Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap by Orenstein Peggy

Author:Orenstein, Peggy [Orenstein, Peggy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: feminism, Psychology, Sociology
ISBN: 9780307833112
Goodreads: 17237120
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 1994-08-01T07:00:00+00:00

The “Junior Mother”

Although all black children have to negotiate the dilemma of “white” achievement, girls like LaRhonda have another, unique obstacle to success: the pressure to place their family’s well-being over personal advancement. Like many underclass African American girls, LaRhonda lives in a world of women:8 her father is often in jail, as is her mother’s boyfriend, who has lived with them intermittently for the last five years. Her uncle, as she says, “can’t even take care of his own kids.” That leaves her mother and her aunt, who are unemployed, as well as her grandmother to raise LaRhonda’s entire extended family. Despite her own illegal activity, LaRhonda sees herself as part of that community of women and, as the oldest female child of her generation, she has begun to shoulder a large share of its burden.

On a Tuesday morning late in February, I meet LaRhonda shortly after the second-period bell has rung. She has just arrived at school: although she woke up at 7:20, giving her ample time to make it to class, she first had to supervise her four youngest siblings’ morning ablutions, help them dress, make their breakfast, sign their homework, and walk them to elementary school. She arrives on campus still adjusting her earrings and dabbing at her lipstick, unsurprised that she has missed both English and gym. “I can’t help it,” she says. “I have to be responsible for my little brothers and sisters. My mom can’t do it by herself. There’s just too many of us.”

LaRhonda’s mother, Nicole, is only twenty-eight years old. Her own dreams of becoming a secretary died when she became pregnant with LaRhonda and left school after eighth grade. Two years later, she had another child by the same man, and subsequently has had four more with her current boyfriend. On the occasions when we’ve spoken, Nicole has talked about going back to school and getting her degree, maybe even learning a trade. But according to LaRhonda, her mother has said that before: lack of money and child care and her regular pregnancies always get in her way.

LaRhonda and I walk across the schoolyard, a desolate expanse of concrete and asphalt surrounded by a metal fence, and settle in on a bench from which we can see her gym class engaging in rigorous calisthenics. “I used to look up to my mother a lot,” she says, gazing out at her classmates in their red-and-yellow uniforms. “But now I see she lives in the projects and she’s on welfare and can’t get no job because she didn’t make it out of high school. It’s no life, no life.”

As LaRhonda talks, I find myself thinking about Becca at Weston. Like Becca, LaRhonda sees her mother as ensnared by the circumstances of womanhood; she, too, believes that, as the eldest daughter, she is obliged to alleviate her mother’s suffering in a way that her brother, for instance, who is just a year behind her in school, is not.9

“I take care of my mother,” she says scornfully, when I ask if he pitches in.

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