses. Owning and storing bikes is not impossible if you want to do it.
Bus rides require using specific routes on specific schedules which can be time consuming or inconvenient. If you're working several jobs, the cost difference between a bus and an uber is made up for in the time savings.
It's like comparing the "expense" of convenience foods to homemade. Sure, it's more expensive to buy something fast or readymade, but often when you're poor, time is the real commodity.
This was a fantastic, a challenging and educating read. Thank you AHP and Dr. Stockstill!
As always, there's no such thing as "other people's kids".
As a parent who just had to enroll her only kid in daycare during the pandemic, there is definitely a need for better publicly reported information around daycare. I haven't ever been inside my kid's school (so so weird) because of covid precautions. This means the only information available is what the school self-reports to me (the person who hands them a $1500 check every month) or basic info from the state (the school is licensed). It is hard to have conversations about equitable access to types of ECE on this micro-local level when I've never even met another parent or any of my daughter's classmates.
Thanks for resurfacing this, I missed it originally! An excellent companion piece to the Nice White Parents podcast and White Kids book that I've been reading recently.
This was a great read. I loved hearing from Dr. Stockstill and her work. I lived in Salt Lake City last year, and ended up driving 15 minutes across town to take my 2-year old to preschool. This was because the two preschools near my home were were 100% white (including the caregivers in one case). My child is black--so we drove across town to make sure she had some diversity at her school. I had never thought to call SLC "segregated" until that moment--but it absolutely is, and so are its schools.
One of the schools told me, "We would love to have more diversity at our school!" as a means of encouraging us to enroll our biracial daughter. I told them--that might be great for you and your students, but not for her or our family. I would be interested in hearing how to better integrate preschools. It seems like high-quality preschools that are paid for by the state would be ideal, but also seem unlikely across the U.S.
And also! This quote really stuck with me, and kind of captures what I'm constantly trying to create for my biracial child in choosing a place to live: "For white kids, the people of color they saw were mostly people who worked for them. For the kids of color, the people of color they saw were their family, friends, neighbors and teachers."
Living in a community that's mostly white, where people or color are working for them, is not a great community for anyone, imo, but esp not for raising a child of color.
This was such an excellent interview, thank you. I am so glad to have learned about Dr. Stockstill.
Thank you for this discussion. I shared it with my local integrated schools group. We really need universal, public childcare and pre-K to solve this (and many other!) problems.
My younger child had a very atypical preschool experience because he was in public special education. It was a regional program (through the Intermediate Unit, for Pennsylvanians) meaning that unlike district classes it was not subject to residential segregation.
His first class was housed in a 99% Black/Latino, high poverty elementary school. His second class was an inclusion class based in a daycare in a middle class, 90%+ white neighborhood. There was some control within the class itself since the IU employed the teachers and therapists for the special education kids, but the atmosphere and physical infrastructure of the two schools was incredibly different. It was really striking to see it up close.
"They had real insights about society and inequality. Stuff like, “people from our neighborhood don’t take taxis, we ride the subway.”
Interesting. Here in the UK, we can judge the level of poverty by the frequency of taxis - and now Ubers - calling in a street. The poorer the street, the more often taxis appear. I've no idea how that can be, growing up with little spare cash and now at 55yo living on Universal Credit I use my bicycle and the train. Perhaps someone can explain.
The occasional taxi ride is faaaar cheaper than owning a car, and generally also cheaper than multiple train tickets if you are a family or group. The smaller your living space the more difficult it is to store (multiple) bicycles, and impoverished areas tend not to have secure outdoor bike storage either.
The occasional taxi ride is much more expensive than a bus ride, and my town has plentiful buses. Owning and storing bikes is not impossible if you want to do it.
Bus rides require using specific routes on specific schedules which can be time consuming or inconvenient. If you're working several jobs, the cost difference between a bus and an uber is made up for in the time savings.
It's like comparing the "expense" of convenience foods to homemade. Sure, it's more expensive to buy something fast or readymade, but often when you're poor, time is the real commodity.