|
My family background: great grandparents: non educated to college educated, dirt poor to owning half the rental properties in town. Grandparents: Maternal-Upper middle class income living on half of their salary which made them live as lower middle class, very informed with my grandfather very educated. I spent a lot of time with them in my early childhood. Paternal: Police officer (his parents owned half the town) and accounting clerk. Lived in a nice big house failr frugally. Also well informed types. Aunts and uncles took a variety of careers and lifestyles from working class to upper middle class. Oour extended families were close while I was growing up. My parents married and had me when they were still teenagers. They went to college and worked while I was a baby. They divorced when I was a few years old and they were both very poor for a while. I believe that my mother got food stamps. My mother, who finished college, became a parole officer after some low paying counseling short term jobs. My sister and I still had to "charge" our school lunches a couple days before she got paid. She used her money to buy nice clothes to attract richer men. She dated upper class to rich men. The richest one was an engineer whose father was a CEO of a tire company. We visited his parents who had a live in maid. My father during the same time had dropped out of college and had a series of manufacturing jobs. He also played in a rock band where he made slightly more than his manufacturing jobs. Unfortunately, he had trouble keeping those jobs because his band took priority over their "mandatory overtime". My mother got a master's degree and got a better job with a non profit although my sister and I still wore rather cheap clothes aside from a few nice outfit bought at the best department stores. When I was in elementary school, I lived in houses owned by a factory near our house. Living in a small city/large town, are elementary school was fairly diverse based on social class although I did not know what that was then. I was the weirdo who read encyclopedias. I was in the gifted program and once a week all the gifted children from all the elementary schools had gifted class. Half the children that were gifted lived in the district that had all the nicest houses in town. I didn't know why that was either. My mother eventually married an upper level manager who belonged to a country club and lived in a nice big house just outside of town. The richest people in town attended the wedding. We had to switch schools to a rural school that was even more diverse than my elementary school, classwise. There were kids that lived in nice rich houses, farms, and trailer parks and I lived in a nice rich house. My first friend at the school lived in a trailer park. I didn't understand social dynamics. I didn't understand why the "popular" kids that lived in rich houses didn't want to hang around me if I hung around her. My rich, although upper middle class is more accurate if he lived in a bigger community, was very abusive to my sister and I. His wealth didn't do us any good either. We were the slaves who were contributing nothing to the household. Still, we went to the country club. When I was in high school, my evil step father got transferred. I moved in with my father despite my mother promising to disown me. My father had just lost his better paying manufacturing job that allowed him to finish college through tuition reimbursement. Unemployment was high in the area though and he did not get a decent job until I was in college. He took a $7.00 job. The woman who he married worked in child care and made minimum wage. We did not experience true hardships until my dad's band broke up. Then we were poor. I no longer got a $10/week allowance or $100 at the beginning of the school year. Food was even an issue as an active athletic young woman. I was told that I ate too much. There had to be left overs for the next day. My father and step mother did not want me to get a job though. My job was to do well in sports and in academics so that I could get scholarships. I did do well and was in lots of other activities as well. I applied to prestigious liberal arts and got enough financial aid to pay the rest. I had friends who were slightly better off financially that didn't even try to go anywhere besides a community college as 4 year colleges were for the rich. I had richer friends who drove brand new cars purchased by their parents. One friend who did not have much of a clue had her parents purchase the other side of her dorm room so she didn't have to have a room mate. This same friend did not know many of her cousins who lived in the same town because they were "trash". Anyway, I went to college with a diversity of students ranging from inner city welfare to donates millions per year to charitable organizations. I think most came from upper middle class backgrounds. I got along with people there better than anywhere else in my life. I don't know if most knew that I got lots of aid. My work study job, food service, was open to non work study students and some wealthier students did work there. I wore the nicest clothes that I could buy on clearnace. I was familiar with more exotic food than most of them which I ate even as a poor food stamp child. I married the son of a successful lawyer. We live in a nice duplex and own nice vehicles. We can buy most things that we want and have shopped in every type of store. We are in the middle quintile wage wise and live in a low cost of living area. I hold a technical job at a manufacturing plant. Most of the people who work there are lower middle class with a few truly poor, based on family size and prior debt situation, and middle class with spouses with better jobs. My best friend is also diverse in class with a totally different set of circumstances. What class am I?
|