It’s my fault for poorly wording the comment “class isn’t formal in the US”.
Where really it’s more “class is defined in so many different ways that it’s tough to know what it means, but damn does it serve to keep people down”
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What do you think is the best /happiest class to grow up in? Because we talk about privileges but I think upper and even upper middle comes with A Lot of pressures and expectations.
I think middle, maybe the top of lower middle is actually a good environment for growing up… But we are all biased toward our experiences somewhat!
ETA I’m thinking good/happy childhood experiences but also skills (and… emotional patterns? Like confidence?) learned for adulthood. I think middle class/income teaches those well.
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There are plenty of pressures and expectations when you grow up broke too. Pressure to help pay your family’s bills out of your own minimum wage job before you are even an adult. Pressure to not try out for sports or activities at school because that’s one more expense you add to the household. Pressure to go further than your parents did so that way you never have to live like that again, but also so you can make it so THEY never live like that again.
I got a speeding ticket in high school. We didn’t eat meat that month. I’ll take upper middle class pressures any day of the week.
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That was a given! I didn’t think anyone would pick “growing up in poverty is best”. And if someone feels that way I am very interested.
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This wasn’t poverty, we didn’t qualify for food stamps or other assistance. Lower middle class. Both my parents worked, they owned our house. Each person in the house of driving age had a car. We looked middle class, but we lived very much on the edge.
My parents lost their house while I was in college. Went bankrupt and mailed in the house key. There is a part of me that will never not wonder if I hadn’t taken another job in school to send back money, they wouldn’t have had to do that. I paid their water bill out of my federal work study income, but I used to contribute more.
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I think the happiest one is stability. Which isn’t a class of itself, but has greater chance from middle-middle and upwards. Stability is financial but also emotional stability of parents. It doesn’t mean living in one place, but the lack-of-fear that the rug will suddenly be pulled out from under you.
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Your family probably had higher assets /income but less financial stability than mine. We lived on dad’s grad student stipend until I was 11, then post docs until I was in college (not known for high pay…). Instability came from immigration issues (where will his next job be? Will the visa get renewed? Luckily before Trump…). I cried over college applications out of fear of being deported if we couldn’t afford it. I was definitely lucky things worked out… But those issues weren’t specifically class or income related. Bad luck and difficult circumstances happen at all income levels…
I think not being able to rely on 7 paid extracurriculars and exclusive camps like some of my friends taught me to do worthwhile things on my own. I think roadtripping and camping and visiting family abroad were better, in the end, than band trips to Italy. I’m glad I had time to learn to sew and knit and cook and craft and even clean.
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That’s a really good point.
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Same! The lack of total chaos makes everything easier, from studying to not losing your damn mind, lol. IME the way women are treated is also much better at upper middle compared to working class. In general, of course. Like, what is considered acceptable behavior from men is different. Children are treated much more softly too. Families seem overall more functional.
You can also nurture all your talents at upper middle and not have any fears of survival (I’ve never had real poverty fear, I don’t mean to imply I have). Individuality is supported and celebrated at upper middle instead of ostracized and mocked. It’s ok to be good at school and bad at sports, or good at art and bad at math, or good at math and bad at theatre or good at sports and good at theatre. It’s a much softer and more open culture in some ways, but I agree with what @LadyDuck said too; happy is about home life.
I think people who are born and raised rich do miss out on certain skills, like you said @galliver . They seem more afraid to me, in general. It seems like they’re really quick to deem things unfixable or impossible, to think people are mostly bad, things won’t work out, everyone is greedy, the world gets worse and worse, etc. I don’t think the issue is strictly money, though.
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This is an interesting struggle of the foster care system.
Placement with family is considered best, as long as it is safe. But often infants have people who want to foster-to-adopt. Many of these parents are resentful when children are taken from their placements to return back to their family, who might live in poverty, when they could have instead been adopted to an upper middle class lifestyle where they would be “better off”.
During the foster care certification and training process, you have to agree to work toward reunification as the best goal; but many people don’t really believe that.
There are still plenty of people who think wealth deserves children, and poverty does not. (‘Why did you have kids if you can’t afford them?’) This line of thinking is probably why it is so hard to get social services in this country. People still view poverty as a choice.
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If looked at culturally and divorced from economics, I’d say that I’d take a mix of lower to middle class. Lots of great family values and community that come from experiencing strife and needing to band together, and middle class culture usually comes from a place of stability mixed with needing hands on know how. That said, one thing I really admire from upper class is the appreciation of quality and beauty for its sake.
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I don’t think it’s strictly money either, but I think class plays a role, which we have general consensus isn’t just money?
@anon51297825 I can see how that would play out but that’s really sad. I do think there is some separation between “I want to raise my kids even though I’m in poverty” vs “I want to raise my kids in poverty.” Anyway I totally see why you mention it…I often wonder how many issues especially classified as neglect could be resolved by spending money on families rather than taking kids away? (Obviously there are also completely non financial issues that exist, too.)
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Yes, I agree @galliver. I was just reiterating because I think it’s not that hard to fix the issues of the upper middle because the consequences are so low and it’s only cultural. It’s really hard to fix the working class issues because the consequences are so high and it’s both cultural and financial.
Problems of the upper middle are mostly about feelings, understanding, perspective, setting expectations, etc. And those people (now me! yay!) have all the resources in the world to choose not to conform. It’s totally possible to go to an elite school and not get swept up in consumerism, toxic selfishness, etc. It’s possible to be raised rich (i mean upper middle income) and do tons of volunteering so that you start to realize how abnormal your situation is. You can choose to live in an economically and ethnically diverse area and have friends who are working class. It’s possible to have other values (cultural, religious) that don’t align with upper middle class consumerism and still fully participate as an upper middle class person.
Problems of the working class are more about survival, basic respect, familial instability, abuse, predatory lending/gov’t systems, lack of healthcare, poor education, etc. If you’re working class and men treat you like garbage…there’s nothing you can do about it. If you complain about your boss grabbing your ass, well get in line, that happens all the time. If you’re a foster kid your voice is less than nothing. If your school is shitty you can graduate high school and barely be able to read, American illiteracy rates are shocking and very much along wealth/racial lines. If you get discriminated against for having a disability, you can’t even sue, and you might not even know how! You just have so much less control.
So I think the problems of upper middle are entirely cultural and easy to opt out of. I think the problems of working class are cultural and financial, and impossible to opt out of.
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I don’t want it to seem like I’m trashing my upbringing. I’m feeling guilty and like I’ve come across as ungrateful, so here are my favorite things about working class culture, because some of it is really great.
Summary
Working hard is celebrated and not considered a hardship or something unfair. It is assumed that some aspects of work will be unpleasant, and that is also not seen as unfair. The pay is what makes it fair.
Taking care of people who can’t take care of themselves is also considered a normal part of life, and not unfair.
People have reasonable expectations from life. They generally want stability, a decent job, and a decent family, and are happy with those things. They don’t expect to live in some sweeping novel of one lone person finding meaning and changing the world.
There is way less perfectionism. The idea that people make mistakes and are imperfect is more entrenched. This leads people to be less hard on others, IMO. Children have lower expectations for parents and vice versa. People assume the best in most cases and give one another grace and the benefit of the doubt.
People really help each other, and not just financially. Car stuck? Want to add a room on your house? You don’t need to hire people, just ask neighbors (you might not even have to, because they’ll probably volunteer). Old people are more incorporated in society, even if they have no family, because they are adopted by their neighbors.
Independence happens younger. Some basic life skills are learned earlier, like cleaning, cooking, yard work, animal work, machinery stuff, scheduling things yourself, taking care of problems, etc. Lots of people get their first jobs at a younger age and are expected to pay for their own school clothes, etc. I think this breeds confidence and a lack of complaints about “adulting”.
Kids have way more freedom, though I admit this may be because I was rural working class. I was not scheduled in lessons and “playdates” as a little kid. I was in the woods or fields far out of my parents’ view for most of the day most summers. We went home for lunch and dinner, but other than that we had free run of a lot of space. More independent play leads to better critical thinking, more creativity, etc. I was very surprised at how reliant my upper middle class peers were on their parents to solve problems for them! Even well into their teens and twenties!
People consume less, in certain ways. Consumption of cigarettes and fast food is higher, no doubt, and lots of people buy brand new cars, but almost all other stuff is far lower. People rely less on consumption for entertainment. Entertainment is building your own treehouse or hosting a block party talent show or having neighborhood baseball games (for real, we did all this). Everything fun isn’t paying for an event, paying for travel, paying for restaurants, paying for spas, paying for enrichment classes, etc. People make their own fun and it’s often wayyyy more fun and inclusive because there is no barrier to entry.
People are really invested in the community and extremely generous even if they have to put themselves in danger. When our town flooded really badly the damage was mitigated because nearly every able bodied man (or teen) went out immediately with no questions asked, and started making and stacking sandbags. Women were pulling people out of buildings in motor boats that they brought from home. Older women brought food and drinks to workers and served them all day long. Families with big houses let people live in their homes when they were destroyed. Construction companies donated tons of stuff. People with trucks were delivering supplies. It was mobilized so fast and with so little effort because no one asked “why do we have to do this? shouldn’t some organization do this for us? what about my lost wages? this isn’t fair!!!” Instead, people responded with insane generosity and without any later bitterness. I’ve seen this over and over again in all kinds of ways.
So yeah, I just wanted to add this balance because it was weighing on my heart.
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I like reading all this.
Mr. Meer comes from working class culture and I come from middle class “keep up with the Joneses” culture. I’m definitely way, way more like to want to throw money at a problem by hiring someone to come out to fix something, he’s more likely to want to try to tackle it himself. Sometimes it makes sense - resolving minor plumbing or car stuff on our own - sometimes it doesn’t - putting new posts in for our fence (definitely not a one-person job and we had an infant at the time so I wouldn’t have been able to help). For me, that’s just what you do, you just call someone else to solve the problem for you and hope the bill isn’t too high (like, not higher than you’d prefer, not “too high” in the sense of not being able to pay for other things until the next paycheck comes in).
But now that I’m raising a kid I make a point of having him “help” me build things or fix things along with telling him if he breaks something then tough luck it’s broken. Maybe we can fix it but it won’t be the same as it was before. Not that I was raised to think breaking things was fine, but fixing things and the value of the knowledge about how to fix things was not valued.
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Yeah I have seen this a lot in upper and middle class culture. It’s like, knowing how to do things is seen as a waste of time because it’s not academic or elite. A lot of homemaking stuff is really looked down on too, but so is stuff like mowing your own lawn or fixing your car.
True story: When we moved to the fancy town our neighbors thought my dad was hired help because he was doing yard work. I am not kidding. Two different people approached him and asked if he could mow their lawns too. When they realized we lived there they asked why he was mowing his own lawn. Like, I don’t know if they thought he was conducting an academic study or what! The funniest part is the “lawn” was like a postage stamp. Way less than 1/4 of an acre even and totally flat. It probably took like 20 minutes to do the whole thing.
Honestly, I think some upper middle class people don’t even realize what a premium they pay for convenience. How do you (general you) know what a good deal is on a meal if you can’t cook and have no idea what ingredients cost? How do you know what a good deal is on a repair if you can’t even name the parts being repaired? It’s kind of funny.
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I’m nodding along with all of what you’ve written. These positive cultural things all ring really true for me. The stronger sense of community, the actual concrete helpfulness, the generosity and less perfectionism…those all feel like very good and healthy things.
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I think I should have asked this as “what are the benefits of being brought up in different classes?” with emphasis on long term happiness /satisfaction. Because obviously in the moment things are easier with money, but it can also become a crutch and stunt our growth and resiliency if we aren’t careful.
I totally see your points on how it’s infinitely more possible to opt out of wealth than poverty, but I would note this is only true on the parents side, kids don’t choose their upbringing and the expectations that get placed on them. They can rebel but that has other consequences…
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It’s also just a confusing topic! I think your phrasing was totally fine. I am really grateful I didn’t grow up exclusively upper middle class. I think I’d be less happy, less grateful, and less able to handle adult life if I had. I’m also really grateful I’m upper middle class now. If I were still working class now my life would be so much harder it’s difficult to even picture.
My life is easier because I grew up working class. My life is easier because I’m no longer working class. It’s…weird.
ETA: I agree with your idea that there’s a huge difference between ease and longterm happiness/satisfaction too. I think there is too much ease in too many categories for certain segments of society, and I think too much ease makes people absolutely miserable. Ditto for the inverse.
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Right there with you.
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