The Social Class Ladders—Labor, Gentry, and Elite

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you're a woman who "married down" how did it affect the culture your children grew up with? Are they also Ls/Gs? What is your culture at home?

I can answer this as the child. My mother tried hard to raise us the way she'd been raised -- value education, be financially literate, contribute to your community, participate in some sort of activity that you enjoy. She was supportive, helped us with homework, volunteered at school and our activities, and saved for our college educations. What helped the most was that I spent a lot of time with her parents (spoiled only grandchild for quite some time), and they taught me formal table manners, took me places with their friends, introduced me to influential people, started my college fund, and were all around wonderful to me. My father's family always had some sort of daytime talk-show drama going on, few are college-educated, and they were always screaming at each other about something or backstabbing each other to curry favor with their parents. I have no relationship with any of them as an adult, and I can't say I think I'm missing out.

To some extent, I also married down, but my husband was a complete fish out of water with his L upbringing and fled to G as fast as he could. His parents also felt education was very valuable, which is not typically of where he was raised, so going to college was expected/encouraged/financed. We come from different financial philosophies, but he's laid back enough to let me handle them and will acknowledge that he simply is not aware of a lot of the financial ins and outs that many of us take for granted. He's learned a lot and manages the "his" portion of our finances just fine. We don't fight about money, he enjoys culture, and he knows he got a shitty education as a kid and is hellbent on making sure that our kids get the best education we can provide for them. Both of us have graduate degrees. Where we differ is on ambition (he has a job for $, I have a career), ability to deal with anything bureaucracy-related (forms, waiting on hold, jumping through hoops for insurance issues), and tolerance of bullshit social games (no interest in schmoozing with other parents to get our kids on the playdate circuit). In terms of the culture in our home, we're in line with our G2/G3 counterparts, for the most part. We have kids over, we do "cultural" stuff as a family (plays, museums, some travel, etc.), we participate in community events, we stock their 529s, our kids are in activities (scouts, sports, etc.) and we lead some of those, etc.

[Anonymous]

I'm a solid G2, with G3 parents, and I married another G2, but he had L2 parents.

I remember our first date, and I was asking about his family. He said his sister worked with x-rays, and I immediately (and snobbily) assumed that she was a radiologist. She is not, she's a x-ray technician. I was taken aback.

How has marrying into an L family from a G family affected me? It has and It hasn't -- we're both G2 and do all the G2 things the article says. But, I do think that being around some L family members, frequently, challenges my perspectives on things sometimes.

I laughed out loud about the 'gauche' comment. So true.

[Anonymous]

What separates the G2 from G1? Is it just the circle of friends?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What separates the G2 from G1? Is it just the circle of friends?

G1 means national / international class cultural leader. Nobel prize winners, etc.

G2 means PhDs in academia, elite college graduates, etc..

[Anonymous]

Really interesting article. I think the mobility now is really restricted if you compare it to the last century. My grandfather was born to an L4 (single mom factory worker) and became a G2 (engineer who owned his own successful firm). That leap was possible because of quality public education from smart women who didn't have many career options beyond teaching and various public and private social safety nets that we are currently dismantling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I come from a E family and am married to a G from an L1 family.

The differences in our outlook on money, culture, education is STRIKING.

If I could do it again, I would marry another E or a solid G with a G family.

PP, this is interesting -- could you expand on some of the differences you see in your attitudes vs. those of your spouse?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Well, of course the Gs don't want their kids marrying Ls -- more risk of falling lower down the social ladder, and, if you far enough down the L chain, you start running into people not only not sharing your values but openly disdaining them. My G mom married an L, and, though he never said anything until they were headed towards divorce, I think it broke my grandfather's heart that he'd spent so much time and effort making sure his kids got a college education to have her end up with someone uneducated (that she ended up supporting). I've been called over-educated, had my job mocked because the profession is seen as uppity, told I'm going to hell for not taking my children to church, and I've been criticized for not knowing who particular NASCAR drivers are. Humans are pack animals, and we're more comfortable with people who are like us. I love my in-laws dearly - they are wonderful, caring people - but I am always on guard around them not to come off as too smart and smile and nod rather than attempt to discuss any sort of nuanced political or social issue with them.

The idea that working hard, going to college/grad school, etc. is your entry to a higher social class is a myth and it's why the whole pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is so maddening. Very few people make it on sheer grit. Most people have a leg up, a connection, a network, or something that gives them the opportunities to stay at the top. And they see those resources as finite and guard them with their secret club rules.

I understand your concern. Since I have some roots in what you are describing, I both understand the rules of that world and have spent a lot energy in fleeing it. One reason I maintain some distance is that, frankly, my own education and interests are sometimes viewed as threat. This is doubly the case because I am a woman. There are some rules I won't live by, and I don't want my child to internalize them. I wasted too much time and effort getting an education, over economic and logistical barriers, with a certain amount of pushback (as well as some fierce advocates) -- why have the next generation have to repeat the same journey? They should move onto a new project.

That said, thinking back on my own experiences for a minute, I don't see allies and adversaries in this project strictly along strictly class lines. Perhaps this is because my own migration was through and out of a religious movement that itself contained class strata. For example, in my church group, there was some serious L policing of gender and politics, that I found frustrating. But it was always possible to round game that attack a bit by appealing to the value of work and family values. So, I could express my emerging feminism this way, "Don't you think that girls should be able to fix cars and fend for themselves if they need to take care of their children? I'm just saying everyone should be able to stand on their own two feet." However, the lower level "G" strata of the same evangelical world were interested in Theology, and they didn't deal so much in practical questions -- the project from that angle to is coax the world-as-it-is to fit a theological model. Only the model is True. So they would detect nascent apostasy in my advocacy and come out flying -- after all, who did I think I was? And a woman. Go figure. This is why you don't let women get out of line. The Model predicted it. This lower level G self-defense is one where Biblical literacy and the authority to speak about it cloaks both class and gender privilege.

Now, if I could get high enough in the evangelical G strata, they wanted their daughters educated and successful, if also married well. The tone changes considerably in those quarters.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that in my early life I knew Ls who were relatively easy to get along with, from my "uppity" point of view, as well as a plenty of Gs who seemed to have the time, energy, and cultural mandate to make themselves very frustrating.

Needless to say, religion, region and race are all factors that vastly complicate any narrative we want to tell about American social life.

Anyway, here's a point to which I want to migrate, off my long detour: I think that I understand your concerns. But I guess my own experience as a kind of cultural and class migrant, as well as someone who now lives in a fairly diverse community, is that I tend to look for and understand the value of cultural hospitality. Every tribe of people has something they want to defend and conserve. That is natural. But my own experiences and education have led me to value the practice of understanding people and making room for them. It is true that people cannot simply "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps;" that being the case, I certainly hope that when someone has taken the effort to fit themselves in and they will also be invited to stay. I understand your concern about, say, a person with a master's degree marrying someone with a high school education and no particular interest in education. But the working class kid who reads veraciously and put themselves through the same master's program?

The argument that runs, "We will always see their background and know who they really are," is - to me - not so very far off from my old church adversaries who refused, straight up, to understand anything about LGBT people in the same town, or people who want to see immigrants as outsiders even after they've been in town for 20 years. I get it. There's some truth to it.

But let's not stop short at that point. There's some suggestion in the comments that there's a limit to friendships across boundaries. I beg to differ. I know people from considerably different backgrounds, and while that can often be a barrier, I have seen people move across those barriers many times.

I feel like I should clarify that these are not necessarily my concerns, just that I understand them. I am also a class migrant and can fake both sides pretty well, but it always leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling of not fitting in either place and having to be quite careful about the worlds colliding. It is exhausting to be on guard all the time. One of the reasons that we live in the DC area is that the diversity of people makes this stratification less taxing for me -- there are people like me who get it. But it took a while to find them. My first internship in DC was brutal, and I was in with high G and E kids who made it clear to me that, regardless of my education and work ethic, I wasn't and never would be one of them. I can completely understand why some people give up on climbing the social ladder. The deck feels stacked against you, and it's frustrating to invest time and money into an education on the premise that we live in a meritocracy only to find out that there are barriers education and hard work can't break down.

Ah, I see. I think I understand the concerns as well, although I'm nonetheless flummoxed by purposefully exclusionary behavior (wherever it occurs) - likewise by lack of curiosity about people with other experiences. I get it intellectually. But I can't *understand* it.

I agree on migration being tricky and taxing. When once one is from multiple communities, one also as if one no longer fits 100 percent into any of them. Also, flexibility can be an advantage, but burden of code-switching is always on code-switcher.

Your point about diversity easing the burden rings true. I hadn't put to myself in quite this way, but it occurs to me that I tend to feel a bit fish-out-of-water in very homogenous communities. However, communities that have mixture of people -- and smaller groups where a shared interest brings people together -- are more comfortable. I like being able to disappear into a mosaic. Truth me known, I also like hang out around community edges, because the other migrants know what's up.

[Anonymous]

Alas, I messed up the quote tree. Another try:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, this is an interesting discussion that hits a nerve. I, too, find the undercurrent in the comments depressing. I understand why the PP with an L-->G husband was put off. I am a combination of L (by birth) and G (by education, profession). Being told that Gs can sniff you out from a mile off, secretly pity you, and don't want their kids marrying your kids is a pretty nasty gut-punch.

If that's playing nice, I wonder what playing nasty looks like. I understand the social class is very powerful, but do you really enjoy feeding it crackers? Don't all the college degrees inspire some cultural flexibility?

And here I thought working hard, going to honors college, getting a graduate degree, and trading in ideas and information was supposed to earn me gentry street cred. No?

Well, of course the Gs don't want their kids marrying Ls -- more risk of falling lower down the social ladder, and, if you far enough down the L chain, you start running into people not only not sharing your values but openly disdaining them. My G mom married an L, and, though he never said anything until they were headed towards divorce, I think it broke my grandfather's heart that he'd spent so much time and effort making sure his kids got a college education to have her end up with someone uneducated (that she ended up supporting). I've been called over-educated, had my job mocked because the profession is seen as uppity, told I'm going to hell for not taking my children to church, and I've been criticized for not knowing who particular NASCAR drivers are. Humans are pack animals, and we're more comfortable with people who are like us. I love my in-laws dearly - they are wonderful, caring people - but I am always on guard around them not to come off as too smart and smile and nod rather than attempt to discuss any sort of nuanced political or social issue with them.

The idea that working hard, going to college/grad school, etc. is your entry to a higher social class is a myth and it's why the whole pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is so maddening. Very few people make it on sheer grit. Most people have a leg up, a connection, a network, or something that gives them the opportunities to stay at the top. And they see those resources as finite and guard them with their secret club rules.

I understand your concern. Since I have some roots in what you are describing, I both understand the rules of that world and have spent a lot energy in fleeing it. One reason I maintain some distance is that, frankly, my own education and interests are sometimes viewed as threat. This is doubly the case because I am a woman. There are some rules I won't live by, and I don't want my child to internalize them. I wasted too much time and effort getting an education, over economic and logistical barriers, with a certain amount of pushback (as well as some fierce advocates) -- why have the next generation have to repeat the same journey? They should move onto a new project.

That said, thinking back on my own experiences for a minute, I don't see allies and adversaries in this project strictly along strictly class lines. Perhaps this is because my own migration was through and out of a religious movement that itself contained class strata. For example, in my church group, there was some serious L policing of gender and politics, that I found frustrating. But it was always possible to round game that attack a bit by appealing to the value of work and family values. So, I could express my emerging feminism this way, "Don't you think that girls should be able to fix cars and fend for themselves if they need to take care of their children? I'm just saying everyone should be able to stand on their own two feet." However, the lower level "G" strata of the same evangelical world were interested in Theology, and they didn't deal so much in practical questions -- the project from that angle to is coax the world-as-it-is to fit a theological model. Only the model is True. So they would detect nascent apostasy in my advocacy and come out flying -- after all, who did I think I was? And a woman. Go figure. This is why you don't let women get out of line. The Model predicted it. This lower level G self-defense is one where Biblical literacy and the authority to speak about it cloaks both class and gender privilege.

Now, if I could get high enough in the evangelical G strata, they wanted their daughters educated and successful, if also married well. The tone changes considerably in those quarters.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that in my early life I knew Ls who were relatively easy to get along with, from my "uppity" point of view, as well as a plenty of Gs who seemed to have the time, energy, and cultural mandate to make themselves very frustrating.

Needless to say, religion, region and race are all factors that vastly complicate any narrative we want to tell about American social life.

Anyway, here's a point to which I want to migrate, off my long detour: I think that I understand your concerns. But I guess my own experience as a kind of cultural and class migrant, as well as someone who now lives in a fairly diverse community, is that I tend to look for and understand the value of cultural hospitality. Every tribe of people has something they want to defend and conserve. That is natural. But my own experiences and education have led me to value the practice of understanding people and making room for them. It is true that people cannot simply "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps;" that being the case, I certainly hope that when someone has taken the effort to fit themselves in and they will also be invited to stay. I understand your concern about, say, a person with a master's degree marrying someone with a high school education and no particular interest in education. But the working class kid who reads veraciously and put themselves through the same master's program?

The argument that runs, "We will always see their background and know who they really are," is - to me - not so very far off from my old church adversaries who refused, straight up, to understand anything about LGBT people in the same town, or people who want to see immigrants as outsiders even after they've been in town for 20 years. I get it. There's some truth to it.

But let's not stop short at that point. There's some suggestion in the comments that there's a limit to friendships across boundaries. I beg to differ. I know people from considerably different backgrounds, and while that can often be a barrier, I have seen people move across those barriers many times.

I feel like I should clarify that these are not necessarily my concerns, just that I understand them. I am also a class migrant and can fake both sides pretty well, but it always leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling of not fitting in either place and having to be quite careful about the worlds colliding. It is exhausting to be on guard all the time. One of the reasons that we live in the DC area is that the diversity of people makes this stratification less taxing for me -- there are people like me who get it. But it took a while to find them. My first internship in DC was brutal, and I was in with high G and E kids who made it clear to me that, regardless of my education and work ethic, I wasn't and never would be one of them. I can completely understand why some people give up on climbing the social ladder. The deck feels stacked against you, and it's frustrating to invest time and money into an education on the premise that we live in a meritocracy only to find out that there are barriers education and hard work can't break down.

Ah, I see. I think I understand the concerns as well, although I'm nonetheless flummoxed by purposefully exclusionary behavior (wherever it occurs) - likewise by lack of curiosity about people with other experiences. I get it intellectually. But I can't *understand* it.

I agree on migration being tricky and taxing. When once one is from multiple communities, one also as if one no longer fits 100 percent into any of them. Also, flexibility can be an advantage, but burden of code-switching is always on code-switcher.

Your point about diversity easing the burden rings true. I hadn't put to myself in quite this way, but it occurs to me that I tend to feel a bit fish-out-of-water in very homogenous communities. However, communities that have mixture of people -- and smaller groups where a shared interest brings people together -- are more comfortable. I like being able to disappear into a mosaic. Truth me known, I also like hang out around community edges, because the other migrants know what's up.

[Anonymous]

L= loser

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:L= loser

E=Entitled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Ah, I see. I think I understand the concerns as well, although I'm nonetheless flummoxed by purposefully exclusionary behavior (wherever it occurs) - likewise by lack of curiosity about people with other experiences. I get it intellectually. But I can't *understand* it.

I agree on migration being tricky and taxing. When once one is from multiple communities, one also as if one no longer fits 100 percent into any of them. Also, flexibility can be an advantage, but burden of code-switching is always on code-switcher.

Your point about diversity easing the burden rings true. I hadn't put to myself in quite this way, but it occurs to me that I tend to feel a bit fish-out-of-water in very homogenous communities. However, communities that have mixture of people -- and smaller groups where a shared interest brings people together -- are more comfortable. I like being able to disappear into a mosaic. Truth me known, I also like hang out around community edges, because the other migrants know what's up.

DP. What's interesting is that the feelings you are expressing as a class migrant are similar to those that an immigrant (or a first generation American like myself) feels. My parents are a bit unusual in that they held a similar class status in their home country (well, mom was more analogous to an E3 and dad is solidly G2 professionals with high local community standing but okay income/wealth). I've struggled less than other first generation Americans of my ethnicity to fit into the G2/E3 world I typically move around in. But perhaps because of my parents status in their home country, I've spent more time there, and I definitely relate to not having an identity in either country. Here people want to xxx-American me; there they just call me an American.

[Anonymous]

I was raised G2/3.
I'm L2

I married a family that is likely E2.


It's been interesting and my parents harbor weird feelings about my new lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was raised G2/3.
I'm L2

I married a family that is likely E2.


It's been interesting and my parents harbor weird feelings about my new lifestyle.

Fascinating! More details, please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was raised G2/3.
I'm L2

I married a family that is likely E2.


It's been interesting and my parents harbor weird feelings about my new lifestyle.

Fascinating! More details, please.

My parents are well educated, so it isn't that they are bumpkins. I would say that they value different things. My parents firmly believe money is necessary but certainly not the goal.
My in laws have built generational wealth. They are the children of the gentry, their grandparents were likely also gentry, so you would have to go back several generations to find the ancestors that were labor.
They believe in wealth that sustains itself and creates opportunities for others to also share in it and eventually begin building their own. There is a strong patriotism in that philosophy. So, even if they become billionaires, they could never be E1.
The ladders are interesting, but I feel like I am a combination of different classes and levels.
My parents have graduate degrees. I don't. I went to colllege but then I went to trade school.
I love my job, but it's is physically demanding and I won't be able to do it forever. I'm not 40 and it has taken a toll on my body.
By contrast my E2 SIL is in peak fitness and health. She's the CEO of a company. Her well being is never sacrificed and it shows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By contrast my E2 SIL is in peak fitness and health. She's the CEO of a company. Her well being is never sacrificed and it shows.

CEOs are E3.

E2s prefer to not work.