I am glad your family didn’t make you feel like you were too big for your britches.

Your writing is compelling here and it makes me wonder why I didn’t think about class more at a young age, considering that in eighth grade I moved with my family from a lower class, industrial city neighborhood to a middle class neighborhood in an affluent suburban town where my first friend was a senator’s daughter. One minute I was running wild in back city alleys and the next sitting pool-side at country clubs.

But there was no you’re getting too big for your britches thing at home. It was assumed we’d go farther than our parents, just as they had gone farther than theirs. And my parents worked very hard to make this happen.

Wow I totally agree that the middle class is the sweet spot but I like to think that part of what makes it so is that you are free to stay where you are or maybe even take a non-traditional path but are also free to aspire upward without apologizing. It seems the most forgiving layer in the US class layer cake, encouraging children to seek the place that’s best for them.

I am curious though how solidly middle class families handle it when a child does aspire to the professional or elite class and is suddenly in that milieu. Is it a point of contention or pride. I wonder.

In my experience with the affluent NY Jewish culture, this seemed to be handled by creating an elite subculture, i.e., not even trying to gain admittance to the traditional WASP world but creating a parallel elite world that retains some of the nuances of the middle class sweet spot while also comfortably moving and shaking with the powerful.

This is so interesting to me!

Thanks so much for your lovely comment.

But maybe I read too much into a photo.

Class was a mixed up subject in my household b/c my dad actually was to the manor born and defied the rules by marrying a poor-as-dirt farmer’s daughter. It was such a transgression that family legend says my aristocratic grandmother refused to allow my mother to enter the home at first, and attempted to push my mother down the grand old staircase to the mansion, which would have had pretty dire consequences if Daddy hadn’t caught her. I received so many different messages about money and class, I can’t even separate them out now. I *do* think the middle class is the sweet spot for not being forced by circumstances into extremely narrow, confining roles.

I still sense a certain rolling of the eyes when my mother asks “so how is the book coming along?”

Now I want to know the title of this book on middle class — I’ll send a tweet.

I probably should have developed the idea more that it can be difficult to change your class of origin because your family and friends may send signals about not crossing the line. In my experience members of each class layer reinforce membership with these kinds of messages.

I wonder if the reaction you got from your mother or those who thought you were “too big for your…” came from their own insecurities about not being where they wanted to be and maybe that they envied your self-made sophistication.
xo