Reply to The Social Class Ladders—Labor, Gentry, and Elite

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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?[/quote]

[b]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.  [/b]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.[/quote]

I don't think these are "gentry" values. People of all classes value education, financial literacy, community, and engagement with hobbies.

I grew up the same way and I am a first generation college grad (plus grad degree).[/quote]

Okay, that's not been my experience. Most of the people I know in the L class have jobs that don't align with school schedules or are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, so they volunteer at school less.  My mother was at nearly every extracurricular match that I was in, and my friends with L parents were happy if they came to even one or two games, some only came to senior night their last year of high school.  My husband grew up L and couldn't understand why I thought we should go to every game because neither his parents nor any o fhis peers had parents who were that present.  Most Ls also don't have the same degree of financial sophistication that Gs and Es do -- my husband had no idea what a retirement account was growing up, and, even growing up high-L/low G, my parents never spoke to me about investments or anything beyond budgeting and paying your bills.  When you don't have extra cash, you don't invest.  The best graduation present I got from college was one of my mom's relatives (a mid-G) starting a Roth for me because I didn't know I needed one.

And the "value education" thing is definitely class-based.  If you think the majority of Ls value education, you need to get out in the world some more.  There is a definite derision for higher education amongst the rural L community where my husband was raised.  My in-laws were the outliers in having been to college, and that they expected him to go was well out of the norms for the area.  Maybe 20% of his graduating class from high school went on to any sort of college.  I have definitely heard the sentiment, more than one time, that college is just a trap to get you to owe a lot of money to the government so that they can keep you down.[/quote]

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