I usually skip out on meme games but I thought I’d try out Jeanne’s class one. Bold are the privileges I can claim from my youth, italics are ones that I’m unsure of or that are more “yes but” kind of privileges. My mom’s Lutheran pride kept her from wanting us to look or feel poor. Yes, I didn’t have second-hand clothes but the rich kids often did. While they might wear scrubs from their parent’s doctor practice or vintage clothes scored from a thrift-store outing, I was in striped button-down shirts from the respectable department store whose teen department was always empty of teen customers. Yes, respectable people on TV sound like me but that’s because my mom dropped her childhood Pennsylvania Dutch accent and was hyper-aware of non-standard accents (a trait I’ve unfortunately picked up, I correct/mock Julie’s “wooder” pronunciation for water before I can even think about it, it’s like I have a very specificTourettes Syndrome that only applies to non-standard accents). Julie tallied up and commented on the quiz here in Jeanne’s comments. It’s fascinating to realize that although I grew up significantly poorer and have less than half Julie’s “steps” she’s much more culturally working class than I’ll ever be.
Father went to college (he was secretive about past, he might have done a semester at St Joe’s)
Father finished college
Mother went to college (two year secretarial program)
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children’s books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively (because we’re good assimilationists)
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Had to take out less than $5000 in student loans in order to go to college
Didn’t need student loans to go to college out of high school
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp (day camp at the Y for a few summers)
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (pride kept us out of second-hand stores until we later crossed that class boundary where thrifting is cool precisely because its not a necessity)
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child (I was the only child at home after age 7)
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course (my mom thought they were cheating)
Had your own TV in your room in High School (mostly as monitor for Radio Shack Color Computer she bought me junior year of high school)
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up (we were more zoo/county fair/Independence Hall tour types (hey, they’re all free/low-cost!))
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family (n/a: included in apt rent, besides my mom would never let on that things were tight)
A list like this can never be all inclusive but it seems there are some big omissions. Where’s anything about family structure and finances, like “You had two parental figures living in your house” and “Both parents contributed to family income” or “One parent stayed home or worked part-time”? In my own instance, my father had a secret other family and never paid for anything other than the occasional trip to Roy Rogers (secret family to “Little Marty” at least, the women and older children presumably noitced he was only around half the time and constructed some mental run-around to explain it away).
The other omission is social networks. I have no memory of family friends. I cannot name one friend of my father and my mother’s friends were limited to a handful of “girls” at the office. By the time I got to high school I started to see how certain classmates were able to work the system to get the best teachers and classes and this was mostly accomplished by parents swapping notes after Hewbrew class or at church or at hockey practice. Friends are rightly noted for the strength of their social networks and I suspect these provide a social privilege that is far more valuable than parental salary.
Jeanne promises to write a part two to her post explaining what this all means to Friends. I’m looking forward to it though I’m unsure just what easy generalization can be made if we’re looking at origins. One of the few surveys trying to be comprehensive found Philadelphia-area Friends don’t reflect American averages yet for many convinced Friends our participation has mirrored (and perhaps been unconsciously motivated by) an upward class mobility. Keep an eye on Social Class & Quakers for more!
Martin,
Thanks for pointing out the survey. I hope to do one of my one sometime in the future.
Just so you know, the list is supposed to show just some of the advantages people get as a child, rather than things they earned themselves. You’re right, it isn’t a complete list.
Your point about clothing is a good one. My mother, too, would never “lower herself” to go to second-hand clothing stores. She made many of our clothes when we were very young, until I was out of elementary school. After then, they used Sears lay-away to buy new school clothes for us every year. My brother and I had a paper route and I babysat. I bought things I wanted with that money, including clothes. And the first thing I bought with my first actual pay check was new clothes.
Interesting about the differences between you and Julie. I wonder about how each of your families felt about your situation. My mother disdained her roots (her father was a coal miner in KY) and also our family’s situation (in a working class neighborhood). People I’ve talked to whose family were proud of their heritage have a very different cultural persona than I do (I feel like was less culturally working class than my neighbors and classmates). I read an interesting article recently on some of these differences in an academic setting. PDF article is here. Before reading it, I hadn’t thought about my own family’s attitudes and the difference that made in my life.
Hi Jeanne: yes I’m more “generic American” than Julie. I think the tendency goes back some generations.
My maternal grandmother apparently started going to the Lutheran church in town simply because the “good people” all went there and was completely mortified whenever I did anything hippy’ish. There’s pretty clearly some Lenape mixed in on that side too – Colonial-era Moravian missionaries in the area encouraged the Lenape to essentially become white by adopting Christianity, German names and the farming lifestyle. I’d publish some hilariously in-denial family histories (“Seneca Bryfogel” of Indiantown, PA whose family must have come from southern Germany because everyone’s so dark-skinned) except I don’t want to be one of those whitey’s claiming an Cherokee great grandmother. Whatever DNA’s back there is pretty much a moot point, as the assimilation’s pretty complete and my childhood cultural influences are much more indebted to Gilligan’s Island, Star Trek and Doctor Who than anything learned on my grandmother’s knee.
So yes, in one of those oddities that make the world so interesting, Julie gets more points on the privilege scale than I, but grew up much more culturally working class and is less able to deal with Quaker’s largely unexamined class issues.