can't get esc_attr to work but esc_textarea does

Here’s an example line of code for a textbox input:

'<input class="custom-fields custom-fields-textbox" type="text" name="', $field['id'], '" id="a_', $field['id'], '" value="', esc_attr ($meta ? $meta : $field['default_textbox']), '" /><br />',

That doesn’t work, but replace esc_attr with esc_textarea and it does work. Meaning the relevant characters are encoded.

Ditto with this:

$allowed_html = array('strong' => array());
		$meta = wp_kses($meta, $allowed_html);
		$meta = esc_attr( $meta)

Again, esc_attr doesn’t work but esc_textarea does.

I’m stuck.