Megan and I are totally on the same wave length right now. She has a column on parenting in Bloomberg. There’s a lot in there, so I’m going to decline to sum it up. Let me just jot down my own thoughts.
Parents, especially in wealthy communities, are raising children in an entirely different way than parents in other communities. Kids are groomed, supervised, tutored, medicated, and honed. Their time is micro-managed by parents. The free-range kids are news only because they are the freaks.
These momagers mean well. Their motives are good. They want to care for their children. They keep an eye on education bureaucrats and local government officials. The schools and town politics work well for a reason — people are keeping an eye on them.
However, it also creates inequities. The intensive efforts of these well-meaning parents have intensified that gap between managed kids and kids without the new momagers. The wealthy parents who opted out their children out of the standardized tests may have harmed the accountability of schools in poorer areas.
Megan writes, “Still, the net effect is a system in which affluent parents nominally support equality of opportunity while practically doing much to make it less likely. And because they are rarely personally acquainted with many children outside of their socioeconomic group, their views on what would benefit those kids are bound to be impoverished.”
Related: How the rich get their kids into the ivies.
Apt. 11d 
Thanks for the Bloomberg link. I wouldn’t have seen that. My favorite line: “one of the most important ways they do that is by trying to keep their kids away from children of lower socioeconomic status.”
Most of my neighborhood opts-out of our local public school because it has a nearly 80% free/reduced lunch population. We, however, have found it to be an amazing school with incredible teachers. My neighbors are very nice people, all very liberal democrats – they do care about the poor. I think they are just more comfortable at a school where everyone looks more like them. (This quote also resonated: “the net effect is a system in which affluent parents nominally support equality of opportunity while practically doing much to make it less likely.”)
I truly think that the ability to get along with all kinds of people in the world will be a valuable lifetime skill for my children. But I have no idea how to get other white middle class families to attend our school.
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Sadly, while the ability to get along with all kinds of people may be a valuable eternal skill, I’m not sure it means much in the UMC world. I feel like adult UMC life is increasingly segregated by income level, and that most people don’t have contacts outside their own class. Two instances: my mom had social relationships with all the tradespeople in the neighborhood, but more internet shopping and other factors have reduced that. My father had a social relationship with his secretary, but the disappearance of secretaries means that most professionals interact only with their keyboards and the other professionals.
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“Sadly, while the ability to get along with all kinds of people may be a valuable eternal skill, I’m not sure it means much in the UMC world. I feel like adult UMC life is increasingly segregated by income level, and that most people don’t have contacts outside their own class.”
I think that there are also substantial barriers elsewhere.
I’ve recently been familiarizing myself with the MRA/MGTOW/Red Pill world, and I get the feeling that the following type is fairly common there:
–reasonably educated and literate (I’m judging on spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.)
–reasonably middle class
–anti-social
–little respect or familiarity with the humanities (you know, the stuff that girls are often good at)
–little familiarity with how middle class/upper middle class life works today (hence, they only seem to think that good wifing consists entirely of happily cooking, cleaning and sex and all other forms of domestic and maternal labor are invisible and unfamiliar to them)
It’s a bit of a mystery how one manages to have this particular constellation of characteristics and beliefs and still be middle class in the US, but I have my suspicions. Here are some of them:
–single culture and married culture are largely separate in the US today, so that one might well be quite ignorant of the realities of middle class parenting if one were a single man
–autism spectrum issues
–social isolation and alienation brought on from working from home throughout much of one’s adulthood
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I do think our worlds are getting narrower. Dismissing the need to learn to get along with others on the purely utilitarian basis of whether one is going to be able to interact with everyone in a workplace (which, as you say, may be getting less diverse as the workplaces become increasingly segregated and online services distance people from each other) seems shortsighted to me, though. We do still need to live together as a community and work together together to form our governments. The ultimate endpoint of not being able to interact across class and income will be a totalitarian dystopia of some sort or another (or, maybe anarchy).
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It also creates “inequities”…typo
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Meh. What she attributes to theoretical claims on how public space is to function (that most parents willingly chose and/or prefer “atomistic parenting) I attribute to a couple of other things:
(a) economic decisions at the macro level that have effectively decimated communities on a large scale, making something simple like “finding and keeping a job” a matter of musical chairs, and
(b) white parents anxious about how the new musical-chairs economy is going to impact their children, especially their male children, in the face of affirmative action and cities becoming majority-minority.
Like Kristen, my daughter attends one of those high-poverty schools (hers in in the 90% range; the whole district has such high rates that school breakfasts and lunches are free for everyone), and for the most part I’ve found her teachers to be very dedicated. At the high school level, even more so—that’s “crunch time”, and there is a real effort to discover and provide opportunities for kids with talent. In a suburban school, my daughter would be one of the left-behind. Here, she’s recognized as one of the contenders; one of the kids who’s going to make it up and out.
One of the things I really appreciated about Thomas Shapiro’s “The Hidden Cost of Being African American” is how well it illustrated that working class and poor parents want the same things for their children that the wealthier parents do, there’s just a lot fewer resources to leverage (and more non-negotiable challenges to meet). Shapiro wrote his book focusing on how African Americans are disadvantaged by lack of wealth, but much of his book is very relevant to white working class people from the rust belt. He coined the term “transformational assets” to describe how wealth is used to better one’s chances in life, and how without it, it’s damn near impossible to make what I call “escape velocity”.
That’s what all those good white liberal parents who use the private schools are doing: they’ve seen the handwriting on the wall, how there are going to be many more skilled, educated, qualified people than there are jobs to accommodate them in the new economy, and they’re leveraging everything they have in order to make sure their kids get a seat in the musical chairs economy. That’s what all the “concerted cultivation” is about. They wouldn’t be going to that extent if the overriding fear of being left behind wasn’t hanging over their heads.
This is just another way disparate wealth manifests. Yeah, a lot of urban school districts are underfunded, and for a variety of reasons. But it’s more than that—“pouring money” in won’t “fix” that problem in isolation. The money has to “pour in” directly into the hands of parents in the form of long-term, stable employment, with stable (predictable) hours, at middle-class wages and benefits. Full stop.
Also: don’t think working class parents aren’t doing what we can, within our more limited resources, to “cultivate”, too. Mostly it’s more geared towards sports, both as a means of keeping kids away from drugs and gangs, and as a potential college scholarship. But it’s definitely there. I noticed long before I had my daughter that the defining criteria for staying away from illegal, dangerous, derailing bullshit for kids in my neighborhood was being involved in something, anything, that got them out of the house and into discovering their own skillset. Sports, music, dance, whatever—just something that was their own and challenging and entertaining enough keep interest in and grow into.
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I like your quote from the Shapiro book as it demonstrates that parents from different economic classes are actually more similar than many people imagine. If you attribute the outcomes of their children to primarily systemic issues, then the answer will be perceived to be policy changes that address (like you note) “long-term, stable employment, with stable (predictable) hours, at middle-class wages and benefits”.
If you attribute the outcomes to “those poor parents who don’t know how to parent effectively”, then you’ll attribute the outcomes to the smart middle class parents who just intrinsically know better.
It’s hard work to be working poor with paid work with unstable hours while also supervising your child’s education and opportunities. I don’t know how successful at it many of us would be in that situation.
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“That’s what all those good white liberal parents who use the private schools are doing: they’ve seen the handwriting on the wall, how there are going to be many more skilled, educated, qualified people than there are jobs to accommodate them in the new economy, and they’re leveraging everything they have in order to make sure their kids get a seat in the musical chairs economy.”
I think it’s even better if one is able to make one’s own chair.
That’s not going to be a realistic option for a lot of people, but being an employee has a lot of obvious disadvantages in the current economy, so people who have the option of opting out of it should weigh the advantages and disadvantages.
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I’m going to franchise my chairs too and have a separate stream for artisanal chairs.
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“They wouldn’t be going to that extent if the overriding fear of being left behind wasn’t hanging over their heads.”
yup.
And I can’t agree that the rich parents opting their kids out of testing is going to be damaging to the poor, because, I see no reason to see how the results/outcomes of those tests are going to help the poor. They might, if they were being used well, and if they were good tests. But, I see no political will to use them to fix problems and ses them being used mostly to punish, teachers, schools, and kids.
(and, remember, in my state, the tests will be required for graduation, starting next year).
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I’m so conflicted with the tests. For my kids, I’d opt-out in a minute. But for my “Little Sister” (BB/BS), the tests were a huge wake-up call. It was the first indication we had that she wasn’t learning. She was sliding through elementary school/middle school with B/C/Ds. But her test scores were dismal. Upon closer examination, the test scores were a more accurate portrayal of her knowledge level. She has had enormous trouble in high school, failing most classes. Turns out, she wasn’t learning the basic concepts. The test told us that. Her grades didn’t. (until high school)
I realize that is an anecdotal example of one. But I do believe that most districts are measuring their “achievement gap” using test scores as their main data. I fear if we stop measuring it, it will be easier to ignore it. The tests aren’t perfect – but they do show data of kids who are falling behind.
I agree entirely with your comment on the tests not being good, and the data not being used well. I think the answer is to fix the tests/usage….not to stop measuring.
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I think it’s even better if one is able to make one’s own chair.
That’s not going to be a realistic option for a lot of people, but being an employee has a lot of obvious disadvantages in the current economy, so people who have the option of opting out of it should weigh the advantages and disadvantages.
That’s something Shapiro addresses in this interview, as well as in the book.
But again, if you’re asset-poor, you’re going to have a much harder time of this—and it’s fairly rare for someone who is asset-poor to know anyone who is asset-rich. More importantly, if you’re asset-poor, you’re more likely to live in a community of others who are also asset-poor, of lower income, and precariously employed. Successful businesses that don’t require a lot of start-up assets do require a community filled with people with disposable income. That’s been a problem throughout the rust belt—small businesses shuttering because the customers can’t afford to spend.
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“But again, if you’re asset-poor, you’re going to have a much harder time of this—and it’s fairly rare for someone who is asset-poor to know anyone who is asset-rich.”
Not really. Young adults are pretty much always asset-poor, and yet their parents and grandparents may be asset-rich (or even without that, they may have one well-off relative). Also, it’s not uncommon for a person that is asset-poor to have an employer that is asset-rich, or to work in the homes of people that are asset-poor. My relatives, for instance, are asset-rich, but employ lots of asset-poor employees in tourist industry jobs, and my dad (who moonlights as a community college teacher) has shown a lot of interest in mentoring employees over the years. Likewise, come to think of it, many college instructors (especially the ones who aren’t career adjuncts) are also asset-rich. (This is all relatively speaking, of course–I mean wealth in six digits, not wealth in eight.) Heck, even high school teachers are (relatively speaking) going to be asset-rich compared to the people you’re talking about. And there’s also the internet for inspiration.
I understand that it’s possible to be asset-poor, to have a peer and relative group that is entirely asset–poor, and to only have work supervisors that are barely above that level, but I think that there are actually many points of contact with people that are better off, as long as one is in school or employed.
“More importantly, if you’re asset-poor, you’re more likely to live in a community of others who are also asset-poor, of lower income, and precariously employed. Successful businesses that don’t require a lot of start-up assets do require a community filled with people with disposable income.”
Or alternately, transient visitors with income. That works too.
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Anybody who works for my sister frying burgers, for instance, will have access to the following useful information:
–info about Rotary study abroad
–info about college and making it as a young adult without home support
–info on living and working and raising a family in Western Europe
–how to fit in at a fancy pants suburban school when you don’t really belong
–small business know-how
–personal finance
–logistics of country living
–thoughts about the lousy local school
–suggestions about managing the green card process and going back and forth between the US and abroad
–info about Large Seattle-Area Company
Sis is currently helping a long-time employee with severe health issues put together the money for a c-section for her daughter in Central America and other basic necessities.
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AmyP, your sister sounds great. But that is not typical of the experience of burger flippers. I’ve worked in food service; I was just another nameless, faceless cog—a replaceable tool. I’ve worked in child care—same thing. Service industry work sucks, in no small part because of how dehumanized you are as a worker, let alone the low pay that leaves you juggling bills on a permanent basis (and constantly begging for more hours). I have never met a person who had one of those jobs that didn’t have the same experience. It’s a good bonding exercise for working class people—talking about the shit jobs you’ve had. It’s practically the defining experience of being working class: the lack of personal power or autonomy, or respect.
Good for your sister. But she’s rare.
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AmyP, the family net of a child whose parents (and other relatives) tend to marry, stay married, and live a long life will be radically different from those of children whose parents don’t marry (or divorce with ease), who make unsafe personal decisions such as drug use or abusive boyfriends, and who don’t live into their ’80s. It’s hard to draw on a relative group, if they all loathe your mother and never got to know you. If they stay away from your father for their own safety. If the person you think is your grandmother thinks you look a lot like your mother’s previous boyfriend.
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Cranberry: I don’t want to take away from the other points you made, but being or having been in an abusive relationship is not an “unsafe personal decision”—it’s a deliberate decision by the abuser to be abusive, and it takes time and planning to escape safely. Abusers, like rapists, aren’t into taking “no” for an answer.
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lubiddu: In that point, I was thinking of a friend’s stories of her siblings, one sister in particular, as well as a relative of my father. One relationship, maybe; but what if the person chooses a succession of such people?
My father’s cousin (call him Harry) seemed to have a type, beautiful and certifiable. Both ex wives were diagnosed with mental illness, and institutionalized for a period. This was before the advent of reliable medications, so perhaps it would have turned out differently in this day and age. Nevertheless, the family was not rushing to hang out with Harry and his wives (serially, no bigamy involved.) When he was married to his exes, family relationships were strained.
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Cranberry: I’m going to assume you are already familiar with the life-cycle of abuse, and how abusers don’t start right out of the gate with abusive behavior. I’m also going to assume that you are familiar with the common cultural tropes of “forgiveness” and how “everybody makes mistakes”, and how “there are two sides to every story” and other toxic messaging that assists in masking the pattern of abuse, as well as making it difficult for people to admit (to themselves and to others) that they are, in fact, being abused.
But perhaps you don’t know how common it is? Check out this Oklahoma survey of divorced people. Scroll down to page 16, where you will see that 8% of men in the survey claim that domestic violence was a factor in the breakup of their marriage, as opposed to 44% of the women.
I’m going to take a wild guess that your friends’ sister is financially vulnerable. That sets her up for a pretty nasty dating pool. The dating pool for women without a college education is really dismal; for those that are poor, even more so. So, it’s not that she’s seeking out abusers; it’s that abusers are a disproportionate number of her dating pool. And unless a man has a criminal record for abuse (most don’t, just like most rapists aren’t convicted), well, like Forrest Gump’s “box of chocolates”, you don’t know what you’re going to get.
Unless you’re familiar with red flags for unhealthy relationships, or Lundy Bancroft’s work, or the wheel of power and control and such. Which a lot of women aren’t, because they grew up in families where domestic violence and/or substance abuse were a feature, and/or they’ve been taught toxic, enabling messages and trained since childhood to believe they were “bad” or inexcusably selfish to prioritize themselves in any way, including prioritizing their own safety if their partner is abusive (“he needs help!” Bah!). It also doesn’t help that media imagery of abuse is limited to worst-case-scenarios like broken bones and severe beatings—it implies that a “regular” crack in the head isn’t “really” abuse.
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but I think that there are actually many points of contact with people that are better off, as long as one is in school or employed.
Well, I shop at the same grocery store where a lot of upper-middle-class people shop, and I suppose there’s upper-middle-class people that use the same health care conglomerate I do….but that’s not really “contact”. Nor is working for someone in most cases—ownership even of locally-owned companies is at some distance; there is no face-to-face between the owners and the front-line workers.
But what was really brought out in Shapiro’s books is that so much of economic success depends on being born into the right family—that resources are crucial, and for the most part are family-based. Things like the GI Bill, FHA and VA home loans, and good-paying union jobs with benefits provided a significant lift for people who otherwise would not have been able to gain transformational assets. De-industrialization, disinvestment, the disappearance of the middle class, and the sheer abandonment of many communities means fewer people are able to gain transformational assets necessary for any semblance of safety and security. “Elbow grease” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Sure, maybe some wealthier folks are willing to provide start-up funds for former or current employees to start a business—but let’s be honest about how rare that is.
I disagree there is any meaningful contact between social classes. Filling up the tank at the same gas station, or standing in the checkout aisle at the same grocery store, or going to the same movie theatre isn’t meaningful contact. We don’t live in the same neighborhoods. Our children don’t go to the same schools. We don’t worship in the same places (if relevant). We don’t have the same social connections (fraternal or labor organizations, social clubs, children’s activities/events). There’s no “there”, there. We are effectively segregated from one another.
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I agree with you about the GI Bill and such providing tranformational assets and how it is harder now, but I still don’t think you’re right about the social connections. Or at least, it doesn’t seem that divided in older communities. My non-drinking social connections (kid’s school, church, etc.) are based largely in Catholicism-as-ethnicity stuff that hasn’t changed much from the 80s. My drinking social connections are mostly in a bar that mixes graduate students, non-student young people, and alcoholics (because cheap and you can smoke). You can see it going away, but it’s not gone yet.
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It’s gone where I live; the Catholic schools have mostly closed (except for the ultra-expensive high school, which still provides good academics and the social clout necessary for young people who want to come back to this area after completing their education), and the old-line (gender-segregated) social clubs are dying on the vine. Gen X and the Millenials won’t join gender-segregated clubs.
But its worth mentioning that men have a much easier time crossing social class boundaries. Physical appearance (and not just fashions, although women’s fashions are designed to show social class) plays a role, as does mannerisms, language, gestures—women have more invisible distinctions to deal with, let alone structural things like “the second shift”.
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On the other hand, the Catholicism-as-ethnicity stuff still exists, just without the Mass attendance.
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I’ll put the Shapiro book on my list.
I thought Megan McArdle’s article put together quite a few issues, but I’m not sure of the linkage. Her lack of personal knowledge of modern parenting does show.
First, the other parents in the neighborhood who claimed to have had to intervene with the free range kids–did they know the kids? Or did they assume that any two kids without a parent in tow had to be those kids? I don’t know the geography of the area in question, but the concerns, to me, sound like parental fear of urban environments. Is there an element of racism, classism, and fear of drug use in the critics’ fears?
I find it very sad if the two children in question are the only children in the neighborhood ever seen out without an attendant adult. When I think back to my childhood, I remember being required to walk about a mile to school in early elementary school. As all the other children in my neighborhood were also walking, no one was concerned. It was much healthier for us to walk at least 2 miles a day than to take the bus or be driven. Children in our exurban town do walk to school. That’s why the town sets up adult crossing guards for the school children.
Second, people from our oldest child’s college have said that this young generation is more accomplished (on paper) than earlier generations, certainly busier, but they are also more fragile. Less psychologically resilient. I am not convinced that being “momaged” is healthy in the long term. The elite college population is also reportedly using more mental health services: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/07/college-mental-health-services_n_5900632.html. No idea how one could establish whether it’s a trend.
Parents brag of the kids who seem to succeed. They don’t brag of the kids who auto-destruct, tell the parents to get lost, or go their own way. There is a limit to how much child-cultivation makes a difference. Many, many kids join travel sports leagues, but very few even get a bump for college admissions, let alone receive scholarships. (And the cost of all the years of sports support seem to outstrip any scholarships, apart from a minuscule fraction of students.)
A kid can do all sorts of extracurricular activities, but it won’t change the SAT/ACT score one bit. It might even hurt it, because it drains time which could be spent reading. I do a few alumni interviews each year for my alma mater. It’s hard to get an intellectual conversation going with someone who doesn’t read.
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I think about this issue a lot because I’m someone who jumped social/economic classes. I’m one of the few in my family to have a post secondary education let alone any professional degree. I’ve been “there” and now I’m “here”. I live in a completely different world compared to where I grew up. And I didn’t come from extreme poverty either – just blue collar/working class.
It’s another world.
My nieces and nephews and my other relatives have access to many of the supports/information that AmyP talks about but for a variety of reasons, they don’t follow up on them. I can only imagine why as it’s not something that would be dinnertime conversation.
“So, why don’t you place more of a priority on education?” <—-that'd be the last dinner I'd be invited to!
Seriously, though, I think that for them it's a lack of imagination and a lack of entitlement. It's not that they don't see the value, but they don't have the imagination to connect the dots to see that options A-F are available to them rather than just A-C.
Upper middle class life, higher education – that's for other people. And I don't mean this in a "blamey" way or in a way that implies that they don't have the ability. They do – they are smart people. But it isn't something that they think about that's possible for them.
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“My nieces and nephews and my other relatives have access to many of the supports/information that AmyP talks about but for a variety of reasons, they don’t follow up on them. I can only imagine why as it’s not something that would be dinnertime conversation.
“So, why don’t you place more of a priority on education?” <—-that'd be the last dinner I'd be invited to!"
Funny! Sad!
I'm not up-to-date on their doings, but there are dramatically different outcomes among my mom and her four siblings, despite basically equal inputs. On the high end, there's one very successful vet brother, there are 2-3 siblings in the middle (including my mom), and then the low end is my stoner rancher uncle and his three mostly messed up daughters. One of the girls has such a "colorful" life (or at least used to) that a reality TV producer would say, "Nah, too much drama for us."
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I can only imagine why as it’s not something that would be dinnertime conversation.
Ha! See, in my (Sicilian-American) family, there’s no such thing as boundaries. (which is as good an explanation as any why I live a few hours drive down I-55). With my cousins (almost all of whom are male), there’s a constellation of factors: intimidation at trying to pick up the shattered pieces of a derailed and/or inadequate education, the very real fact that if they attempt to do so, they’re going to need remedial education (problematic when it comes to paying for higher education), higher-education being seen as “unmasculine” (especially in the eyes of their (divorced) fathers, and they still want dad’s approval even though (a)their dad’s are bums and (b)it’s a lost cause anyway), fear of failure (with failure viscerally translating as unmasculine), transportation difficulties (fucking move to Chicago already, dammit!!), and the fact they don’t have parental support for payment and haven’t aged into independent student status. Plus, a few of ’em are in recovery (*cough* again), and it’s probably best they get a lock on that before taking up something even more challenging.
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And for clarity, they’re smart people too—but they lack self-confidence. The ability is there if they want to apply themselves—they’ve got the intelligence for it.
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I never thought about the possibility that they view higher ed as unmasculine. I think for my extended family there’s a feeling that it’s also “hoity toity” or show off-y. A bit of “who do you think you are?” whether out of fear of failure or fear of losing community. An education means leaving the town and all they know.
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I haven’t kept up with the thread, but here’s a somewhat relevant old article about Charles Dickens, his large family (10 children, 8 of whom lived to adulthood).
All except one, the children were “failures,” and viewed as such by Dickens pretty much as soon as they emerged from infancy.
“As the children grew, one by one, Dickens’s enthusiasm turned to ashes. Having earned his success and overcome childhood poverty while still a teenager through his own impressive energy and drive, his children’s complacency and lack of ambition disconcerted him.”
Reading this piece, with an upper middle class eye and a 21st century parenting sensibility, it seems very unlikely to me that a materially comfortable family with a brilliant father would be 7/8 irredeemable duds.
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They likely weren’t duds. In 2012, the descendants held a family reunion: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/charles-dickens/9066914/Its-the-Charles-Dickens-family-who-could-ask-for-more.html.
They’re an impressive bunch, the Dickenses. Charles had 10 children and over the years they have produced a smattering of admirals, high court judges, businessmen, writers and actors, and have spread across the world to South Africa, Australia and California.
Yesterday’s gathering, with an age range of seven to 90, included a fund manager, a retired bishop and the actor who played a young Denis Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
Are there any black sheep in this gene pool, I wonder? “Lots,” says Cdr Dickens with a smile that suggests he’s not going to reveal any more. “But I haven’t met anyone yet who’s been to prison. At least, not that they’ve told me.”
The charming, successful bunch I meet over lunch appears unlikely ever to have been in a debtors’ gaol. Not that you’ll find anyone in this family boasting about their connections. “The vast majority of the time, you keep quiet,” says Cdr Dickens. “I didn’t write anything. I was a naval officer. In fact, there are more Navy officers in the family than writers.”
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Googling “Charles Dickens asshole” gives some interesting results. Here’s one of ’em.
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Hope you enjoyed your trip down the rabbit hole!
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I don’t know Sandra’s family, but if they were maintaining their ancestral working class status, with jobs as (say) welders, stable marriages, and no psychological or substance abuse problems serious enough to prevent showing up to work on time, then I would say that it’s their choice, and a perfectly rational one. I know plenty of people with lives like that.
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Good point. Perhaps I’m overvaluing higher education (in other words, “why wouldn’t you want to read/know more about arts/culture/current events/etc?). I’ll be honest – I understand that many people never read a book beyond high school, see a play nor darken the door of a museum/gallery but I believe that it’s part of living a full life.
We’re still those same people sitting around a campfire tens of thousands of years ago telling each other stories. 120 years ago we were sitting in a parlor together making music and singing.
Maybe I’m naive but I do believe that the arts have become something that the upper middle class/wealthy do. When my in-laws were youngish (very working class – junk dealer/trader), they went to the symphony, saw plays, went to museums. I don’t think that’s the experience of that social/economic class today.
Are they happy? Yes. There is a thread of substance abuse/unstable marriages but it’s not out of the ordinary. And as MH alludes to, no more than in any other economic class. It’s easier for the wealthy to hide their substance abuse issues.
If I unpack it a bit, for me it’s not so much “everyone much have a degree and fancy schmancy paid work” but rather everyone, no matter what, should experience the arts. It’s part of being alive/human. And another part is that the choices of my nieces and nephews are limited from the get go.
There’s my tangent for you!
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Well, the strong advantage of having a college degree is that it gives you employment options and possibilities that you would otherwise not have. If you have a blue-collar job at the local powerhouse (or large manufacturing firm), and then it shuts down when you’re “older” (40s or 50s), well—you can take your ticket (journeyman’s card) and go on the road, but the expense of maintaining two domiciles (if you have a family) is daunting—you’re not making any more money than you would on unemployment (but you are maintaining your pension and health care). Having a degree helps to parlay your work experience into a managerial position—which isn’t just for the newly-unemployed, but also for aging bodies. (yes, Virginia, 20-30 years of heavy manual labor has an impact on one’s body)
This can’t be understated. People with college degrees are much less likely to be unemployed, much more likely to have decent pay and benefits, and more likely to be treated in a professional manner. Education gives a person options he or she would otherwise not have, period. A college degree has become the de-facto signal for whether or not a person is intelligent and has a work ethic. It’s hard to convince people you have either when you don’t have a degree (been there, done that, still doing that).
I always tell apprentices to take night classes after they top out. Just do it. You never know if you’ll have a serious injury, and having that degree you think you’ll never use, or think you’ll never need, will be a godsend in the event of the proverbial substance smacking into the fan.
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FWIW, my observation is that working class folks do visit museums (especially anything having to do with science) and historical sites, and occasionally see plays. Symphony not so much, because the price is higher (and a couple-generations of arts cutbacks in the schools means fewer adults with musical training/appreciation).
But…I think this is only true of urban working class folks. I’ve taken advantage of a lot of local things, but have never visited any arts/educational sites out of state (other than in St. Louis). The cost of travel and being absent from work isn’t worth it; not when a long weekend in Chicago (staying with relatives) is an option. If the U.S. had European-style paid vacations, I’d be booking reservations for more distant locations in a heartbeat!
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no psychological or substance abuse problems serious enough to prevent showing up to work on time,
Attending an Al-Anon meeting, or talking to some people who grew up with family members with serious psychological or substance abuse problems will quickly inform you that merely showing up to work isn’t a good enough metric for whether or not said person has a problem. A lot of ugly stuff happens behind closed doors, which is masked and/or dismissed by those who don’t have to live with it, when “but he (or she) always shows up to work on time!” is the measure.
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I’m don’t have much sympathy for idea that avoiding a substance abuse problem is a very big part of maintaining socioeconomic status. While I’m sure it does correlate, avoiding substance abuse is neither necessary nor sufficient for achieving middle class status. I’d bet the far for substance abuse stems from failing on economic goals than the other way around. I think Protestants just like to get whiny about drinking from habit.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure I drink more than a very large percentage of the people that other people look at as having failed because of their drinking.
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I had a very sweet college roommate from the midwest, who related how the family had essentially staged an intervention when her mother started to drink too much. As I recall, when she started having a glass of wine with dinner 2x per week, they had to step in.
My own family and cultural background consists of functional, social WASP drinkers. What my roommate considered burgeoning alcoholism would have been the definition of a non-drinker for us. Yes, there certainly are people who drink too much. There are alcoholics. It’s a question of control, and shame, and addiction. Episcopalians and Lutherans might not draw the same line to define “too much,” but I think everyone can agree on the full-blown cases.
@Lubiddu, your point about abusive boyfriends made me think of a modern feature of college education. The “term abroad” experience is wildly popular now. I lost track of how many college tour guides had studied abroad, often doing things which had no bearing on the TG’s major. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that parents are fond of the programs because it helps to discourage “too serious” relationships. A month, two months, three months, up to half a year apart will end many relationships. That’s a feature, not a bug, if you want your child to finish college, especially a daughter.
You don’t approve of the girlfriend? Hmm, half a year in France sounds like just the ticket.
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Cranberry said:
“You don’t approve of the girlfriend? Hmm, half a year in France sounds like just the ticket.”
Come to think of it, that could also help to explain the appeal of out-of-state college.
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Only if it’s really, really out of state, i.e., like Iowa or Texas (from New England.) Otherwise, you’re kid will be distracted by road trips.
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re: the substance abuse thread.
When we moved to the suburbs, we met a bunch of people who were barely holding onto a middle class lifestyle. They were behind in mortgage payments and were struggling. But they were brilliant. I mean scary smart. Smarter than other friends with lots more money. Smarter than people I knew in academia. What was up with that?
1. substance abuse problems. A full bottle of wine every night kind of problems. 2. undiagnosed ADHD or high functioning autism, which meant that they spent a lot of time doing their secretary’s job or running town sports leagues. Obssessive without focus. 3. inner demons. A fucked up childhood that resulted in more substance abuse problems and self-destructive behavior.
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Substance abuse is a risk in all social/economic classes. It’s just that the middle and upper classes have the resources and class traditions/rituals to hide it.
There’s the culture around collecting wine/building a wine cellar/scotch tastings/etc. Or socializing with the neighbors on the weekends that regularly turns into a big piss up. Or the one guy at the work dinner who passes out at the restaurant. And always does so but generates enough billings that everyone looks the other way (“that’s just Fred”). Or like you note, the weekend glass of wine that creeps to being a bottle each week night.
I’m certainly not saying that anyone who drinks has a substance abuse issue. What I am saying is that it can be hidden behind a culture of the wine/scotch “expert”.
Self-medicating with expensive wine is more acceptable that self-medicating with pot or other drugs.
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