You can’t just fake community, you have to build it with actual trust and connections. This is something I think about a lot because my kid goes to a very diverse school. It’s a relatively poor public school that one day, not so long ago, opened up a Montessori stream within the school to run in parallel with its regular classrooms. So, between its mainstream school families and its Montessori school families it now has this super diverse school population – there are hippies, army families, surgeons, homeless parents, grandparents with custody, teenage parents, drug dealers, a quite famous street artist, Christians and Muslims (and atheists), Aboriginal families and recent immigrant families, and lots of overlap between groups.. and all these different cultural backgrounds just bobbing about in the population there. It is fascinating, and it mostly works very well as a school community, although it must have been a hell of a transition for the old school community when it first started taking in Montessori families.
There’s still some caution between various groups of parents but overall it’s very cohesive. I think the secret to its cohesion is not so much its warm school spirit, though there is some of that, but more that everyone is forced to tolerate one another because no one particular group of parents is big enough to dominate the school culture. Long may that balance be held. (And it may be difficult to do that, because the Montessori stream has been very successful in attracting students). But we’re also all sharing space and having repeat interactions with one another, so we have to get on with tolerating one another, too. And we’re all doing something annoying to someone in that school population.
The moment that stuck out for me was the time I saw one of the mothers standing and breastfeeding her three year old in the middle of the school grounds in front of everyone. No big deal for me, at the time I was still secretly breastfeeding my own three year old at home, but this school isn’t a particularly ‘crunchy’ school, believe me, you’re just as likely to see a parent feeding a can of Coke to their kids. Everyone has to try and tolerate one another so no-one bothered scowling at the breastfeeding, they got on with their day instead. Maybe parents have had enough to do with this mother before that they also saw her as an ordinary person in their school rather than an Extreme! Breastfeeder!
I don’t know for certain.
Anyway, having my kid at this school has made me realise how much I am otherwise absent from my local community – I work and socialise mostly in the inner-city, for instance. Now suddenly, I have got to know and care about families in the local community whom I otherwise would never have met. And suddenly, I am aware of prejudices and stereotypes in myself that I didn’t admit I still carried. Classism, it runs deep.
This interesting article in The New York Times about people trying to help one another in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy talks about some of these issues. Basically, you can really fuck this ‘community’ thing up easily and hurt people with your big opinions if you’re not really part of a community.
As volunteers with the makeshift relief efforts have applied their own rules on how to dole out relief — telling people where to wait and enforcing limits on how many blankets or food items storm victims receive — some have entered the more fraught area of applying their own values to those they are helping.
As she gave out diapers and cases of infant formula to storm victims, Bethany Yarrow, 41, a folk singer from Williamsburg who has been volunteering with other parents from the private school her children attend, said she was shocked by the many poor mothers in the Arverne section of the Rockaways who did not breast feed. The group, she said, was working on bringing in a lactation consultant.
“So that it’s not just ‘Here are some diapers and then go back to your misery,’ ” she said.
That sort of response has rankled Nicole Rivera, 47, who lives in a project in Arverne, where the ocean sand still swirls up the street with every passing vehicle. “It’s sad, sometimes it’s a little degrading,” she said as she stood in line in a parking lot waiting for free toiletries.
Ms. Rivera said that she was thankful for the help, but that its face — mostly white, middle- and upper-class people — made her bitter.
Oh thanks so much for this post, it resonated so strongly with me in terms of what I have been experiencing and thinking through, in this, my daughter’s first year of school. We moved to a large-ish country town last year and she started school at the large-ish public scjhol which is very diverse though not as diverse as it could be given there’s a Steiner school in the town so most middle class leftict and/or hippy types seem to send thei kids there. To be honest many of them send their kids there so they don’t have to engage fully with the broader community. So while diverse, there is a lack of crunch factor to the school which has meant that we are very aware of ourselves as a highly privileged minority as strawbale house dwelling, organic food eating, very well educated lesbian mothers who advocate for things like permaculture gardens and more creative arts. Yep, total cliches we are. In lots of ways it has been great in how it has challenged us on some of our deeply held but kinda hidden class snobbery. When we lived in Sydney we associated primarily with people who were as privileged as us but now we’re all mixed in together and it is wonderful
and important but it’s also a bit confronting at times. Yes classism it does run deep, very deep. Turning one’s nose up at the poor is almost like the last acceptable prejudice. I think of how many times I hear good, conscious,socially aware people writing someone off as a bogan or a redneck and it makes me realise how deeply embeeded classism is. Oh we can be a smug lot us educated leftist types. Yeah so working at finidng language that doesn’t patronise or dismiss but is genuinely inclusive is a really interesting and I think important aspect of being a part of a truly diverse community.
Thanks for the really thought-provoking post. I live in a rural area that is split between being a bedroom community for those that work in the bigger city and the “native” citizenry who have lived here for generations. As we start figuring out where our son will go to school, we are realizing our classism and trying to figure out how to deal with it.
Interesting. That article reminds me of the London bit in Orwell’s “down and out in Paris and London”. ESP the lines, waiting and charity from a prescriptive moral position different from your own.
We have a bad case of ‘communities’ here. ;-).
To all reports it was pretty dire here a couple of decades ago with a lot of hostility between the original Anglo suberbaniseres of this bit of ex swamp and a Greek influx starting in the sixties. As is the ‘strayan way the Greek community and markets are now considered drawcards and the community is so diverse that I doubt that there is a majority of residents that hail from any particular background.
This is really apparent at the primary school and, as it seems for you, it really seems to work. I’ve lived in diverse communities at uni and in inner cities and ‘bohemian’ enclaves, but this is my first experience of it in the suburbs it is a lot of fun. Please excuse the rambley comment.
What is also awkward is when some people you know denigrate ‘bogans and rednecks’ and when you don’t fit that description yourself but your family / family friends do… Anyway, I loved this post, very thought provoking. I see this kind of co-exising in my regional town a lot, we have the alternative-lifestyle people on one hand and the people who come from old farming stock on the other… oh and then you get people coming in from the cities. But then I grew up here and so having lots of people with different ideas around seems normal to me (even if we’re all still pretty mono-cultural and mostly anglos).
Just read the New York Times article and the comments – the sense of unchecked privilege in many of the comments is outstanding and can be summed up as:
‘But, but, we are helping…why aren’t they grateful?’
Best comment:
I wonder if…those who disparage poor women for bottle-feeding their infants have ever worked second- or third-shift in a hospital, nursing home warehouse or factory; know what the hours are like for a low-seniority bus driver in New York, where transit runs 24 hours; or have cleaned offices for a living (hint: that’s a 9-to-5 job, except that’s p.m. to a.m.) You have virtually no control over your time; you don’t have privacy to pump breast milk; and you are flat-out exhausted – and you very well could be a single parent, doing it all alone. And now your life has been turned upside down by a hurricane, and somebody wants to refer you to a lactation consultant because she thinks you’re not a good-enough mom. Jesus wept.
i’m just glad stuff like this is being covered; i can’t help but wonder if part of it is the relative success of horizontal efforts (like Occupy Sandy right now), first with Hurricane Katrina and now in places like Rockaway.
Not that trying-to-be-in-solidarity helping types can’t be condescending as well, but that they’re at least trying not to be, and getting some conflicting media coverage to the usual Heroic Response Team thing.
Is there something more to the lactation consultant story that I’m missing? It’s entirely appropriate to have a lactation consultant present in relief efforts that involve women and infants. Not 100% of the families will be 100% formula feeding, swooping in and handing out heaps of random formula without any informed support can and does substantially undermine the efforts of women to breastfeed under difficult circumstances, and in addition even for families who don’t intend on long term breastfeeding, a little help at the right time can be very helpful. For example, there may be newborns who are currently formula fed who are going into crowded, unsanitary conditions in relief centres, where even a few days or a week of colostrum or transitional milk may help protect them from infection risks. Lactation consultants can be involved in helping centres set up appropriate breastfeeding facilities, assisting with any expressing that needs doing, help women who are finding it difficult to breastfeed in their changed cirumstances, AND assist with safe formula sanitation that can be very difficult in relief centres, etc etc etc. There is a huge body of work on this, the WHO and UNICEF have relevant, evidence-based guidelines that apply, and anyone doing relief work should be aware of them.
Obviously I don’t support guilt or shame techniques – never have, never will – but is the very existence of lactation support being considered inherently guilt-inducing?
I also wondered if there was more to the story than what I read.
My read was that the woman being interviewed didn’t know about any of the things you just mentioned, which are indeed very important (and even more important areas that no longer have secure, safe water following a disaster, or hot water to sterilize bottles properly). Her leap seems to have been – OMG poor people don’t breastfeed! We will send them an LC so they can learn better! The presence of an LC is not inherently guilty producing, but the woman’s train of thought appears to be full of condescending assumptions. Just the fact that she appeared surprised that poor women breastfeed at lower numbers that affluent white women is a red flag.
That’s how I read it too Perpetua. She didn’t mean to be condescending and thought she was genuinely being helpful, and no doubt was to women wanting help with breastfeeding or unaware that they might be able to do some breastfeeding (I didn’t know this either), but didn’t realise how her actions would be perceived. I have to admit that I recognise this behaviour having done it myself. But I think I’m getting better. I hope so.
The red flag in the lactation consultant story is that “she was shocked by the many poor mothers in the Arverne section of the Rockaways who did not breast feed. The group, she said, was working on bringing in a lactation consultant. ‘So that it’s not just ‘Here are some diapers and then go back to your misery,’ she said.”
So not a lactation consultant to help current breastfeeders deal with the upheaval of circumstances. A lactation consultant to tell women whose milk has already dried up that they are living in misery. Because the only reason for not breastfeeding is not having heard the gospel. Because poor women never have to work at jobs that don’t allow for keeping an infant with you or expressing milk. No, it’s all just ignorance on the part of the mothers. /snark
In the U.S., women who breastfeed at all usually only do it for six weeks. Because—really because, this time—maternity leave is six weeks maximum. And if you have a crummy cashier’s job in a convenience store, there’s nobody to cover your breaks, so breaks don’t happen, so you can’t express milk, and overtime is routine and unpredictable, so if you want to keep a roof over your baby’s head you put it on a bottle and go back to work. And this is the environment into which an affluent woman with a toy job comes and says you need to be educated about why you should start breastfeeding during one of the most stressful events of the year.
Amen.
This idea that we should offer education to convince women who aren’t breastfeeding that they should, instead of finding out what removable barriers exist for women who want to, and removing them, gets actively in the way of real breastfeeding support.
Though i do think she’s thinking about the misery of living without electricity or heat or running water, not the misery of feeding your baby with a bottle.
I love this post, I am also adjusting and accepting and freaking out about the community I have landed in with a school age child and an extended period of underemployment. You always write so eloquently about the issues that I struggle to make sense of and become very preoccupied with. I don’t know how my story will end. I’m struggling to find my place and feel pretty isolated where I live. Classism does seem to be the last acceptable unabashed whinging point for people. I have found alot of it amongst both the parents and the teachers of the Montessori school my son attends, but the mainstream primary school we enrolled him in at the beginning of the year was so obsessed with everyone conforming to a depressing, prescriptive version of learning and life that there seemed little choice but to return to Montessori. The learning environment has been wonderful but the school gate has been hard. Our family just doesn’t seem to quite fit. I think also I just find large groups and enforced cohesion very difficult. I hated school and I’m not enjoying being a school parent.
[…] This research highlights one of the many ways in which opportunity gets trapped within particular groups of advantage. Fascinating isn’t it, and really alarming? I see this a lot when I watch parents from different socio-economic groups interacting with their children around the very diverse school that my daughter attends. […]