(No [More] - I did it as a comment instead due to length)

I know I have. I was born in Australia into a poor, white working-class family who'd emigrated from the north of England some years before. We returned to the UK when I was a child.

I suppose the American equivalent would be 'poor white trash'. My dad drank, and spent his money buying rounds for his mates in the pub whilst we ate toast for dinner. The house was shabby, a two-up, two-down, with an outside toilet and no bathroom. The only heating was a coal fire in the living room. No car, no colour TV, just an old black and white one that you had to bash on the side sometimes to stop the picture rolling. We ate no fresh food, just things from tins and packets, served with spongy white bread and margarine made from chemicals.

There were few books in the house (I remember a bible, a dictionary, a woefully out-of-date encyclopaedia and an atlas which dated from the days of Queen Victoria's British Empire), no conversations or discussions about things, I was shouted at and hit a lot and I'm fairly certain it never occurred to my parents that I was entitled to my own opinions, wishes and feelings. "Children should be seen and not heard" was my father's mantra, often accompanied by the belt. Hitting children was socially acceptable. The only time we ever went out was when my dad took us (leaving mum at home) to the local working men's club where we'd sit in the corner with a bottle of Vimto inhaling the smoke from a thousand Capstan Full Strength.

Racism and homophobia were the norm (although they weren't described as such then) and those were the values I grew up with. Anyone 'different' was to be despised. It took me a long time to learn new values, the old ones were so ingrained.

My parents were buying their little hovel on a mortgage, and they abhorred people who lived in council houses. I suspect this is probably because, when they returned from Australia, they were expecting to be given a council house but didn't qualify for one. So it was a disdain borne of resentment.

The worst sin you could commit in my mother's eyes was being 'common'. But we were common as muck.

My older sister went to a secondary modern school, but I passed the 11-plus and went to a grammar school. I believe education was the saving of me. I'm the first person in my family ever to work in an office or get a degree.

Education and leaving the intellectually dead, morally repressive town in which I grew up saved me.

My sister stayed in the town. She has never lived anywhere else, and has only left it for a week at a time to go to Skegness every couple of years or, rarely, to come down to visit me for a weekend.

She does the same job my mother did (school dinner lady, albeit she is head cook and my mother was a kitchen assistant). She lives in the same area we grew up. She's racist, homophobic and closed-minded. There are no books in her house. She adopts whatever popular sentiment is being presented by the media as her 'opinion', whether it be on the subject of asylum seekers, celebrities or Madeline McCann. Her idea of a great night out is bingo and karaoke at the local working men's club. In other words, she is the person our upbringing prepared us for. I know she is unable to relate to just about everything that interests me too.

When I visited her a few months ago, I told her in advance that I'd cook dinner, and I brought the ingredients with me. I asked her (a cook, who's been to culinary school) where her garlic press was, and she looked at me as if I was speaking in Swahili. To me, that seemed to crystallise the differences between us. Most of my friends have a garlic press, or a coffee grinder, or a juicer or a ... you get the picture. It never occurred to me (maybe it should?) that she wouldn't have one. But why would she? Most of what she eats comes from a packet or a tin, accompanied by white bread with chemical margarine. It doesn't occur to her (despite the fact that she plans menus comprising fresh ingredients every day for the kids at her school) that the food you eat at home should be anything other than that we grew up on.

I know without a doubt that I've moved away from the class into which I was born. I suppose in British terms, I'd be considered middle-class. I live in an affluent part of the country (albeit in a very modest home), I have a well-paid, 'professional' job, my values are very different from those I grew up with in terms of attitudes towards people, politics, culture, just about everything...

If I hadn't left when I did (at 17), it would have sucked me back in. As Tracey Chapman said: "Leave tonight, or live and die this way.""Fast Car"

Every time I go back to that town I get a mixture of feelings - sadness at how little the place has changed - it's bigger, much bigger, but there's still only one small theatre which struggles to survive, surrounded as it is by hundreds of pubs. Anger, because it's changed so little. And relief that I got away.

Of course, this question also applies in terms of 'downward' social movement too.

Mine is a less extreme case than essexjan's, though there are some similarities. I was born in a dead-end, former coal-mining town: my father worked in a succession on maintenance jobs at local factories, my mother at the checkout of the local Asda. My family was what one might term ‘aspirational working-class:’ education was valued, and, while there weren't many books in the house, we all had library-cards. It was a stable background: neither especially happy nor unhappy, but in no way abusive; poor, but above the breadline.

Even so, I hated the town where I grew up & studied like a bastard with the sole aim of getting away from there, which, after a few false starts, I eventually did, getting my university education, and a taste for classier food, and wine over beer, filter-coffee/espresso over instant, buying my own books over getting them from the library. And I worked at neutralising the valleys accent I felt embarrassed of.

My glib summary is that I'm working-class by birth, middle-class by education & profession, but always an aristocrat in my deluded imagination.

What was that thing I was reading yesterday that had to do with class? It was linked either from here, or mefi, but I think from here... maybe by seanyboy?

Anyway, I'm too lazy to go find. Something that was mentioned in that essay was how, often, economic class doesn't define social class - which is true of me. Economically, I've travelled downward (though if I had stayed in the U.S. and continued doing what I was doing, I would have travelled upward), but socially, I've travelled upward (in a way) from my roots, which were solidly middle, then upper-middle class, because I soon (by my early 20s) became a part of the "creative" class.

I don't think there was a trigger for me, because I always was as I was... I read constantly, so my general and social knowledge was always a lot more sophisticated than my environment of towns and small cities would account for, and my philosophies, interests, and quirks were very different from most everyone I knew. But it was moving (to New Orleans) that gave me a like social milieu and related career opportunities. When I hit that city, I thought, "my god... I'm probably the most normal person here. How utterly bizarre." It was like exhaling after 20 years of holding my breath.

So I'm a bi-class-traveller! Up and down! We don't own our own home (well, actually, we do own some property... so that's not entirely true, but it was given to us, so...), we don't have money in the bank, we don't even have a car. Economically, we are low-class, but socially, we can do what we like. We wouldn't fit with the super rich, because they have their own bubble, but intellectually, we're fluid; some of our friends are famous/rich/incredibly accomplished, some are musicians/actors/directors/artists/writers, some are teachers/doctors/technicians/engineers, and some are service staff/students/unemployed... But most of us are pretty much all the same self-selected social class that is, I guess, most generally defined by appreciation and/or expression of the arts, and politically liberal/left.

But I disagree about the garlic press; I've never used one that wasn't a chore to clean... And just smashing and chopping doesn't take more than a few seconds.

Yes, up on both economic and social which means I'm uncomfortable most of the time and get to feel guilty about it too.

But I disagree about the garlic press; I've never used one that wasn't a chore to clean... And just smashing and chopping doesn't take more than a few seconds.

But you use garlic, taz, which would mark you as a 'dangerous intellectual' in the circles I grew up in.

oh, wait... I might even be terrorist-level, because for certain things I want a garlic paste, and use the mortar and pestle (of which I have two!). whoaboy.

*calls Homeland Security, anonymously*

Great post; thanks for sharing.

My father (who is sorely missed) was born in a coal camp, and managed to escape by becoming a journalist. At one point, he wrote for the Baltimore Sun.

I used to live in a trailer park, but managed to escape by becoming a musician. Don't laugh; it's true.

Anyway, my story isn't that interesting, and I'm sure no one gives a fuck.

*********

I still don't think you can use the term social class to describe American socioeconomic strata... at least not in the same way that you would use that term elsewhere in the world.

Jennifer Lopez or Sean Combs are considered to be Upper Class. Jade Goody never will be, even though her bank book is similarly fat.

Anyway, my story isn't that interesting, and I'm sure no one gives a fuck.

Your story is already interesting, just from the little you've said, and I give a fuck.

Not so sure about the social class/America thing, though. I mean, I think you're suggesting that social class is more mobile in the U.S., because fame and money is more of a marker than family/background... but there are many countries in which talent and accomplishment is considered much more socially significant than money in terms of "class" (though I don't think there's a country that doesn't have the "important family" class bias). Or, maybe I'm not understanding you?

have you moved out of the social class (or socio-economic group if you prefer) into which you were born?

Um, maybe. I thought I had, but I realized that I was more locked out of the class I thought I was a member of than I thought I was last night. I'm 24.

Backstory: I grew up in a really insane property market in southern California (in ten years, the value of our house quintupled) and went to college in an equally pricey northern part of the state, so in my mind, there'd never been any possibility, really, of me being able to even consider living in either place. I had settled all this in my mind by becoming an English teacher abroad, which is both a fulfilling career and a lifestyle where I don't really need to worry about paying the bills as much. I'm in between contracts right now, though, so I'm living with my mom back home; my parents divorced a few years ago. She makes one-half the median income of our area, which would be enough in most other places in the US but is barely enough here, so we watch our expenses and mostly do fine, though there's a lot of balancing of late fees and avoiding of the mailbox. No savings, no investments, nothing being put away for retirement or catastrophe. (Aside: I'm trying to help her apply to college for next fall, which will be another whole story of class consciousness.)

Anyway, I was out last night with some friends from high school, and in the course of our conversation, we started talking about health care. One of us is becoming a neurosurgeon, another a lawyer, another pursuing a Ph.D. in education, blah blah blah. I am, um, not doing those things.

Neurosurgeon-in-training starts talking about how crowded emergency rooms are, how hard it is to treat everyone who comes in. I ask him if he thinks national health care is a good idea.

"Are you crazy? Why should someone who's on welfare get the same treatment as someone who's a millionaire? Why should we subsidize more expensive care for those who won't get better jobs and just pay for it themselves? That's not fair at all. And the American Medical Association (the US' doctors' org) hasn't endorsed the idea yet because they know it would be a disaster."

I could have answered his rhetorical question a lot of ways - Because I think everyone deserves health care? Because health care is a human right? Because we can afford it as long as we aren't invading other countries? Because poverty can be institutional, something you're born into, not a conscious choice to be indigent? - but I told him something technical, something about how free preventative care would eliminate a lot of ER crowding and still allow specialist care. They all started to talk really fast, so I told them I didn't have health insurance and that my parents wouldn't have a way to pay for my funeral if I was killed, or even a long hospital stay if I was seriously injured - that even the insurance to pay for these things was too expensive, let alone the "real cost," which is a bogus number invented by insurance companies ($100 for a doctor visit, $3000 for an ambulance). That shut them up right quick.

I mean, these are some of my oldest, closest friends, we went to the same high school and similar colleges, and they're remarkably diverse: kids of now-poorer divorced parents like mine, kids of first-generation immigrants from Iran and the Philippines and China. How dare I speak out about me, apparently one of them, having money problems! How dare I bring up my family's deepest worries, which cripple us and make us less ambitious for fear of risk and disaster! How dare I bring up insecurity!

One of them had earlier complained that his expected salary had dropped from $1 million to $300,000 over the last ten years. I told him that $300,000 was more than my mother would make in 9 years, and than I would make in 20. This was followed by an uncomfortable laugh.

It's almost like the Fates are telling me that no, I'm not supposed to be hanging out with these people, that my modest, emotionally-fulfilling career is actually worthless - just pennies - compared to the lawyer who will make more than the value of a house in a year. I'm angry that I feel that in the prime of my youth, thinking that I was respected among my friends for my drive and ambition in choosing to live and work abroad, that I am in their eyes actually no better than someone who doesn't deserve insurance because I haven't worked hard enough - even though I've done the same exact damn things they have. Of course, I'm right at the beginning of my adult life; things will change once I advance, I guess, but this totally sucks right now.

I really want to comment, but I'll have to wait for hours to do so properly. Nice question, Jan.

We'll be waiting, GeckoDundee.

mdonley, you really need to find new friends. I know that sounds like a snark... but I'm completely sincere.

This is a fascinating question and thread, and I'm completely stumped as to my own answer. I bet if you polled my family and friends, you'd have a huge range of different answers, because everyone measures "class" or "status" in a different way. My life compared to that of my parents is so apples vs. oranges that I'd have to write a page or more trying to compare them.

taz, luckily my friends from college, who I'm much closer with, are much more supportive and financially diverse (read: not gazillionaires-in-waiting) than this lot, most of whom have chosen to pursue very elitist, traditional professions and marry early. I don't see these scoundrels that often, so my wounds from their heartless barbs will heal soon enough!

*raises fist in defiance*

Jennifer Lopez or Sean Combs are considered to be Upper Class.

I really don't think they'd be considered 'upper class' - not by members of the US's actual upper class. They'd be considered rich, yes, but 'upper class' implies a lot of other things besides individual wealth - power, connections, education, breeding, etc.
I used to think the US had less of an economic class system until I got to know some of the very rich and powerful.

My answer is hard to make. We did not have money growing up, and no one in the family did. One set of grandparents were career Army - my grandmother a civilian employee and my grandfather a staff sergeant, which is NCO rank. My other grandfather was a master plumber and my grandmother an expert homemaker. I think you'd call these 'working class' roots, but they were all solidly employed in skilled work, and their choices of work gave them and their families a high degree of stability and opportunity. My parents didn't have college educations when I was young, but worked their way into professional jobs due to training, gradual education, and determination - my dad became an electronics engineer, and my mom a journalist.

We never had a lot of money, clothes, new cars. I was the first college grad in the family. And growing up, I was always conscious that people living very nearby had a lot more than we did. Family entertainment was often something free - a Sunday drive or a walk on the beach or a board game. The first house my family owned, when I was 10, was a small mill house bought from our grandmother. There are a lot of ways in which I had an upbringing really similar to the other white working-class kids in my town.

And yet my parents really valued education and were both very literate. We went to the library a few times a week and the house was drowning in books and periodicals. IT was always assumed that I'd be heading to college. Though our house was humble, my folks chose to live there because it was in a great, safe town where the schools were pretty good and provided excellent opportunity. When we took vacations, we drove for days to visit family instead of going to Disney or Captiva or Busch Gardens like some people I know, but they were fantastic vacations which I would now never trade for a tourist experience somewhere. Everything was a learning experience. Our manners and public presentation were policed pretty well - we're presentable.

I guess maybe we could be called lower middle class. But the definitions are problematic. When I went to college, and in my subsequent career, I've been mostly surrounded by people whose backgrounds are more privileged than my own - private schools, summer houses, graduate degrees, trust funds all over the place. It makes me feel that my background was 'poor.' But in fact, I hold my own in this environment; my education, both formal and informal was as good or better than most, and I move well enough in this world.

The truth is probably that my family is part of a long American story of gradual achievement with hard-won gains passed from one generation to the next. There has certainly been class mobility - particularly if you look at my great-grandfather, who was in service in Ireland before emigrating here in the early 1900s. But without exception and regardless of material wealth, most members of my family have always been sharp cookies, responsible people, very hard workers, and valuers of education and curiosity.

These days, like taz, I prefer the murkier, more fluid artistic/intellectual/academic elite to the (very real) wealth-and-power elite. In that social world, background matters less than personal qualities.

:), mdonley.

Thinking about this more... the idea of "class" is a social contract in which the majority of people enter into a loose agreement about what criteria constitutes various class hierarchies. Objectively, none of this is necessary at all, but, practically, humans seem to want/need/demand hierarchal structures just like most other animals.

But, there are tiers and hierarchies amid the tiers and hierarchies: "old family" is pretty much a constant among societies, and I can kind of see the engineering point here. There is a heritage of wealth (though this may, and does often dissipate), along with a heritage of noblesse oblige - the obligation toward the community that is also inherited. And then there are lesser, but still dynamic elements - such as how the community structures their internal graph of "class" using X Family as a keystone, and how that family and its members are supposed to serve as an example and inspiration in terms of manners, taste, piety, sophistication, etc. - all standards the community wants and insists upon...

In other words, there is no "class" without the agreement, consolidation, and deliberate sanction of the "underclasses".

To remove oneself from that paradigm is not difficult, it just requires... removing oneself. To a different structure... because unless one lives in complete isolation, he/she will be subjected to the rigors of class-sorting. As I see it, if advancement feels important to a person who is not born to the upper classes of his society or subgroup, he or she has two choices: remove her/himself to an environment that favors his/her own special qualities, skills, or talents - or plot and scramble like crazy to try to fight and dig and inch oneself upward on the existing ladder.

Some people who reach great heights never see themselves as socially "successful" because they never became a part of the social elite that they grew up viewing as the epitome of rank and class. Others have created their own rank and class, with themselves at the top. Many have gravitated towards groups and communities that especially regard their own particular skill or talent, and eventually find themselves socially flush. And a very few are going to be entirely befuddled and bewildered when you talk to them about such things, because they haven't ever paid enough attention to wonder about their social standing. These are the blessed. :)

I think I've changed social classes about a million times, due mostly to illness that has hampered my ability to work consistently.

Financially, I'm probably even poorer than my parents were -- I got free lunches as a kid in Mississippi -- but where my parents shopped for clothes at the local X-Mart and we went out for "fancy' dinners at Red Lobster, I'd rather have one pair of $200 jeans than 20 pairs of $10 jeans, and I'd rather eat at a decent restaurant once in awhile than at Red Lobster every day.

Besides which, having been to a nice college where all my peers were well-off, I find myself in completely different company than my parents did. So even if I have less money than my friends do, my social group is definitely the upwardly mobile destined to be upper-middle-class or more.

(At 27, it remains to be seen if I'm upwardly mobile, financially speaking.)

I don't know how well off my Mother & Father were when I was born. One night when I was really young, she bundled me out of the house and away from an abusive alcoholic husband. After that we were really badly off.

My earliest memories are of a level of poverty far in excess of those of the other kids I knew. Early on, we couldn't afford a TV, could only afford to pay the phone 6 months out of the twelve. It got better but I was always the kid who had to wear his one-size-too-big clothes to destruction. I never really had sweets and I don't remember too many toys.

Before she started doing OK, I remember my mother working 2 jobs. I suppose that's an indicator.

On saturdays also, I used to take a bag up to the pig farm up the road. I got to scrabble through the rotting potatoes which had been deemed unfit for anything but pigs and find the nearly edible ones for us. I suppose that's an indicator too.

Unlike my peers, I've only ever received about £2.00 of pocket money in my life. I've worked for the extra things I wanted since I was 14.

Even though we were quite badly off, I suffered most of my childhood for being "posh". We were underclass poor, but I was bought up with books and speaking properly and an aspiration to education. The racist white trash thing e/j mentioned permeated my life, but it never came from my parents.

When I wasn't being bullied for wearing scruffy clothes and National Health Specs, I was being bullied for being too hoighty toighty.

Even now people I meet think I had a privileged background. I did, I suppose, but it isn't the way they think.

Now, things are different.

I'm wealthier than I've ever been. I'm middle class. I have a nice house and an affordable mortgage. Although I'm far off being "rich" in real terms, I don't want for anything.

The educational & liberally moral values which were given to me as a kid are still there. People still tend to classify me as middle class and they're right. I'm middle class. Proud to be middle class.

It's a strange place to be. I don't feel that I deserve what I have, but I have it. I feel that people view me as having been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Most of them don't believe where I came from and how little we had when I was growing up.

Anyway, that's my story.

Wow. That's an amazing and wonderful story, seanyboy. This is a great post and thread. I just have to keep myself from talking too much, because every time someone posts something, I get new thoughts.

I always thought you were something special, seanyboy, and this background only proves how right I am. (I'm always right! I just can't seem to stop being right.)

According to that NYT calculator, I am doing very well indeed, especially considering I grew up working class poor in a rowhome in the city. I know I've mentioned this before, but my upbringing was interesting in that my grandparents were lucky to have bought cheap waterfront property in what later became an affluent shore town. So even though we didn't have much, we spent our summers hobnobbing with extremely wealthy, powerful families. We're talking "just don't touch the principal" rich. And you know what? The more they had, the less they cared that we had less. They had nothing to prove to anyone. It was always the upper middle class and nouveau riche who were snobby jerks. Never the truly wealthy.

I guess....I grew up upper-middle class and now would be considered in the top fifth. I said this in the blue: abuse doesn't know class; I grew up with a mother who inflicted her rage and frustration on me instead of waiting until I was nine to hire sitters so she could take art classes (this had been her major in college, but I think the main reason she went was to get her M.R.S.--though her husband is thirteen years older than she is), and a father who uses the word "woman" like anyone else would use the word "bitch"(while trying to pass himself off as gentle, emasculated martyr). I like nice things, but prefer comfortable over trendy. I drove the Honda Accord I had bought new for eleven years; if I hadn't moved to New York, I would have done the same (though if Jaguar ever comes out with a hybrid...)I live in a doorman building, but I really don't like having to be dependent on them: my needs are simply to accept packages while I'm out, to announce visitors and prevent unwanted people from entering. I can open my own doors (and would prefer to have my own key to let myself in late at night), get my own cabs and usually handle my own packages from the mail room. The building management has recently demanded an increase with the staff; there are now two doormen during the day instead of one, even though it's a fairly small building--twelve floors with three units on each and a penthouse.

I prefer to hang out with arty, genuine people rather than the ones who only care about money and those who want to milk it from them.

I did. My family was pretty much dead-on with every stereotype of rural white trash. Junky, messy house that was always in the middle of 3 or 4 unfinished repair jobs. Yard and garage full of machinery. Bizarre financial priorities (my father came into some money at one point, and blew $30k on a motorcycle and then a motorcycle trip).

Growing up, I didn't think much of it; I thought everyone's family worked pretty much like mine. Slowly, I noticed that my friends' families tended to take better care of their stuff, and would make plans on timelines longer than the day after tomorrow, and so on.

Looking back, it's clear to me that social class isn't really about money; there were some lean times, but generally my parents made enough to live on (and eventually, my father started making a lot of money as a programmer; but all of that money went into legal fees for frivolous lawsuits and-- I think-- meth). But their mental outlook was markedly different from the middle-class families I knew. They were closed-minded and defensive about everything. They prized a sort of scrubby cleverness over any sort of learning (like, the coolest form of knowledge was figuring out how to get cable tv for free). They felt like The Man was personally screwing them out of their big chances for everything, and they were bitter about this and used it to justify all sorts of silly bullshit.

They had no sense of restraint at all; my father would punch holes in the walls during football games if things went badly for the Huskers.

I dunno; from about Junior High on, I knew that I'd be getting out. It's not that I was a social climber, I just didn't want to live like my parents, and I knew it (especially as my mother descended into hard-core alcoholism). I did really well in school, and was able to get a full ride to college; and that was pretty much it, although I spent my college years and most of my twenties experiencing profound culture shock as I learned what it was like to live in the middle class.

The book The Glass Castle reminded me a lot of my childhood. My parents weren't quite that crazy or irresponsible, but they were pretty close.

the only area in which I disagree with taz is the part about removing yourself from the class structure. You can't really remove yourself - you can opt out of caring, but in the US at least, people in the upper class have a startling amount of power to determine our daily reality. By virtue of their money, donations, political power, and personal networks, they have an enormous influence over what we see and hear, who represents us, and the laws by which we live. They're involved in business, government, and the nonprofit sector and they determine a great deal of what goes on there. Their interests have a lot of sway over what appears in magazines, what towns and cities get redeveloped / rehabilitiated / gentrified and what ones carry on in a state of neglect. They determine by their greater ability to choose place of residence which school districts will be the best funded and offer the best programs and which will be subpar.

The longer I work in a field that involves both soliticiting pork from legislators and kowtowing to wealthy donors (all in the name of bringing a service to a middle- and lower-class student and family public) the more I realize that there is much less in true public control than I'd like to imagine. Power is power, and people in the highest economic and social strata have quite a bit of it, which makes a difference in the amount and kind of resources available to everyone else.

My mother is Canadian and came from an upper-middle class family. My father grew up middle class. His father, my grandfather, was a plumber and the union president. He was a violent, but functional, alcoholic. My mother became pregnant with me at a young age and married my father. That was probably the biggest mistake of her life, but she doesn't think so. They were young and had a very rough start. We were definitely in a lower class income bracket. Because of my mother's upbringing we always looked and behaved like civilized people in public. My mother had a knack for fashion and we always looked great even if our clothes came from K-mart. My mom wasn't addicted to anything. She was clean, cooked proper meals, and pretty much lived with my dad because she was stuck. She really didn't have a family support to escape to. My father, even though he was an asshole growing up, played to the public very well. All of my friends thought we had the greatest family.

I was poor growing up, but I never knew it. From the ages of birth to nine I lived in a trailer without air-conditioning in Florida. I can remember eating a lot of scrambled eggs for dinner and occasionally washing my hair with dish soap and brushing my teeth with baking soda. We didn't get too much of anything during the year. A candy bar or a McDonald's meal was extremely rare. Christmases were always extravagant, I think my parents felt guilty and always made a huge deal out of Christmas. My parents were young and there was much chaos and fighting. Around the age of 9 or 10 we moved into a rented two-story house in a respectable neighborhood. The fighting and chaos decreased and my mom had a steady job at the hospital working as a secretary. My father always worked construction when we were babies. He was a crane operator for a long time, drove a Wonder Bread truck for a little while, and worked in the grocery business for a long time. He was a meat cutter for most of his career, and then worked as meat manager for a great while. After that he became a real-estate agent and did very well. In my younger years, money problems and drinking were the root of my family's problems.

We didn't stay in the nice two-story house for long. The owner wanted to sell and we couldn't afford to buy. We moved into a rented townhouse, and life was hell. I think my father measured his success in the house we lived in and felt like a failure. There was a lot of violence and dysfunction and I failed the 8th grade because family life sucked.

When I was 14 we moved into our first house that we owned. My parents still live here today. My father's best friend was a general contractor and built it for my parents for sixty thousand bucks. My father is now retired, 57-years old, and they are financially secure.

My sister and I were the first people in our family to get a college degree. College was always drummed into our heads. We were going to college, come hell or high water.

I would now consider myself middle-class. I married a very smart, responsible, financially savvy person. Our house will be paid off in a couple years. We have plenty of disposable income. I don't have to work if I didn't want to. We hang with a lot of professional types that have a lot of flashy cars and flashy houses. If I had to guess, my husband and I probably have more actual cash that is readily available than them, but you would never know it. I am grateful for my lack of money problems. I know how much strife living paycheck to paycheck can cause.

I'm about the same as my parents, though I think of it as economic class and not social class (I'm sure if I was upper crust I'd think of it as social). Social implies circles, and I don't have circles of friends with similar backgrounds, really, more a hodgepodge.

Economics underly it all anyway, at least in the US, and the relatively free flow of money makes class not particularly hereditary (unless you inherit vast untouchable wealth, which makes your class, even in the Land of the Free, social as well as economic, and then you may as well be one of those rich relatives who does so much harm or good in a Dickens book: a fictional character not held by the bounds of narrative. I digress).

I kick it with the rich, I kick it with the poor, my daddy's a cipher, my best friend a whore. I make an undisclosed sum, my apartment is squalid; there's a week's worth of debauch folded in my wallet.

My case is somewhat different in that I don't really know what "class" I belonged to growing up. My parents were missionaries (first in Japan, then in the Philippines) and while we didn't have scads of money lying around, we were quite comfortable. In Japan we were probably equivalent to middle-class; our house was actually quite a bit bigger than the Japanese norm. In the Philippines, we lived like kings compared to the average Filipino.

Since I graduated from high school in Manila, I've bounced around on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, so I've probably descended a bit in class.

Not so sure about the social class/America thing, though. I mean, I think you're suggesting that social class is more mobile in the U.S., because fame and money is more of a marker than family/background... but there are many countries in which talent and accomplishment is considered much more socially significant than money in terms of "class" (though I don't think there's a country that doesn't have the "important family" class bias). Or, maybe I'm not understanding you?

I wasn't articulating it well is all.

In the UK, where Class is King (yes, even still), it's based on a really iron clad thing: either you're part of the gentry or part of the serfs, and completely based on bloodlines and parentage. That has obviously changed, but I can still tell if someone went to boarding school based on their accent/manner. We're told these days that 'everyone is middle class' here, but that's utter bullshit.

In America, it's nothing like that at all... it's based on money. If you do well in business, etc, you can be NEW MONEY and ascend; i.e. join the club. New Money in Britain is not granted access to the club, and neither are their kids. You have to be RELATED to OLD MONEY...

(ps thanks for caring about my story - if I get a chance I'll type a bit more out)

I've gone way, way down the socio economic scale but I ended up in the Boho Zone and I've been happy here all these years. Kind of like Taz - quite a lot, actually.

I grew up in what is usually called Old Money - lots of it. Alas, most of it is gone now but the ancestry lingers on. So I was raised to play tennis and ride horses and sail; it was expected that I would of course go to college because we all had, for generations and generations. I was (briefly) a debutante. I went to prep school (three of them; never did graduate from high school.) A lot of things were never, ever discussed in my family, like money, because that's tacky. Many things are tacky and I relish them all now. We had impeccable taste and antiques. And servants in front of whom you are never to speak about family matters. Beaches and boats and cars, horses and pedigreed dogs and cocktail parties. My parents drank a lot and threw big fancy parties occasionally and fought more or less constantly and had affairs and broke up and got back together and lost money and made money and so on. It was all kind of Cheever/Updike/Walker Percy esque. We moved a LOT. And we scorned the nouveau riche - social class in America isn't all about money. My family is snooty as hell about it - and there've been periods (not, okay, in living memory) where they were poor as church mice. Doesn't matter - you have to keep appearances up. We're DAR, daughters of the confederacy, order of the cincinnatus, plantation owning, lace curtain Irish and never, ever shall it be forgot.

When I was in art school and naturally at the bar one night a friend of mine from a similar family background said, "Look around. You can pick out the kids like us, the ones from the really, really fucked up "good" families." She was right. I don't want to go into it all here but yeah, money doesn't cure dysfunction very well and, as my brother once said bitterly, we have all the problems of rich kids and none of the advantages. This is also more or less true.

I never got along with the other kids at my socio economic level despite my mothers best attempts. Early on I gravitated to the freaks and weirdos, the misfits, the artists. When I finally got to art school I was so happy - kind of like discovering the internet and that I wasn't the only total freak in the universe.

In the meantime, of course, I had a baby at 18 and I've been a single mother more or less ever since and I've never had two dimes to rub together. Sometimes I get upset about that, jealous and sad and I wish I could own a house or a new car or travel but in the long run I guess it doesn't matter all that much. My house is full of books and art and music and people from all walks of life. I think maybe on an unconscious level I rejected the money from my family life where possibly there were other things, like hypocrisy and anger and so on, that I could have gotten rid of instead and kept some of the money making attitude but oh well. I get along quite well with my family nowadays anyway - and also we've always had artsy/bohemian/eccentrics in the family tree so it's acceptable in a weird way.

I would say my socioeconomic status is both lower than and more fluid than my grandparents' or great-grandparents', or even my parents'. They were financially secure, even (a few) modestly wealthy. The men generally had post-graduate degrees, and the women were college-educated. Judging from their diaries and correspondence, their contact with people substantially poorer or less educated would have been through patients, students, or parishioners, or through servants.

(I've just found a big box of my grandmother's correspondence from the 1930s, when she was a student at Mount Holyoke. Some is from family members and friends in the U.S. and some from family in Asia. It's fascinating.)

I'm poor. I live pretty well, considering. I'm scroungingly frugal wherever I can be, and I splash out where it counts. I have enough of a cushion to know I can take care of myself, but my income, even before I became an impoverished student, was often well below the poverty line.

I'm in my thirties and have only a partial college education. But after years thinking I would need a Ph.D. for my chosen career, I've changed paths and now plan to work toward a Masters.

I've had almost exclusively service jobs, with some managerial positions, but having dismissed my previous desire to become a professor, I now plan (hope) to work in museum design.

Some of my friends have post-grad degrees. Some are college graduates. Some have high school diplomas or GEDs and some, I imagine, do not. I don't much notice or care, and I think that's true for most of my friends.

The point is, I almost never think about my socioeconomic class, or the class of my social circle. We have widely varied backgrounds and widely varied goals. And there appears to be no classist hierarchy within the social circle.

Well, I say that, but:

Even now people I meet think I had a privileged background. I did, I suppose, but it isn't the way they think.

Interesting, and an intelligent way to express this.

Several years ago, I was having a drink with a friend, and in passing I mentioned money being a little tight. She started, then laughed. "Oh, that's funny --- I always assumed you were independently wealthy," she said.

Wha?

At this time, I was working like a dog --- a glamorously clad dog, but a dog nonetheless --- about sixty hours a week at a posh boutique, standing on my feet all day except for the time I knelt down to help customers envision a hem taken up or a seam let out.

But it's far from the first or last time that someone's made a remark like that to me.

So... does that betray the lingering shadow of a classist awareness?

I really don't think they'd be considered 'upper class' - not by members of the US's actual upper class. They'd be considered rich, yes, but 'upper class' implies a lot of other things besides individual wealth - power, connections, education, breeding, etc.
I used to think the US had less of an economic class system until I got to know some of the very rich and powerful.

Sean Combs' parties in The Hamptons are considered (or were recently) the MUST ATTEND events of the summer, are they not?

He is at least allowed to hang around with Actual Upper Class Americans and pretend to fit in, is he not?

Jade Goody can't buy her way into the summer parties in Mayfair so easily.

I'm loving the replies to this thread. Thank you.

relatively free flow of money makes class not particularly hereditary

Personally, I think this is not true. Money doesn't really flow that freely, and what people who have grown up with sufficiency don't realize is that they've been benefitting from it consistently from day one, and that they have inherited more than they think. For instance: having a car or computer given to you or sold to you for below market price from within the family; having family pay rent on your first apartments; not having to have had a regular job in high school and/or in college; not graduating from college with personal debt or student loan debt; being able to take unpaid internships because there was other means of support for living quarters or food; keeping your medical attention up to date -- these are all things which, though they don't appear as income to us, help to set the upper classes apart from the lower. All these things constitute the 'leg up' which an upper or upper-middle-class upbringing might give people, yet which we don't seem to see as hereditary - though it is, and when you haven't had any of those boosts, it's obvious when others have had them.

Then there's this stuff - example from my job. Part of my job is to run an internship program here - it's competitive and includes housing and a stipend. From about 50 applicants we take 7, and they're the most qualified - it's completely merit based. However, the other day, my boss informed me that I would be taking an 8th intern, the son of a colleague and old school buddy of his. This kid apparently screwed around after high school and messed up his chances of going to college this year. His father needs to get him out of the house, so the father 'suggested' that he 'apply' for one of my internships. My boss instructed me to put him through the usual application process - he fills out the forms, has an interview, etc. - but he will definitely be offered the internship, though his qualifications are nowhere near adequate for him to have won the internship on a competitive basis. It's not the first time I've had to take an intern for political reasons, either. I don't like it, but I don't care enough to sacrifice my own job over it. However, it's food for thought. This boy's parentage and an alumni connection are making a huge difference for him. He'll have this internship as a credit on his resume in the future, where other more qualified applicants did not. It will help him get his next internship or first job or study abroad posting. Each little benefit multiplies itself at the next rung of the ladder.

I understand this is how it works, but the interesting bit to me is that this kid is likely to never, ever know the underground machinations that resulted in his 'getting' the internship. He'll think he had the goods. Will he grow up to be one of those people that thinks the poor should just lift themselves by the bootstraps, like he did?

I basically don't begrudge anyone their family money or privilege. What I do wish is that we'd all be able to acknowledge that some are rich and some are poor because of the complex structures we've created and that we maintain. That might help those who have benefitted most from the current system do more giving back (the ol' nobless oblige) or support policy changes that would improve conditions for the classes below their own, as well.

He is at least allowed to hang around with Actual Upper Class Americans and pretend to fit in

Exactly.

Sean Combs' parties in The Hamptons are considered (or were recently) the MUST ATTEND events of the summer, are they not?

Maybe. I don't know much about him.

He is at least allowed to hang around with Actual Upper Class Americans and pretend to fit in, is he not?

Nope. He's allowed to hang around with other celebrities, their hangers-on, and people related to that or who are impressed by celebrities. At least, this is what I suspect. The Hamptons are mostly not high-class, anyway. The Hamptons are mostly bling-bling, not class.

I mean, let's find a guest list of one of his parties. Do you find a bunch of other entertainment types, entertainment lawyers, and maybe a plastic surgeon or two? Or do you see names you have to look up but find out are CEOs and CFOs of medium-large corporations, high-up state or federal judges, high-level government administrators, and a few intellectual-types around as set dressing?

Are they people at his parties Mike Myers and Sandra Bullock, or Michael Collins and Sandra O'Connor?

My folks, over the forty or so years they've been married, have moved from blue-collar working class (pops was a telephone lineman who worked on his own cars out of necessity, and moms worked a bunch of crap jobs--clerk, cook, etc.) into solid middle class (pops was a middle manager, and too busy to work on his own cars, and moms worked to get out of the house) and then, well, if not traditional upper middle class in the sense of Volvos and NPR, then certainly the wealthier end of the middle class (they're both retired, and live on a country club--pops' main hobbies are drinking and souping up his golf cart, and moms volunteers a lot).

Relative to my folks, I've gone up, in terms of education, and down, in terms of income, and kind of sideways, in terms of everything else--aiming for membership in taz's 'creative class,' or Paul Fussell's 'Class X,' or something like that. I don't think it's really possible to live outside the American class system (I might consider making exceptions for people who are mentally impaired and/or rich hermits), but it's still, I think, a good goal to aim toward. 'Living as if there was no such thing as social class' seems to be in the same kind of area as dancing like nobody's watching and singing like nobody's listening.

My paternal grandfather worked in the Benruss watch factory in lower Manhattan and lived in Jersey city, my dad grew up poor and was the first person in his family to go to college. My maternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants, my grandfather was an old style house builder in Cape Cod (amazing little houses, all hand built) and my grandmother was a nurse.

My parents are hippie lunatics who cobbled together an artists life, my dad lucked out in real estate and is now retired, I had what I would call an mid to upper middle class life, traveling, sailing, some time in private school. Because my parents were involved in the arts and counterculture my childhood was spent hanging around some of the great weirdos of the late twentieth century.

Now New York is impossibly expensive, but I keep it together, socially I am of the boho-ararcho-hippie class and economically I am downwardly mobile, God bless America.

What an interesting thread. Thanks for starting it, essexjan.

My upbringing sounds similar in some ways to people here. We were very poor. My mother divorced my father before I turned 2, and I don't remember him: she had no contact with him after the divorce and he didn't pay any child support. She was on welfare my whole life. I guess I was lucky in that NZ's social welfare system was OK. But we still lived in State housing (section 8 I guess is what you call it here?) and couldn't afford a car. There was no abuse or anything like that, it was more growing up with my mother's bitterness at the way her life turned out, and an awareness of how resentful she was of me. Nothing like overhearing not once but several times that she wished she'd had an abortion and stayed in the navy.

That said, I always had access to lots of books. I was at the library 2 or 3 times a week. I think she was relieved that I was so into reading, because then she didn't really need to parent me.

I grew up very aware of the fact that I was probably the poorest kid in the class. It turned me into a real snob when I was in my late teens/early 20s and got some income of my own that I could control, and thus buy stuff that didn't give the impression of not having much money. Because my mother, in addition to not having much money then, was very very bad with it. From when I was about 14 onwards, I would attempt to make budgets for her, and she would ignore them and spend money on ridiculous (in my opinion) stuff. I got very bossy and undermining of her, and we had quite a fractious relationship which has really only recovered in the past few years. (lots of other stuff to do with religion etc. which I won't go into here).

Now, she has a good job, has had the same one for about the last 12 or so years, managing a food production warehouse. She worked her way up from the factory floor into the office and a managerial position. She's smart - I've never doubted that, but she's not very good at managing herself.

I have definitely moved out of the economic status of my upbringing, but there are elements to my personality that are a direct result of it. I am absolutely obsessed with not wasting food. To the degree, that yes, I will make the strangest meals to incorporate perishable food that's about to go bad. I budget well and always know, within about $10, how much is in my bank account. Marrying mr. g meant taking on a lot of debt (med school loans), and I've pushed us to pay it down quickly.

So I think I'm solidly middle-class now, and will probably stay there.

My parents did the stratospheric second-generation (or third-? I get them confused) immigrant American Dream thing. Serious Ellis Island fantasy on both sides of the family (my parents went to high school together and have similar background). My Catholic great-grandparents all left Eastern Europe to escape the Russians, arrived in the U.S. with close to nothing. My grandparents spoke English without accents, tried to shuffle off their ethnic backgrounds, and rose to blue-collar jobs and owning homes in the cheaper suburbs of Chicago. My parents' generation came of age when Polish and Lithuanians were beginning to be considered white enough to qualify as real Americans, was the first to go to college, and my father and all my aunts rose to six-figure salaries, enormous houses in the outer suburbs, and general upper-middle-class life.

But there's a definite emphasis among them (some more than others) on status symbols. With my aunts, especially, brand names are uber important -- they seem to signify to them that they've really made it.

What gets interesting (to me at least) is my generation. I get a definite sense that my brother and my cousins and I are reacting a bit against the materialism that dominated our parents' lives, choosing creative careers and "alternative" lifestyles (buying local coffee rather than proudly displaying the Starbucks TM bags, for a small example) and living in places that are interesting, rather than just places where we can afford housing.

And none of us has (as far as I know) needed to deal with the racism that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents dealt with; now we're just plain ol' American. (And, of course, completely alienated from any sense of our past.)

And while I definitely shy away from the "Money is everything" sense that I got from my parents, I both understand where that impulse came from in them -- money *is* close to everything when you're making that stratospheric leap into the next class up -- and I know that my reaction against it is a luxury, to some extent -- it's easy to claim money's not important when I already grew up with many of its advantages (as Miko points out) and know that, in a pinch, there's a relative who can help out.

I'm kinda interested to see where I end up. That part's a bit unclear to me just now.

Anecdote that mgl's story reminded me of: My father visited me at some point, and we went out with two of my friends. One of the friends had a father at Harvard at about the same time my dad was there, and this friend is also fascinated by the 60s & 70s, and he and my father had a really good time talking about the politics and culture at Harvard, and in the US, at that time. Later my father called me and said, "What old money does your friend come from?"

I was confused, as this friend has always been a alterna-whatever guy who lives on freelancing and idolizes Bob Dylan; old money had never entered my mind in regards to him. "Ask him," my father said.

So I did, and my friend died laughing. "Darling, we're so old money, we don't even have the money anymore."

This friend and I joke about how interchangeable we are; we always seem to know more or less the same thing, have similar senses of humor, etc. It was bizarre to me that my father just instinctively saw the class difference that was there, though. He always jokes about being the "Polack from the South Side of Chicago," and while to me that's just a phrase, it's still obviously a very sharp distinction in his mind.

I see I've forgotten my paternal grandmother, unfair... Her job was to boil the fuck out of perfectly good food in the shanty Irish tradition and cover the furniture with plastic. A wonderful lady, gentle and quietly crazy.

I think in the US social class matters most in the South--the professor who taught my Jane Austen class at UCLA extension was from Virginia...and I've read plenty of Florence King.

According to all the indicators, mine is higher than my parents' whose was higher than their parents (my father was the first in his family to go to college or own a home and he was raised in a two room apartment with two sisters and, as mom is fond of reminding us, used to get socks for Christmas). It feels lower, most likely because we had enough when I was growing up, I was never faced with the burden of having to try to afford things, but now that it's my own budget, I'm very aware of what things cost.

I was startled to learn recently that many many of my friends and acquaintances think my family is much better off than we are. I don't really know why that is. None of us are particularly conspicuous consumers (I come closest, being something of a clotheshorse) and we don't carry a lot of consumer debt. I suspect it comes from being raised as officer's daughters and having spent much time being hosts at official functions with Very Important Guests. That establishes a certain baseline of behavior which I know I carry into a great many social situations (not meet-ups, though!). It might also stem from the excess of education we have amongst ourselves.

Certainly in America, we have a "money can't buy you class" attitude which we just love to use to sneer at people with more money than ourselves.

I think in the US social class matters most in the South

I saw it most in force when I lived in Boston, though it may just be that I was old enough to be aware of it there.

my parents came from solidly working class backgrounds, my dad's urban my mom's rural, and dad worked a variety of salesman jobs and mom taught school and they raised me in a very dead-center middle class way (with all the attendant hangups about normalcy and conformity that come with that especially in an immigrant Catholic background that occhi mentions) and economically, I've struggled and sometimes done well and sometimes done poorly as an adult. My sister married her a doctor and my other sister is a superacheiver, so I've been sort of assigned the role of prodigal sun. But I'm kind of incurably middle class as someone once said. But at the same time I've kind of rejected all the aspiring and striving that was sort of shoved down my throat, possibly because of pressure put on me to be the final chapter in the whole 'only in america' saga and the fact that from a very early age I was something of a screw-up, which sort of inclined me to look at the whole thing askance. or something.

I think that social class matters most in this country when people live in the same places for a long time, and especially when multiple generations live in the same place.

Mother's family:
My grandmother's life has been an economic roller coaster; she was born to a rich Jewish family in Ukraine, which had to escape after the Soviet revolution; some relatives had come to the states earlier and become successful--they helped set my great-grandfather up with a candy store in Brooklyn, but he died when my grandmother was eleven. I don't know what my great-grandmother's second husband's finances were, but I've been told she had some rentals later in CA. My great aunt had some success as a stage and theater actress (she's the barmaid in Queen Christina who flirts with Greta Garbo) and later as a clothing designer (I found a column of hers in Modern Screen) and decorator.My grandmother married my grandfather when she was sixteen, as far as I know he was lower-middle class, but he was also mentally ill; apparently his plan was to commit himself so my grandmother couldn't divorce him--my great aunt claimed she intervened and convinced him to get the divorce before he did this. By this time my grandmother had had three kids; but the oldest had died. My great aunt introduced my grandmother to a member of the family who ran Sears, with whom she married and had two more sons. He didn't work, lost half his fortune on a bad deal in the 60's and the rest either went up my youngest uncle's nose or was pissed away by him in Vegas. Before the money was gone, they had built a house in Beverly Hills north of Sunset, but had to sell it. They were living in a condo in Century City when I was born, moved to a place in West LA, moved back to the condo complex when I was seven, bought a place south of Wilshire in BH when I was 13, moved back to the condo a few years later.

Father's: My great-grandfather sent for the rest of his family in Belarus after he had earned enough money to support them. I don't remember what he did, I'll have to ask my father. My grandfather was the second youngest of six; the last daughter born in America. They settled in Cleveland in what's now a black neighborhood, but moved to LA in the 20's after the middle sister and brother developed TB. My grandfather was at Ohio U at the time, but quit to be with the family, where he ran several used bookstores before starting the Pickwick, which he sold to what's now Target. His last place was in the Hollywood hills with a swimming pool, but it was a house, not a mansion.
I don't know what my paternal grandmother's father did; he died when she was twelve. Her older half-brother became very successful with vending machines in D.C. and was a big force in the Jewish community there.


On preview: My impression of Boston is that education matters quite a bit there as well, more so than NY--it's one of the things I miss about the city.

I understand this is how it works, but the interesting bit to me is that this kid is likely to never, ever know the underground machinations that resulted in his 'getting' the internship. He'll think he had the goods. Will he grow up to be one of those people that thinks the poor should just lift themselves by the bootstraps, like he did?

YES. Such an excellent observation, Miko. I know it's almost a cliche to point it out anymore, but just look at our current president.

I've seen this in my job, also, involving someone who was an intern, is now a producer, and likely has no idea that his uncle basically got him a job. (And, the poor kid is in way over his head, yet thinks he's not a screw-up; he just thinks people have grudges against him.)

And I think you're also right that this tends to lead to people having less empathy with others. I can see some of this in myself and my younger brother: my parents were very very low-income when I was born, much less so after he came along. He didn't experience a lot of those hard times my parents had at first, and has grown up to be extremely conservative and class-conscious. Our mom has even commented on the fact.

(one odd side note: we do have a history of weird deaths. My Dad's maternal grandfather, a sailor, died of yellow fever in Panama at 23 and grandma was raised by neighbors. My Dad's father was attending St. John's when his father died and he had to quit to run the small shop the family had near Fulton Fish Market. My Dad never went to college, instead getting drafted and then going to work. His brother managed to go to Columbia and graduate high in his class and then died in a drowning. The only male in my paternal family history to finish college and he dies. I think I may have flunked out of school out of self-preservation).

My impression of Boston is that education matters quite a bit there as well, more so than NY--it's one of the things I miss about the city.

That's true, and I guess the class distinctions I noticed didn't play a huge role in my everyday life. But there is a large contingent of Old Old Money in the city, with preppy clothes and prep-school diplomas and summer houses on the Cape and a horror of ostentatious displays of wealth.

Though I think there's also a service ethic in that tradition, a good sort of noblesse oblige that makes charity work a given. My ex and I talked a lot about how Kerry seemed to come from that tradition, the idea that wealth and education obligates one to helping others, whereas Bush ... didn't.

These days, like taz, I prefer the murkier, more fluid artistic/intellectual/academic elite

I dunno, I've always felt alienated from that, too. My father was a reader but of stuff like pulp mystery novels and entertainment was TV or the movies. That makes me think of the ways that class can often mean more than money. I remember when my sister got married and her mother-in-law visted. She was a professor as was his dad and his step-dad. My folks, like I said had relatively mundane jobs and came from mundane backgrounds even if the income levels were similar, but we're loud and emotional and don't sita round sipping brandy and discussing the classics, that's just not how they were. But my youngest sister said after she left "I don't like his mom, she looks down her nose at us." and I kind of got that impression, too, that despite the roughly equal incomes, they consider themselves of a higher class.

Also, my mom has always wished she was part of the old money that occhi and others describe, even though she dosen't seem to realize that as the immigrant daughter of an Italian stonemason, she'll never really be a member of the club, and I always sort of veered away from all that. My Dad was a city kid, his Dad's partner in the marine supply store they owned was Uncle Jack, who my Dad described as a 'professional gambler' with murky 'connections,' and his next door neighbors growing up were bookies, so he was considerably less naive about the way the world worked. Also on his side of the family, there's a history of alcholism and on Mom's side what I can only describe as extreme neuroticism. And despite my mom's aspirations we never quite scaled the heights as she wished. I remember that at high school graduation one of her rich friends got a new convertible. My sister got rollerblades. I joked that at least they both got wheels.

I also remember that when I was a teenager my Dad got laid off from his outside sales job at one company, and after a few years of other jobs wound up working a job (one of two he had at the time) as a home furnishings floor sales guy in a very well known midrange rtail chain (I'll call it KD Dimes). At the time, I was working retail, too and knew all the crap that went with it and it bothered me that my Dad was having to do that, too.

I can never figure out what class I grew up. I never thought we were poor, but maybe we were poorer than I thought- my Dad was in the military, after all, and we lived on base overseas. And my Mom bought us clothes at thrift stores, although that could have just been because she enjoyed the thrill of the chase. But then again, my Dad was an officer (he was a lawyer), and both of my parents value education and the arts very highly. Taking all factors into account, we're probably somewhere near the top of the middle of middle class, and I imagine I'll probably stay somewhere around there.

another illustrative class observation, my Uncle Nick (he married one of my Dad's sisters) grew up the son of a railroad worker in a what's called a railroad flat in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He was also extremely smart and extremely driven and works an international banker and makes more money than God. However he still has a 'dese' and 'dose' Brooklyn accent and radiates his origins in every direction. They live in a ginormous house in a faux-rural suburb. One Christmas I asked my his wife if it was OK if I went and had a cigarette in the driveway. She said 'go ahead, they already think of us as thoese crazy Eye-talians from Noo Yawk, anyways."

(Oddly, one of their daughters is dating a guy who's parents are German immigrants. They came for dinner one Christmas, and I was told to sit between Nick's parents and the Germans because as my mom put it 'They don't like the Nazis.' Nick's dad Lenny was in the 82nd Airborne, maybe that has something to do with it)

I asked my his wife

I asked my aunt, his wife... (see where flunking out of college gets you. Don't be no fool, stay in school. and don't do drugs)

I'm in a class all by myself.

only because nobody wants to be there with you. ;>

And wisely so, Jon. Wisely so.

We'll take class both ways for this.

Economically, my family was lowish end middle class. We had a decent house, my parents both had cars, always older and/or used models, but little to no luxuries.

I never had an allowance, rather I would be given a small amount of money if I really wanted to do something, but have done odd jobs to full employment at the family business since I was 9 years old, for most of my young to teenage years making below minimum wage. I left the business for a period of about six years, where I worked retail, and then not at all and lived very frugally off my savings through a period of very dark depression, the less said about that the better. I returned to the family business, I make lower okay-ish money. However things may be happening with the business that may raise both my parents and my prospects dramatically. Maybe.

Socially, I was the "the poor kid" in a school that had a small percentage of regular to low middle class, but a very high percentage of the worst sort of entitled little fucks to ever grace high school cliques.

I was very shy, and basically had one friend or two at the most all through school, not developing a larger circle of friends until college. So for all of my youth I didn't belong to a social class at all. In adult hood, I have some good friends and I feel much more comfortable in my own skin than I used to.

The funny thing is, at the end of the day, I really couldn't care less how much money I make as long as it is slightly above subsistence level. I guess I am a poor capitalist and consumer because I am not all that acquisitive. If I have a functioning car, and a fast computer, I am pretty much set. This doesn't exactly make me an attractive target for the ladies, but neither does my build or facial appearance.

I also don't much care what people think of me anymore. They can take me or leave me, as they wish, it won't bother me too much.

My brother is pretty much the exact opposite of me, he was always socially successful, married a wealthy girl (who was amazing spoiled and clueless), his father in law set him up in business, he has a million dollar house on a lake, and I honestly don't envy his life one bit.

This doesn't exactly make me an attractive target for the ladies

[derail] This notion, that women are receptive to wealthy men*, cuts both ways in contributing to the ugliness of dating.

*And I'm not attacking you or arguing that it's untrue; I know plenty of decent men who observe it or believe it, which lends it importance of a kind, whether it's true or not.

On the green a few days ago, I described a long-ago first (and last!) date that left me wanting to bang my head on the table. What I didn't mention, because it was irrelevent: that guy spent a good deal of the evening subtly telling me about his stable of exotic cars, his various entertainment and communications gadgets, and his lucrative software contracts.

At first I was bored silly, then repulsed; I believe he thought that, even if I didn't find him engaging, I would like the fact that he had plenty of money and was willing to splash it out on expensive toys and treats.

Ewwwwww.

Mind you, I had made it clear at the outset that I wasn't even letting him pay for dinner, and he thinks I'm interested in his money? Yuck.

I did, kind of.

Mom and dad are middle-middle-class [*see note] (mom is a retired bank teller/supervisor, dad is a metal worker, so, if you want to nitpick, mom is upper-middle-middle-class, and dad is lower-middle-middle-class). Dad has high school equivalent, mom started college but dropped out.

I finished college (Brazilian top universities are state-owned and funded, so my parents had only to fund my living costs), during which I was in the unifying "ramen-eating-college-student" social class.

After college I got a couple jobs, moved to Sao Paulo, was somewhere between middle and upper-middle class for there (which would probably be considered upper-class in my home town).

Here in the US, according to that graph, I rank in the top fifth in education, occupation, and income, and at the bottom in accumulated wealth (none at all). Of course, the NYT wouldn't put a "Race" column on that graph... but I'd like to see them sincerely calling a first-generation, heavily accented Latin American immigrant "upper" or even "upper-middle class" :P

* This was in Brazil, where the scale is completely different from the US (cars and electronics are very expensive, food, clothing, and necessities are very cheap -- it'd take a whole month of a middle-class wage (pre-tax) to buy an iPod, or a couple years to buy a car). So, my childhood would be considered upper-class by some standards (my family had a full-time maid), and definitely lower-class by others (no VCR, DVD or CD player, 10-year-old-car)). So I'm using Brazil's social structure to classify.

but I'd like to see them sincerely calling a first-generation, heavily accented Latin American immigrant "upper" or even "upper-middle class" :P

qvantamon: exactly. that little chart placed way too much emphasis on money and education to really account for how the classes divide in America. Dad wasn't significantly smarter than his own father (I would imagine) or his uncles, but they had accented English and old world habits. Dad didn't. So three scholarships later, he had two degrees and professional respect they never earned.

My background is kinda mixed:

My mum's mum came from upper middle class people - decent money, well educated, etc. My grandmother and her parents traveled widely (my great-grandfather was a geologist). She was educated in France and South Africa. My mum's dad's family was dirt poor. No electricity, no running water, etc. Because my grandmother married a poor man, my mum grew up poor, but my grandmother made sure her kids learned the social graces, went to school, etc. So while there wasn't any money to speak of, they didn't appear to be the poor white trash they were.

So, similar to her mum, my mum made sure her kids knew which fork and glass to use and when to use them. Anyway, we grew up poor but knew how to behave. None of my siblings or myself have made it to college but we're all (except one, and he's doing about the same as they did) doing better than our parents did. My mum also managed to quit bartending and working in light industrial jobs and move onto office work. She worked hard to be able to buy her own home and retire at 65. Her debts are minimal and she's able to afford what she wants to do until she dies.

My father's family were, and still are, poor white trash. They thought my mum was hoity-toity. She used *gasp* serving dishes instead of putting the pots & pans and condiment jars on the dining table. We actually ate at the dining table instead of in front of the boob-tube. My father worked as a mechanic and then as a machinist. He's subsisting a small pension and social security.

Currently: per the chart we (the mister and I using his qualifications) are in the upper middle class. Upper middle doesn't seem right; it doesn't jibe with my idea of upper middle class. I think we're in the middle middle range.

Don't know if anyone will read this, but here's my bit...

My mom's parents were upper middle class, and were not happy when she got pregnant with me (on purpose - she wanted to marry my dad. Bad choice) We struggled for years; my dad left when I was 10 and my brother 5. Mom had been a stay-at-home mom, so we had to go on welfare. Dad never paid a dime. Mom worked her butt off to make ends meet as a secretary. I started working at 16 for the same supermarket I still work for. There were times when I gave my mom money for a car from my savings. I chose too many bad partners in my life, married the wrong man too young, bought a house that I couldn't afford once my then-husband decided to stop working (we had two kids by then). My single parent years were complicated when my company cut my pay (and 24 other people) by 28%. But I struggled through it all, and once my boys were in school full time and I didn't have the child care expenses any more, things got rosier. I met my current husband, eventually moving out of my tiny apartment to a double-wide mobile home (only three years old when we bought it). Yeah, I live in a mobile home, but here in New Jersey, it's getting to be the only way to afford to live. It's nice, in a nice family park, we have newish cars, a nice yard, and for the first time in forever I have a savings and checking account, and an IRA. My kids have more than I did (though I did have my own room, and books and music everywhere). I went through those years where I was teased over old hand me down clothes during school. But all in all, I felt secure growing up, I loved where we lived, and I am still very close to my mom. It's been a good life, all in all.

Yes, I read it redvixen. I keep checking back to this thread and seeing lots more things added.