disorganized rambling on class

[amw]

Something i find myself bumping up against semi-frequently in my life is a different sense of class than many of the people i interact with. I am not sure where my sense of class developed, but i wonder how much my childhood in the UK had an influence

Comments

[siglinde99]

It’s an interesting brain dump. Frugal definitively means different things to different people. I think I’m frugal (and in many respects I am), but I’m not nearly as frugal as you for material things. OTOH, I can’t imagine going on an overseas holiday any more, or just packing up and travelling the way you have done.

I think you are onto something around the perceptions. I have talked to my son about my environmental views and he was surprised at how much I care about plants he can’t even identify. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and therefore he doesn’t care much. It was similar when I talked about housing issues. He is looking to buy a million dollar home in a walkable part of Toronto and thinks that’s modest, because he spends way too much time with wealthy friends and family (his wife’s side - not mine!). I have to grit my teeth and be glad that at least he refuses to consider a monster home built on farmland on the edge of the city - contributing to climate change and making us even more vulnerable from a food security perspective. At least when we have conversations about these things, he is willing to listen and consider why he has an old unrepentant hippy for a mom.

[amw]

I am not sure that my frugality is related to my social class - i certainly take it far further than anyone else in my family! - but modesty... perhaps.

It's interesting how "class" (if that's what this is) doesn't always get passed down to the children. When i look at my sister and me - and to be fair i haven't spoken more than a few words to my sister in over a decade - i get the impression she is much snobbier than i am, despite earning far less money and having far less "high flying" jobs.

I wonder what experiences in life create that sort of difference in outlook? Maybe for her it started in school, where when i had problems in school the parents thought about sending me to a private school but in the end i stuck it out in state schools and survived okay, despite a fair bit of bullying and rough times. My sister had problems later on and went to a Montessori highschool, which definitely gave her a bit of a superiority complex imo.... but of course that's just my perception, which is fed by my political views that private schools are inherently problematic... a view i might not have had if i had ended up going to one as a teenager!

[siglinde99]

School and the connections you make there definitely do have an impact. My son played hockey with a bunch of kids who went to the nearby private school. He wanted desperately to go there (or to an even pricier private school) but I refused. Still, the kids he hung out with remain his best friends, and it was through one of them that he made the right connections into the business world.

My daughter’s biggest influence was undoubtedly the social workers and psychologists she relied on especially in high school. She went to a specialty arts school but ultimately studied social work and loves her career working with kids needing mental health support.

they might both have ended up in the same place as adults, but I have zero regrets about keeping them in the public school system. Even though I wasn’t happy my daughter chose the arts school, she did make good friends there and being around all those kids who might be considered weirdos in regular schools was good for her. She said it was the first place she ever felt normal.