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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I grew up poor. My parents were poor immigrants. We just didn’t go to the movies. I went to an amusement park with my church and summer school once every year. My parents gave me money to get an ice cream or snack for my one trip. We never went as a family.

My kids get drinks and food. I do not buy them overpriced souvenirs normally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:- physically going to church every Sunday
- toys/electronics whenever you want them
- books and maybe clothes for Christmas and birthdays; no toys after about the age of five
- college is expected
- parents monitor grades and homework regularly/daily
- summer jobs required, but it doesn’t matter how much money you actually make

It’s usually the lower or middle class who attend church. And kids don’t often have summer jobs. They go to camps or pursue other activities over the summer to better themselves at a hobby or sport.

Did you grow up UMC? Are you now? People go to church and teenagers have summer jobs.

Grew up MC and am now UMC or UC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:- physically going to church every Sunday
- toys/electronics whenever you want them
- books and maybe clothes for Christmas and birthdays; no toys after about the age of five
- college is expected
- parents monitor grades and homework regularly/daily
- summer jobs required, but it doesn’t matter how much money you actually make

It’s usually the lower or middle class who attend church. And kids don’t often have summer jobs. They go to camps or pursue other activities over the summer to better themselves at a hobby or sport.

Did you grow up UMC? Are you now? People go to church and teenagers have summer jobs.

Grew up MC and am now UMC or UC.

So, no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Np. Yes I was going to add something like this. Grew up UMC (500k) in a low cost of living area and had everything.

My family really focused on the arts and music. We discussed Renoirs, different housing styles (Georgian and such) and built vacations around museums. I remember loving the unicorn tapestries and we made a trip to Paris just to see them. We had discussions on current events, novels and history. We went on international vacations 4x a year and a new place every time. We focused a lot on learning new things. By 25 I’d been to all 50 states and every country in Central America (not sure why, we just enjoyed those countries a lot and I spoke Spanish). My parents were home at 6pm nightly for dinner.

Also, cars aren’t modest at 16. I had the car of my dreams and I got to pick out the color. My mom remembered her MG midget and my dad spoke often of the car he got too. I see a lot of kids getting 50k Jeeps.

My parents gave me a car at 16, 13 years of private school (nothing like the costs here though), paid full price to the college I wanted to go to (which was a state college), 2nd new car for college graduation, put 20% down on my first house at 22 in DC and paid for my wedding. I don’t get any other help but all of that really set me up well. I do have friends who get the max from their parents yearly (30k?).

[Anonymous]

Interesting how the coasts differ (or not). We’re in LA and I would say most of the UC people here do/have:

-Lots of extracurriculars - ballet, swim team, tennis, gymnastics, soccer, surfing (NOT football)
-Music lessons (starting out on either violin and piano)
-House filles with books, art supplies, original art (no art posters)
-Membership at private beach club and country/swim/tennis club
-Spend weekends at aforementioned beach clubs, museums, hiking
-Vacations to Utah or Colorado to ski, Europe once or twice a year, Hawaii, the Caribbean, NYC for Broadway
-Nannies and housekeepers (bonus points for live in housekeeper)
-We don’t really do sleep away camp (except URJ camps) but surf camp, music camp, and sports camps (up to two weeks) are popular UC activities
-Private schools and college expectations
-Fresh food for meals - grocery shopping at farmers markets and gourmet food stores
-Fancy cars (range rovers are very popular - your car is your life)
-Fitness (fancy workout classes/Peleton/SoulCycle/Yoga/Pilates)
-Good skin

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:- physically going to church every Sunday
- toys/electronics whenever you want them
- books and maybe clothes for Christmas and birthdays; no toys after about the age of five
- college is expected
- parents monitor grades and homework regularly/daily
- summer jobs required, but it doesn’t matter how much money you actually make

It’s usually the lower or middle class who attend church. And kids don’t often have summer jobs. They go to camps or pursue other activities over the summer to better themselves at a hobby or sport.

Did you grow up UMC? Are you now? People go to church and teenagers have summer jobs.

Grew up MC and am now UMC or UC.

Never heard of this. I know plenty of 1%wers who attend religious services. I also know many kids of 1%ers who punch a time clock (not in family business and not in make work internships.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I’m the PP with cousin who is orthopedic surgeon. My cousin is the team doctor for a football team and baseball team. His time off is limited during these seasons. He has a private jet and a mansion on an exclusive island in the south east. His family travels but he has to stay back when duty calls. He has set operating days but when his high profile athletes get injured he amends his schedule. He is fantastic at what he does and his schedule is very demanding despite the millions he makes.

[Anonymous]

This thread is....amazing.

Open your children's minds, teach them to be curious and caring, show them other countries and peoples, whether through books or in person. Becoming an admirable human is not about a checklist.

[Anonymous]

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

Is this Blaine from Pretty in Pink? Because I feel like Andie reading this.

[Anonymous]

Parent was UC, grew up UMC. Raising kids UMC but we make UC money.

-kids have iPads at age 3 individually. I choose when they use them.
-extensive travel, they are under 5 so I haven’t wanted to do international with them. We will though.
-know about other languages and culture
-kids have been in private jets
-shop Target/Old Navy but can also do high end like Sorel, Roller Rabbit.
-nanny
-weekly cleaning lady
-landscaper
-we attend church and to me it depends on denomination. Episcopal is UMC.
-extracurriculars but we only do two
-second home (kids think our house is small so therefore we are poor) we discuss money and how appearances are deceiving.

I know what pp means about having it or not. And to some degree that’s true but if you make UMC money and try to fit it, slowly, you learn mannerisms.

[Anonymous]

If you aren't born into wealth and social status, you'll never really be upper class. I say this as someone who went to Phillips Academy Andover for high school and met a lot of kids from that world. My parents could afford to pay full freight, but I quickly realized I would never be part of the world some of those kids occupied, no matter how much money my parents make. That's fine--it doesn't bother me--but it's the reality.

Truly upper class people don't make their money from paychecks. They make their money through dividends. They have trust funds. They have dorms named after their families. Their families have been going to Ivy League schools since the early 1900s. They have legacy at prep schools like Andover, Brearley, and Collegiate.

It's not about vacations, nannies, etc. It's about whether you have generations of participation in the halls of power in this country.

If you haven't been born into that world, you will never be truly accepted into it, no matter how much money you make.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you aren't born into wealth and social status, you'll never really be upper class. I say this as someone who went to Phillips Academy Andover for high school and met a lot of kids from that world. My parents could afford to pay full freight, but I quickly realized I would never be part of the world some of those kids occupied, no matter how much money my parents make. That's fine--it doesn't bother me--but it's the reality.

Truly upper class people don't make their money from paychecks. They make their money through dividends. They have trust funds. They have dorms named after their families. Their families have been going to Ivy League schools since the early 1900s. They have legacy at prep schools like Andover, Brearley, and Collegiate.

It's not about vacations, nannies, etc. It's about whether you have generations of participation in the halls of power in this country.

If you haven't been born into that world, you will never be truly accepted into it, no matter how much money you make.

That's exactly what I meant about two generations before you that it takes to penetrate UC. UMC too but to a lesser degree. It's like faking patina - you really can't, and fake aging shows. You need generations of slowly accruing habits and assumptions to the point where you don't know any different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A self-made UMC person would spend their early adulthood making it. You don't really begin to make UMC money until your early 30s if you weren't born to it, and that's the best-case scenario. At that point you're a fully formed adult. Attending college and living in a big city doesn't really cut it because literally millions of young people do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Been thinking about this lately. Both DH and I grew up poor/LMC but fortunately have the means to provide our future kids with better.

What would you say are the classic or traditional components of an idealic childhood?

Assume loving, attentive, supportive parents is the foundation. What are the extras or nice-to-haves?

Good lord! Stop bragging. If you have to ask then your children are already miserable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Np. Yes I was going to add something like this. Grew up UMC (500k) in a low cost of living area and had everything.

My family really focused on the arts and music. We discussed Renoirs, different housing styles (Georgian and such) and built vacations around museums. I remember loving the unicorn tapestries and we made a trip to Paris just to see them. We had discussions on current events, novels and history. We went on international vacations 4x a year and a new place every time. We focused a lot on learning new things. By 25 I’d been to all 50 states and every country in Central America (not sure why, we just enjoyed those countries a lot and I spoke Spanish). My parents were home at 6pm nightly for dinner.

Also, cars aren’t modest at 16. I had the car of my dreams and I got to pick out the color. My mom remembered her MG midget and my dad spoke often of the car he got too. I see a lot of kids getting 50k Jeeps.

My parents gave me a car at 16, 13 years of private school (nothing like the costs here though), paid full price to the college I wanted to go to (which was a state college), 2nd new car for college graduation, put 20% down on my first house at 22 in DC and paid for my wedding. I don’t get any other help but all of that really set me up well. I do have friends who get the max from their parents yearly (30k?).

This exactly sums up how I grew up. Consequently, I was taught museum etiquette and proper table manners at a very young age. Being the only child of an only child certainly heightened familial expectations. Grandparents favorite discussions with me were history and the stock market as an elementary schooler. Definitely an interesting lifestyle!