Some children bring home-baked cakes to nurseries for their birthdays, others pick up twenty milk buns from the discount shop, while still others come with expensive, elaborately designed cakes from the patisserie. This practice stems from an unspoken norm established by parents. In this work, I showed what birthday contributions were offered by parents in a kindergarten class of 16 children over the course of a year. This is a class in a school that brings together children from different backgrounds and social classes. My experience as a teacher in both kindergarten and primary
school shows that parents often unconsciously enter into a competition when it comes to providing a cake for their child‘s birthday. The direct comparison of these different „cakes“ illustrates
the varying financial and time resources of families. These differences
can have a direct impact on children‘s educational opportunities.

pictures: Kushtrim Memeti