What are the classic components of an UMC or UC American childhood?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up solidly MC in the Midwest and my husband grew up solidly UMC in the NYC suburbs. These stand out for me as things he assumes are normal for our kids.

Vacations - 1 or more a year. To a tourist destination, not just to visit family. Taking a nanny on vacation with you when kids are young. Taking a friend with you as a tween/teen. Booking multiple hotel rooms or a house instead of squeezing in.

Participating in any activity the kid is interested in. Not having to make the kid choose between dance lessons and softball because there is only money for one thing a season. Being able to go on all team trips, camps, but the special team jacket, etc.

Sleep away camp instead of local day camp. Specialized camps for talents and interests.

The assumption that your kids will get valuable mentors and internships “through your network”.

The assumption that kids will go to the best college they get into without waiting to compare financial aid packages. While they are there, they will join clubs and fraternities, go on optional research trips, and live in off campus housing while working unpaid internships- all parent funded. when the parents visit 1-2x a semester, they will take a group of their kids friends out to dinner and then fill the apartment with hundreds of dollars in groceries from a Costco spree.

The assumption that parents will provide a modest, but safe and reliable car and reasonably new cell phone from age 16 - 25.

The assumption that your parents will pay for your wedding and 20% down on your first house.

I agree but cell phones start at around 4-5th grade. Lol at making them wait til 16, I wish.

My kids had their own iPads in 2nd grade and iPhones in 5th.

THIS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up UMC, and for me and my friends it was:
- Expensive sports (think horseback riding)
- Private school (K-12), followed by mostly private college with some top state schools thrown in
- Vacation houses
- Travel, lots of it, including internationally (no weeks in the Outer Banks every summer)
- Sleepaway camps all over the country and world
- Lots of parties, like pretty fabulous birthday parties and sleepovers with really cool activities
- Tons of toys (we didn't have gadgets like Apple watched back then but I'd think something like that is probably in now)
- Great clothes (I'm a girl so maybe I cared about this more than boys would)
- Cars at 16

I don’t think this is UMC. Maybe not Forbes top 100 in wealth, but probably top 5%

The top 5% household income is about $160,000 per year in the US. I don’t think this lifestyle is attainable on that.

The problem is there’s a lot of higher income people in this area, and a lot of lifestyle inflation as a result. If you were making a HHI of $160k in, like, St. Louis, you could live pretty close to this lifestyle IMO but private K-12 and private college might be out of reach if there’s no wealthy grandparents to bankroll. You’d probably have to make $300k HHI in the DC area for the same lifestyle.

Hmm.. 350k currently in Chicago. Two kids and a SAHM. No debt, including our house. We could not afford much of this list. This lifestyle is not UMC, even in a less expensive city.

BTW your list needs some tweaking. Sleepaway camp is a Jewish thing in my opinion. I know many Jews who are middle class and pay (or grandparents pay) for expensive 8 week summer camps. Lots of toys is a low income thing. Fewer high quality items = UMC. The clothes can go either way. Many middle class families spend dearly on clothes but can’t handle the recurring cost of expensive lessons and vacation traditions. Plenty of UMC families dress their kids in Target clothes and spend that money elsewhere, on more important things that are in line with their values.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up UMC, and for me and my friends it was:
- Expensive sports (think horseback riding)
- Private school (K-12), followed by mostly private college with some top state schools thrown in
- Vacation houses
- Travel, lots of it, including internationally (no weeks in the Outer Banks every summer)
- Sleepaway camps all over the country and world
- Lots of parties, like pretty fabulous birthday parties and sleepovers with really cool activities
- Tons of toys (we didn't have gadgets like Apple watched back then but I'd think something like that is probably in now)
- Great clothes (I'm a girl so maybe I cared about this more than boys would)
- Cars at 16

I don’t think this is UMC. Maybe not Forbes top 100 in wealth, but probably top 5%

The top 5% household income is about $160,000 per year in the US. I don’t think this lifestyle is attainable on that.

The problem is there’s a lot of higher income people in this area, and a lot of lifestyle inflation as a result. If you were making a HHI of $160k in, like, St. Louis, you could live pretty close to this lifestyle IMO but private K-12 and private college might be out of reach if there’s no wealthy grandparents to bankroll. You’d probably have to make $300k HHI in the DC area for the same lifestyle.

Hmm.. 350k currently in Chicago. Two kids and a SAHM. No debt, including our house. We could not afford much of this list. This lifestyle is not UMC, even in a less expensive city.

BTW your list needs some tweaking. Sleepaway camp is a Jewish thing in my opinion. I know many Jews who are middle class and pay (or grandparents pay) for expensive 8 week summer camps. Lots of toys is a low income thing. Fewer high quality items = UMC. The clothes can go either way. Many middle class families spend dearly on clothes but can’t handle the recurring cost of expensive lessons and vacation traditions. Plenty of UMC families dress their kids in Target clothes and spend that money elsewhere, on more important things that are in line with their values.

DP and I totally agree about how sleepaway is often a cultural norm and not really indicative of economic class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up UMC, and for me and my friends it was:
- Expensive sports (think horseback riding)
- Private school (K-12), followed by mostly private college with some top state schools thrown in
- Vacation houses
- Travel, lots of it, including internationally (no weeks in the Outer Banks every summer)
- Sleepaway camps all over the country and world
- Lots of parties, like pretty fabulous birthday parties and sleepovers with really cool activities
- Tons of toys (we didn't have gadgets like Apple watched back then but I'd think something like that is probably in now)
- Great clothes (I'm a girl so maybe I cared about this more than boys would)
- Cars at 16

I don’t think this is UMC. Maybe not Forbes top 100 in wealth, but probably top 5%

The top 5% household income is about $160,000 per year in the US. I don’t think this lifestyle is attainable on that.

The problem is there’s a lot of higher income people in this area, and a lot of lifestyle inflation as a result. If you were making a HHI of $160k in, like, St. Louis, you could live pretty close to this lifestyle IMO but private K-12 and private college might be out of reach if there’s no wealthy grandparents to bankroll. You’d probably have to make $300k HHI in the DC area for the same lifestyle.

Hmm.. 350k currently in Chicago. Two kids and a SAHM. No debt, including our house. We could not afford much of this list. This lifestyle is not UMC, even in a less expensive city.

BTW your list needs some tweaking. Sleepaway camp is a Jewish thing in my opinion. I know many Jews who are middle class and pay (or grandparents pay) for expensive 8 week summer camps. Lots of toys is a low income thing. Fewer high quality items = UMC. The clothes can go either way. Many middle class families spend dearly on clothes but can’t handle the recurring cost of expensive lessons and vacation traditions. Plenty of UMC families dress their kids in Target clothes and spend that money elsewhere, on more important things that are in line with their values.

DP and I totally agree about how sleepaway is often a cultural norm and not really indicative of economic class.

I've been scratching my head about this too! I don't really hear about sleepaway camp being a "thing" here. It's common for kids to do one or two week sleepaway sports camps but not 8 week camps. I wouldn't want to send my kids away for the whole summer! I would miss them too much.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to go on a limb and add a mildly controversial thing. In addition to all the "things" in this thread, in my humble opinion, you cannot really comfortably belong to the UMC unless your family, ideally in two generations before you (so your parents and grandparents) were also UMC. It's great having UMC-level money and UMC-level jobs. But growing up with these things also gives you habits and assumptions and mannerisms that are frankly very hard to teach. They are hard to articulate even for people who grew up with them, that's how unspoken/DNA-level they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we're UMC.

Nice house in safe neighborhood in FFX County
Built in pool in the backyard.
Kids do plenty of activities.
We boat.
Grandparents with vacation homes in mountains and beach.
Skiing in the winter, multiple ski trips, local mountains every other weekend.

Kids are too young, but when they're 16 they'll get late model Hondas or Toyotas to drive.
529s for college.

What does "we boat" mean? You have a boat? What size? Or you rent one?

I actually thought the posh thing was sailing, not "boating".

We own a boat. It's 24 feet and we keep it docked in our neighborhood. It's fine for the Potomac, kids like tubing and wakeboarding, and some light fishing.

[Anonymous]

I think one of the hallmarks of UC/UMC is exposure to the arts at a young age. Your first time to the theater or opera or art museum is not on a high school field trip. As a tween you might have family outings to the orchestra, or season tickets to a local theater company.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up UMC, and for me and my friends it was:
- Expensive sports (think horseback riding)
- Private school (K-12), followed by mostly private college with some top state schools thrown in
- Vacation houses
- Travel, lots of it, including internationally (no weeks in the Outer Banks every summer)
- Sleepaway camps all over the country and world
- Lots of parties, like pretty fabulous birthday parties and sleepovers with really cool activities
- Tons of toys (we didn't have gadgets like Apple watched back then but I'd think something like that is probably in now)
- Great clothes (I'm a girl so maybe I cared about this more than boys would)
- Cars at 16

What’s wrong with the outer banks? You know how many rich people have 2nd or 3rd homes there?

Sorry, I didn't grow up on the east coast, so I was comparing my husband's family spending one week at the Outer Banks in a rented beach house to international travel. I didn't mean people who own beach houses - that was addressed above in the vacation houses. Clearly you can understand that the people who own houses at the Outer Banks that they go to with their family and people who rent them for one week every summer as their only vacation are not the same people? Didn't mean to insult you and your beach house.

Doesn’t that logic hold for people who rent a house in Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard as their only vacation or maybe one of two?

Sure. People who rent a beach house for a week aren't UC. UC people have their own beach houses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of this sounds lovely. I grew up LMC, earn a UMC starter salary combined with DH, but live like MC because of student loans and not having some of the things that come with UMC parents. But I am around a lot of UMC/UC people who seem very unhappy. Seriously, are they faking it and enjoying their lives but don't want to brag, am I in the wrong circles, or are these comforts, stability, and adventures irrelevant?

I grew up UMC/UC and live that way now. I have pretty much always been happy. I'd say this is also mostly true for the people I grew up with and the people I'm friends with now. So I can definitively that not ALL UMC/UC people are unhappy. Maybe the ones you know are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of this sounds lovely. I grew up LMC, earn a UMC starter salary combined with DH, but live like MC because of student loans and not having some of the things that come with UMC parents. But I am around a lot of UMC/UC people who seem very unhappy. Seriously, are they faking it and enjoying their lives but don't want to brag, am I in the wrong circles, or are these comforts, stability, and adventures irrelevant?

I grew up UMC/UC and live that way now. I have pretty much always been happy. I'd say this is also mostly true for the people I grew up with and the people I'm friends with now. So I can definitively that not ALL UMC/UC people are unhappy. Maybe the ones you know are.

Beyond a certain survival level, money is not related to happiness. But if you have to be unhappy, it is certainly better to be unhappy with money than unhappy without!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up solidly MC in the Midwest and my husband grew up solidly UMC in the NYC suburbs. These stand out for me as things he assumes are normal for our kids.

Vacations - 1 or more a year. To a tourist destination, not just to visit family. Taking a nanny on vacation with you when kids are young. Taking a friend with you as a tween/teen. Booking multiple hotel rooms or a house instead of squeezing in.

Participating in any activity the kid is interested in. Not having to make the kid choose between dance lessons and softball because there is only money for one thing a season. Being able to go on all team trips, camps, but the special team jacket, etc.

Sleep away camp instead of local day camp. Specialized camps for talents and interests.

The assumption that your kids will get valuable mentors and internships “through your network”.

The assumption that kids will go to the best college they get into without waiting to compare financial aid packages. While they are there, they will join clubs and fraternities, go on optional research trips, and live in off campus housing while working unpaid internships- all parent funded. when the parents visit 1-2x a semester, they will take a group of their kids friends out to dinner and then fill the apartment with hundreds of dollars in groceries from a Costco spree.

The assumption that parents will provide a modest, but safe and reliable car and reasonably new cell phone from age 16 - 25.

The assumption that your parents will pay for your wedding and 20% down on your first house.

I grew up like your husband and had all of these things except the 20% down on the house. Maybe because we bought a little later due to not living where we wanted to end up for some many years and therefore renting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do UMC people really travel as much as people in this thread think?

Internationally at every break?

The travel some people in here are describing would cost 50 grand for a typical family of 4-5.

For instance, someone said it’s typical in Arlington for families to take several ski trips out West, a trip to the Caribbean or Mexico for spring break, two weeks in Europe and two weeks at the beach in the summer. What would a travel schedule like that even cost? And who has that much time off?

Doesn't seem unusual to me. I would say we are typical UMC. Live in Westchester County, which is an area of affluent suburbs outside of NYC. We go skiing in CO or Utah the week after Christmas every year, up to Vermont to ski over MLK weekend, up to Vermont again to ski for February break or someplace like Costa Rica or Belize, we like to do a Caribbean destination for Spring Break (because it's still usually cold in NY in April), a week in Europe or at a national park in the US in July, and two weeks at the beach in NJ at the end of August.

I'm a SAHM and my husband's job can easily be done remotely so he does some work while we're at the beach in August.

Sometimes in addition, we'll add a week in Cancun or Tulum over Thanksgiving because we love the weather there that time of year. It's perfection.

I'm not sure what all this costs but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 50k or more. We have 3 kids so we always have to get 2 adjoining hotel rooms or a 2 bedroom suite.

This is not an unusual amount of travel for the people in our community.

Clearly the flexibility in your husband’s job allows for your travel with him. We vacation 4 weeks a year (2 weeks in winter/2 weeks in summer) in a specific tropical destination, take ski weekends, travel holiday weekends, and travel to family whenever we want because my husband owns the company and can work remotely wherever and whenever he wants. Not everyone has the luxury of not having to ask for time off. With that said, my husband works when we travel and has to be accessible most of the time. My cousin is a top rated orthopedic surgeon and only operates on professional athletes can only take off certain times and will also add days of travel when speaking at surgical conferences in Europe. His time has a different demand. Money is no object for him, but time is money for him.

My DH is an orthopedic spine surgeon. We take a lot of long weekend trips. I also travel with the kids without him. DH operates 3-4 days per week and sees clinic 1-2 days per week. He often tacks on Fridays off to holiday weekends. Sometimes DH leaves early or joins us a few days later.

We know a lot of surgeons and doctors in general. Some really enjoy their leisure and will take 3 weeks off every summer, week off for spring break and time off during holidays. Others work all the time including extra research, consulting and conferences. DH is in the middle. He probably attends 2-3 conferences per year. Probably chairs 1 and speaks at another 1-2. Normal work week is 50 hours. DH takes 3 full weeks off for weeklong vacations plus a bunch of long weekends. He operates late 2-3 nights per week and other days is home for dinner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to go on a limb and add a mildly controversial thing. In addition to all the "things" in this thread, in my humble opinion, you cannot really comfortably belong to the UMC unless your family, ideally in two generations before you (so your parents and grandparents) were also UMC. It's great having UMC-level money and UMC-level jobs. But growing up with these things also gives you habits and assumptions and mannerisms that are frankly very hard to teach. They are hard to articulate even for people who grew up with them, that's how unspoken/DNA-level they are.

Can you give some examples? I find this somewhat hard to believe. A self-made UMC person likely attended college, lived in a big city after graduating, may have studied abroad (although probably incurred a fair amount of debt). These experiences would have immersed the person in the UMC lifestyle early in adulthood, and likely impacted their worldview, etc.

[Anonymous]

This is more of a small thing. But when I was growing up in a LMC family, when we went to the movies or an amusement park (which was a rare, once a year type event), we could never get snacks or play the games because they were considered way too expensive. Or even get souvenirs on an even ore rare vacation.

So now when I take our kids to stuff like that, it makes me feel happy to say yes to all of it. Like getting a slushee AND a candy at the movies would have been unheard of in my family growing up.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to go on a limb and add a mildly controversial thing. In addition to all the "things" in this thread, in my humble opinion, you cannot really comfortably belong to the UMC unless your family, ideally in two generations before you (so your parents and grandparents) were also UMC. It's great having UMC-level money and UMC-level jobs. But growing up with these things also gives you habits and assumptions and mannerisms that are frankly very hard to teach. They are hard to articulate even for people who grew up with them, that's how unspoken/DNA-level they are.

I don't agree with this. I grew up in a family where we got some new clothes and others were handed down, we were limited somewhat in our activities, I went on a plane only once or twice before college (only to visit grandparents and not with my whole family), vacations were one week always driving distance, no out of state college, etc. I had a great childhood, but not UMC. I think my kids are UMC/UC. They have a lot of the things mentioned on this thread - private schools, country club, vacation home, ability to attend the best college they can get into, international travel, theater, we talk about saving for retirement, etc. My spouse and I didn't have all this growing up but that doesn't mean that my kids can't be raised that way.