In Monday’s post about the bitter loss of shared dreams, I didn’t address the issue of class and status brought up by the original posts from which I quoted. Several of those who commented did bring up issues of dating outside one’s SES (socio-economic status), and I wanted to return to that aspect of the issue.
I’m married today to a woman who is, on both sides of her family, the first to graduate from college. My wife grew up poor, the daughter of an Afro-Colombian mother with a third-grade education and a father who, for all his kindness and good intentions, was hardly a reliable or consistent presence. Starting when she was eight, my wife worked with her mother cleaning houses and offices before and after school, enduring racial abuse. Her mother, who eventually made a small living as a seamstress, stressed education as the key to rising out of poverty, and my wife embraced that. Somehow, my mother-in-law found the money to buy soccer uniforms, to pay for dance lessons, to pay for the tools that my wife could use to begin her climb into a different social and economic world. My wife worked hard, won scholarships, took out loans, and eventually graduated with honors from the University of Southern California before heading into what has been a very successful career in business management. From both an ethnic and socio-economic standpoint, our backgrounds are worlds apart.
Like many immigrants who are part of the first-generation to “make it”, my wife supports (and now that we are married with completely blended finances, we support) a very large number of people within an extended family who have been less fortunate than ourselves. We send money to our Colombian relatives, paying for medical operations and schooling and clothes. We support cousins in this country as well with little bits here and there. We’ve recently moved to a larger house, not least because we are moving my mother-in-law in. My mother-in-law will get to spend lots of time with her adored granddaughter, and we can provide for her. My wife was and is her nest egg, and my beloved has always known and cheerfully accepted her responsibility to repay her mother’s years of backbreaking work.
This is not how I was raised. In WASPy families — OKOP — ageing parents do not move in with their children. They move into retirement communities with multiple levels of care, gradually becoming more and more reliant on professionals until they slip gently — or sometimes, not so gently — into the next world. I’ve grown up hearing from my mother, my grandmother, and countless other relatives the insistence that “I will not be a burden to my children when I’m old.” My own Mama has carefully designed her finances and her insurance policies to provide for the maximum degree of autonomy and comfort when the time comes. Heck, in our family when mothers come to visit, they stay in a hotel even when a guest room is ready and furnished; such is the near-reverent respect for “not causing an inconvenience.” It seems cold to outsiders, I suppose, but not to us. And of course, it is economic privilege and a social ethos of individualism that undergirds this way of life.
So we know in our household that we will care for my mother-in-law for the rest of her life, but we will not have the same responsibilities with my own mama. We know that we will be giving financial help to many members of my wife’s family, but unless some stunning reversals of fortune come along (heavens forfend), we will not need to do so for mine. There is no resentment, of course. Privilege is not virtue, after all, and in our home we know the difference. The fact that our respective families have different histories and different levels of resources is hardly an obstacle to a successful marriage. My wife and I both derive great pleasure from being able to share what we can with those who need it, and there is absolute unity in this regard.
But to be honest, one reason why our relationship worked from the beginning was because my wife has that wonderful ability to go anywhere and feel comfortable. As different as our families were, we were both raised with similar messages in this regard. My mother’s mother often said to us, during what seemed like endless “manners lessons” inflicted on the young, that she wanted us to be able “to have tea with the queen at Buckingham Palace and sleep on a floor in a poor Mexican village”, and in both cases, to make our hosts feel comfortable. We were taught never to be intimidated by complicated social rules (and we did learn all about place settings), nor to ever betray even a hint of dismay when confronted by a life or a home far humbler than our own. The whole idea was that we should be citizens of the world, able to go anywhere and make good guests of ourselves. We were never to embarrass ourselves with bad manners — and allowing other people to feel superior or making them feel inferior were the two chief ways in which bad manners were made manifest.
My mother-in-law, despite her poor facility with English and her limited education, made sure that my wife met the right people growing up. When my wife worked as a model in her teen years (something that was a considerable financial help to the family), her mother watched over her carefully to keep her safe; she went to every single shoot with her daughter. But more than a chance to make money, she wanted my wife to learn the poise and ease in her own skin that she knew were, along with education, key elements of successfully rising up through the strata. She made sure that my wife was taught the table manners, taught the social graces, taught the deportment that are the key calling cards of the middle and upper-middle classes. Though Spanish is my wife’s native tongue, she speaks unaccented English, not least because my mother-in-law insisted that she learn to do so.
I’ve been with my wife to all seven continents. I’ve slept next to her beneath a mosquito net in a sweltering shack on a remote finca in the Colombian hinterland; I’ve danced with her at white tie Manhattan benefits. She fits in at the Georges V in Paris and the Good Nite Inn in Barstow, and makes the staff in both places grin at her charm. Her manners are better than mine, and mine aren’t bad; the grace, good cheer, and determination that she brings to any new experience anywhere in the world excite and awe me. She is my partner in adventure as well as life, and in that sense our values — despite our exceptionally different upbringings — are essentially the same.
I have dated, lived with, and married women of a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds. One common denominator among the relationships that were most successful was this commitment to, at the least, attempting to transcend class and cultural boundaries. I could not and would not want to be with a woman who would shudder and turn away from suffering or temporary discomfort; I would not and could not be with a woman who would be intimidated by the complex and arcane rules of a formal social engagement. That willingness to try anything, to explore what seems foreign and even unpleasant with good cheer, that characteristic is not limited to any one social class. My life partner and I will raise our Heloise to be able to go anywhere and everywhere, without letting anyone feel themselves to be her superior — and without doing anything to make anyone feel beneath her. Despite the differences between our respective backgrounds, we are committed to this shared conviction and all that it means.
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It’s wonderful, Hugo, that even with you and your wife’s divergent cultural and economic backgrounds, that you wind up in the same place in such a significant way. Soulmates to be sure, it sounds like.
My soon-to-be ex-wife and I had different backgrounds too, her from a very tight-knit Sephardic Jewish family and me from a relatively WASP-ish Catholic one (call us “lace curtain”). We hit a couple of walls, though. For one, she didn’t prove to be willing to “go anywhere and do anything” away from her family, something that proved increasingly problematic as I was pursuing my education, and possibly career, far from our hometown. For my part, my sense of privacy and propriety led to anger and exasperation, especially as our relationship wound up on the rocks, with extended family members being involved in our affairs.
From my experience, in any circumstance but especially where divergent backgrounds are involved, I would definitely recommend getting everyone’s expectations and capabilities out in the open and made clear as much as possible before things get too far. Of course, people too often overestimate either themselves or their partners, especially when one gets blinded by the niceness of having a relationship. It’s a minefield.
I hope you succeed in making your daughter as comfortable in social situations as you both seem to be! She might not thank you for it, but she’ll definitely benefit.
I don’t have that, you know.
I am from a not-so-well-to-do but still privileged family in the Netherlands (both parents have university degrees but my mother ratcheted down her career after having kids and we were semi-poor my entire childhood after my father left), and my mother tried to get my brother and I to be comfortable in as many situations as possible.
She succeeded in many ways. I’m not deterred by discomfort or suffering, I like people of all ways of life, I’m curious and love learning and would like to go anywhere and do anything.
She failed in many ways, as well. See, my mother has very few friends and no social graces herself, so she could never teach them to us. My father doesn’t have any friends either, so he wasn’t much of a help. My brother is an extraverted guy who was always good at making friends in childhood, so he got to learn many of the social graces from them.
I, on the other hand, am an introvert who spent most of my waking hours in childhood either with my nose in a book or being beaten to a pulp by classmates, and not much time at all learning how to compose yourself to be comfortable in different situations.
And I have to say, without necessarily wanting to blame anyone, that I really wish I had learned these things as a child. Good intentions make up for a lot, and I’m heavily trying out these things. Still, I always have to THINK about what I say and do in the presence of unknown people, and it shows, and it hinders the formation of relationships.
Oh geez louise, Hugo. This post….
The way you write it here, you make it sound as if people from a lower social class have the same freedoms to move between classes or situations as upper class people, which simply isn’t true. An upper class person from my city can come to my neighborhood pizza parlor to enjoy a good meal; I cannot go to their exclusive members-only restaurant at the fancy club, even if I have the money to pay for the meal. I’m literally not allowed in the door.
I mean, you seem to have an abstract idea of social class—like it only involves a bank account or certain easily-changed physical markers such as clothing or hairstyle. Like it is completely removed from power relationships.
I’d also like to add (as I have on other blogs when the topic of transcending social class comes up), that women, in particular, have a harder time of doing that because of a lack of neutrality in appearance that men can adopt when they don’t want to stand out. No such neutral appearance exists for women—our “look” is designed to send notice about our class. A legacy from our position as possessions. Not to mention that (from my position as outsider-looking-in) there are more stringent requirements on femininity the higher up the social scale one climbs, so women have significantly more obstacles to negotiate in that climb than men do. (I see that amongst folks of my ethnic and class background, anyway). Oh, and women being the “sex class”, so we also have to jump those hurdles, too. Hugo, I think you’re grossly underestimating the amount of code-switching women have to do, as opposed to men (‘cuz let’s face it, no one is aspiring to be poor. Talk of “transcending class and cultural boundaries” is an attempt to be class-neutral, but class isn’t neutral, just as sex and race aren’t neutral.).
And….intrepidness and gracious manners will take one farther than the reverse, but neither necessarily gets a person entree to any social fora. Why do you think your mother-in-law worked so hard to get her daughter into the social situations she did? Because that entree requires human guides far more than it requires your bootstrap description of adventure and good manners. I’m not getting in the doors of those restaurants in my example above because I haven’t been invited. Those restaurants exist to provide a place that people such as myself can’t go without an invitation. See the difference? Your mother-in-law did what she did in order to get her daughter that invite.
Noblesse oblige? How about unlocked doors?
This is a really interesting post. It is great that you and your wife have such strong shared character traits and values, despite such different backgrounds. I also like that the underlying emphasis for learning etiquette in your family was a desire for you to be comfortable in any setting–a citizen of the world–rather than to imbue a sense of superiority, which is often the motive, in my experience.
I grew up in WASP culture. I totally want to appreciate the immigrant culture of supporting an extended family of relatives. I think we are all in many ways the product of those who came before and we stand on the shoulders of our parents, grandparents, etc. Perhaps in the immigrant culture there is a better understanding of that, and more gratitude and reciprocity between and among the various generations, branches of the family, etc. than in WASP culture, where the “born on third and thinks he hit a triple” idea can be prevalent.
However, like Tom, I was married to someone from a vary different set of values (arguably influenced by class and ethnic background, going a few generations back) with regard to money, despite the fact that on paper our backgrounds looked somewhat similar. My experience was that financial “help” usually came with strings attached, with the one who helped having power over the other. I felt our independence was compromised (I was bothered by this; he wasn’t) and that it kept him extremely enmeshed with his family of origin and severely undermined our partnership.
Maybe the distinction is whether the person receiving the help actually really needs it, or whether it is really about power. Still, I can’t shake the idea that being self-supporting is important, more for the autonomy of the person who would otherwise receive than for anyone else or any other reason.
Let me be clear, La Lubu, I agree — one of the many reasons I don’t belong to some of the private clubs to which others of my near and dear pay dues!
Yes, it is much more difficult for women to negotiate their way up this ladder; my mother-in-law sensed, from the time she arrived in this country, that knowing the right people and having the right deportment would serve as a ticket in for her children. And yes, my wife was a striking teenager who had some success in print modeling; she is keenly aware that for her, her looks (carefully packaged) played no small part in opening doors when she was younger. Once the doors were open, she had to have the chops to walk through and get the job done, of course. She paid a high cost for that, one of which I am keenly aware. Upward mobility is neither easy nor automatic, particularly for women.
I’m very interested by Maartje’s point about how having introverted parents influences our situations afterwards WRT etiquette and social comforts. I’m in somewhat the same boat – my parents are both quite introverted, and so our circle of family friends was quite small growing up. We had no other family within the state, so things were quite insular. School and observing my friends’ parents helped, but as someone who’s a complete split between I and E on Meyers-Briggs, I’ve found it an intriguing challenge to navigate some of the finer points of etiquette as an adult. Seeing my brother navigate his own situations has been even more evocative, given that he’s more of an introvert than I.
My partner also comes from introverted parents, and while it makes understanding some things about each other easier, I’m definitely aware of the fact that I want to consciously expose our children to more situations than our natural tendencies might produce. Having a small, comfortable circle of friends is quite nice, but it can lead to a lack of exposure, and therefore comfort, with different situations.
Hugo,
I have agree with La Lubu; you make this all sound so easy. I did not expect your tone to be as it is here. I expected a post about learning to work through class issues, not how you were both lucky enough to glide through them.
Having recently ended a relationship with someone who is both of a significantly lower class than myself, and who is also struggling with an addiction problem, I can’t help but feel that class has had a hand in preventing this person, whom I love dearly, from staying clean. Because he can’t find a job right now he has had to move home. For him home is a stressful environment where staying clean is hard. I also don’t think he got enough love growing up because of all the stress surrounding the financial issues in his life. He has also been taught, more than other men I have dated, who were closer to me in class standing, not to burden others with his problems. I think this is not only because of his gender but also because he had no one to reach out to in house that lives pay-check to pay-check.
In the end his inability to open up to me and his relapse ended our relationship. I can’t help but feel if this person had had a different growing up things might have come out different. (The relationship was wonderful in many other ways).
I also want to point out that it was not just his class situation that stressed the relationship but my own. I have grown up in a middle class house hold. At times I didn’t know how to talk with him about how I could help him, or if it was ok that I paid for a lot of stuff. And when I tried to talk about class with him he didn’t want to. For him talking about class I think made him feel self conscious; while I, on the other end of the conversation, had the luxury of feeling secure and less ashamed. (Although, I do feel guilty about my privilege.) I have not grown up without problems, But I have had access to therapy and been able to look for support in own family during hard times. NOT EVERYONE HAS THIS PRIVILAGE! Having this support has helped me work through difficult times in romantic relationships, but not everyone is so lucky. I can not help but think that privilege is a function of both mental and physical wellness, and thus a factor in the success rate of romantic relationships.
I’m truly glad that your relationship has worked out so well Hugo, but I’m afraid that it might be the exception not the rule
Catie,
I think you make a lot of excellent points. However, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of middle class and upper class children that grow up in emotionally fucked up environments which fucks with their ability to form relationships later on. On the other hand plenty of people who grew up in a lower socioeconomic class had incredibly supportive parents which makes them easier relationship prospects – these are also generally the people who make the transitions to a higher class. Hugo’s wife obviously has a supportive family.
There might also be an important distinction in the exact situation of a family making little money. Class isn’t just three big groups. Whether food and shelter are often a serious concern, the level of education, the involvement of drugs or violence in their lives (many poor people have little involvement with those) etc.
Oops, swore too much in my last comment.
Catie,
Great comment. A quibble, emotional support from family is not a class issue. It might well be correlated with class it’s true but I have known plenty of well off families with no support and poor families with great support (those tend to be the ones whose children make the transition in class). On second thought, it might partially be a class issue but it is not as clear cut as your comment implied.
Victoria,
You’re right that emotional problems are prevalent in families from all socio-economic back grounds. What I should have made more clear is that not only does my previous partner struggle with finding support in his own home (which ideally should be a place of support) but also his family doesn’t have any money to pay for things like a good therapist to help him, or to look at other treatment programs besides free ones like NA or AA. I’m not saying that these are bad programs they help a lot of people, but his options are limited. On the other hand during my teen years when I became very depressed, because my mother had basically abandon me, my dad paid for an excellent therapist. And he helped me to find other support, such as putting me in a pretty expensive theater camp during the summer to keep me busy and happy. I also went to good schools and had the support of many caring teachers and had a host of many caring neighbors that helped me through this difficult period of my life. In short my point here is one concerning access.
However, I also want to say that although it seems to be true emotional human suffering is something that we all face, class seems to make this issue particularly difficult. I don’t remember the exact statistic but, it is true that a significant number of lower income families suffer a higher rate of divorce and other domestic problems. At any rate I’m beginning to feel that theses things that are called intersections in academia look more like a tangled web, rather than clear intersections. I think that part of being human is universal emotional suffering, but it seems like some people get so tangled up in this web of “intersections†(by no fault of their own), that finding ways to end emotional suffering is far more difficult for some than others.
Sorry this is so depressing. Guess I’m really depressed about the end of this relationship. But I am glad that someone responded to my comment. Never mind about the swearing, it doesn’t bother me.
Do you think your wife’s beauty played a part in her success, and that your mother-in-law was conscious of that? I keep thinking of that Reba McIntyre song “Fancy”, which describes a similar but far more extreme situation.
Catie,
You make an excellent point that I haven’t really thought about. I think it’s definitely true that those who are more well off have more resources at hand to ‘fix’ things that go wrong. I guess I was categorizing everything into ‘healthy’ and ‘nonhealthy’ family environments (as a result of my own experiences) when there are many families where the situation is in flux. I do think that the basic ‘healthy’ families exist in all classes in significant numbers as do those with a lot of problems.
This gets a little personal and I apologize, but I wonder, what if your dad hadn’t been able to afford the therapist or camp, do you think he wouldn’t have supported you and loved you and searched for other solutions till you were in a fairly good place emotionally? While I’m sure the camp and therapist helped, don’t you think the key was that your dad prioritized your well being?
Class very much impacts access, that is almost the definition of class. Access to education and financial stability,etc. affect people’s emotional/and otherwise stability hugely. Of course that kind of thing impacts what kind of relationships people can sustain. Stress is almost universally a destructive force for relationships and people with no money face a lot of stress.
You’re right that it’s a tangled web where it’s almost impossible to sort out clear threads. I do think that family environment and class environment in terms of access to resources are different conceptually. There are different benefits one gets from those two sources (though of course they intersect). I suspect your ex didn’t have good resources from either of those sources. Even exceptional people need at least one of those sources to flourish.
People’s beauty always plays a role. However, my guess would be that the key was her mother not her face. There are a lot of beautiful girls, that alone doesn’t get you anywhere worthwhile.
don’t you think the key was that your dad prioritized your well being?
Victoria, perhaps you didn’t mean it this way, but this comes across as awfully clueless. Prioritizing your child’s well-being is certainly a prerequisite to getting them needed help, but it doesn’t turn a parent into a therapist, or a counselor, or a teacher.
Victoria,
I don’t mind answering your question because I think that this is an important conversation and I’m protected by the internet. So, of course I think that my dad would have supported me no matter what the circumstances because that is in his character. But I have to agree with mythago that I was mostly able to work through the absence of my mother through outside sources (despite my dad’s love for me).
As for my ex I think that his family tries to support him as they are able, but limited access is a real part of his life. I also want to suggest that well being is relative. For example, while upper-middle class parent might enroll their child in a summer camp for the child’s well being, lower class parents, might, on the other hand, teach their child how to find a job and support themselves. The middle class parents probably see the summer camp as a place for their child to grow, explore, and remain in the safety of childhood; where as the lower class parents may see a job as a way to teach their child about the importance of supporting a family as well as themselves. Each of these decisions are dictated by class and influence world view. They are both “good” parenting decisions, that are based in the reality that each parent understands. So of course I think that my ex’s parents have tried to make decisions that would keep him safe, and protect him as they are able; but, limited access to outside sources prevents the gaining of other perspectives that may help you to understand and, perhaps, escape your own situation.
In the end the people who have helped me work through my mother’s estrangement have been those outside of my family. My dad has always been there as a shoulder to cry on, but he could not have given me the tools that I gained in therapy that have helped me gain perspective and work through my own emotions. He did, however, grant me access to these tools not only because he was financially able, but also because he loves me.
Lastly, I want to say that I’m glad when productive conversations like these happen on this blog. It makes me feel like the blog is living up to its full potential.
It’s difficult to see beyond one’s own experience. I can read what Catie writes and think that seems sensible and true and sad. However, it doesn’t jibe with my own experience.
I’ve never been to a therapist or really had a meaningful connection with an adult other than family. My growth as a person and support came almost solely from my family, library books (tons and tons of them) and friends. None of those were resource related. I’d never deny that I’ve had certain advantages in life, have been privileged in various ways that have allowed me to ‘succeed’. However, the most important part has been the emotional part (having a healthy self esteem, confidence, ambition, support network) and that part has had nothing to do with money. My parents financial situation has varied a great deal in the past two decades, including periods of fairly low income. My emotional health has not varied with that income or depended on it in any way.
Coming from that situation and a mother that often is a ‘therapist’ to me it’s hard for me to see a therapist or teacher (other than one competent in teaching their subject) as in any way necessary. I know that therapists can be and often are incredibly beneficial and the best option. I have a hard time seeing them as irreplaceable.
I’m not at all disagreeing with your view of your ex’s situation Catie. I think your description applies to a lot of families. I think it’s worth remembering and acknowledging that it is not universal. Human beings are so diverse. For some it’s exactly as you describe, class is a sharp limit on emotional health, for some it’s not. I’m not sure which is more prevalent or if a third type of life/influence is.
I feel a little silly using ‘emotional health’ above because I’m not sure that accurately describes what I’m talking about but I’m not sure what to use instead.
It’s really interesting–my kind of WASP, being farming people, would consider a hotel room an insult–and I can’t think of anything less individualistic than the bush town I grew up in, packed to the gills with European Anglicans.
An Enlightenment thing, perhaps, rather than an Anglo-Saxon?
Victoria,
You make a good point by pointing out that you can only speak for your own experience, as I can only speak for mine. And I have never wanted to suggest that my experience will align with everyone else’s universally. But in instances where a social system such as class interferes with an individual’s health, emotional well being, or human rights I feel that it is especially important that we try to understand the experiences of those who are oppressed by that system as well as try to understand how our own place in the system relates to that oppression. It is not so much that I want to suggest that my experience is universal, but to point out how my own experience relates to an oppressive system that we have power to change. It’s not that I think that Hugo’s story is false, but I am upset by his lack of acknowledgement for the struggle of others. (although, I think he did do a better job of acknowledging this issue in his response to La Luba).
Catie, Victoria — Those free programs (NA, AA) are as good as anything you could pay for, but they will only work (as will paid-for therapy) if the addict/whoever is willing to buy into them.
But there are conditions for which no twelve-step programs exist, and conditions for which they will not be effective (psychosis for instance). These conditions can interact with the more accessible ones so as to make a good outcome very difficult to achieve, and no amount of caring, and supporting, and love, can help.
In these cases, if there is a cure, the well-off are vastly more likely to be able to get access to it. It’s not a result of being poor, it’s just that the poor, and even the middle class can’t get the help they need. I’ve seen this in my own family, some parts of which have a lot more money, and are correspondingly less able to understand the obstacles faced by the others.
What I love about this post is that it exposes the possibility that two people with different upbringings, lifestyles and cultures can actually live together in harmony. In my family, dating outside your race is the forbidden thing because we refuse to accept the fact that two essentially different people can find enough common ground to live together in peace. The language barier is another thing. Not being able to understand your significant other’s native language is an issue that is completely blown out of proportion. I think the union of two people of different races is a beautiful thing. I’m very happy to know you and your wife are so happy together.