thoughtfulThe list is based on an exercise developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. The exercise developers ask that if you participate in this blog game, you acknowledge their copyright.
If you post this in your blog, please leave a comment on this post. To participate in this blog game, copy and paste the below list into your blog, and bold the items that are true for you. If you don't have a blog, feel free to post your responses in the comments.
Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
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
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18 (not sure)
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
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
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in 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
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family
By the above list, it looks like I'm pretty entitled. I was surprised by how many items I checked off. That's useful; it reminds me that although we often ran short, we were better off than many other people. However, it also highlights several flaws in the list:
1) There is no control for whether the above items were paid for easily out of a family budget, or barely eked out by foregoing other things.
2) There is no distinction between expense levels of such things as college (cheap community college, moderate state college, expensive private college, insanely expensive elite college) or car (new sports car, new average car, dealer's model, used average car, piece of junk that runs). This matters.
3) There are no countervailing markers for being lower class and/or not having enough money. For example, fully entitled people with plenty of money do not customarily have such experiences as:
Things breaking or wearing out and never being fixed or replaced.
Jerry-rigging a repair because you can't afford a professional repair or replacement.
Running out of money towards the end of a pay period.
Deleting basic items (foods, toilet paper, etc.) from a shopping list because you can't afford them.
Delaying a shopping trip until payday so there will be money for groceries.
Delaying or skipping basic medical/dental/vision care because you can't afford it.
Going without health or other insurance.
Growing a garden, hunting, or fishing not solely for pleasure but because you need the food.
Making something because you can't afford to buy it.
Having basic services (electricity, water, etc.) turned off due to lack of payment.
Having basic services go out due to natural phenomena and not be quickly restored.
You can imagine how I came up with the supplemental list. As it happens, most items on the original meme list were either scrimped for, or involved one or more people doing a lot of extra work to make the extra funds. Mom and Dad worked their way through college at a time when that was still reasonably possible based on tuition vs. minimum wage; the seed money for my college was a combination of parental contribution, money saved through childhood, and scholarship; and the private school was two years' worth of an all-honors magnet school that we barely managed to afford. The car I got was a dealer's model that replaced a defunct hand-me-down from my grandmother. Both my parents are public school teachers. We never had much money. Any unplanned expense tended to wreck the budget. But we had good times as well as bad times, and we made the most of what we had. I learned a lot about stretching available resources, finding affordable alternatives, and making do. By gods, when I went to Russia, the Russians didn't laugh at me the way they laughed at my schoolmates for not being able to deal with all the junk that had to be jerry-rigged into working. On the whole, more of those entitlements derive from my parents being teachers than from having money: they went out of their way to give me mind-expanding experiences, and they enjoyed those things too. We just tried to find ones that didn't cost a lot: free or cheap zoos and museums, art bought at street fairs or received as gifts from artist friends, used as well as new books, etc.
Depending on whose scale you use, I probably grew up at the bottom of middle class or top of lower class. I knew there were kids worse off than me, but they were trailer park kids or the like. There were more kids who had more money. I envied the not having to worry so much about basic supplies and services, but I didn't envy their lives. I liked mine better. I still do. It would just be nice to have enough money that a rattle in the car doesn't immediately trigger a mental skim of the kitchen to estimate how much the grocery list can be cut down to cover a repair.
So, the list is useful for making you think about your class experience growing up, and useful for starting discussions. It's not useful for determining your class or anyone else's; it's too skewed and too incomplete. If you can use it for the former, great -- but I'm concerned that people will try to use it for the latter, and get into serious guilt trips or arguments. That seems to be happening on some blogs; I'm hoping to stick with useful discussion here.
January 2 2008, 09:30:01 UTC 13 years ago
http://ditenebre.livejournal.com/81542.html
January 2 2008, 16:17:53 UTC 13 years ago
January 2 2008, 17:51:14 UTC 13 years ago
I also think having parents who have a sense of idealism -- being teachers, buying new books, etc. -- changes a child. That sense of idealism only comes from having more than enough to survive. When survival is in question, the only ideal you have is having enough money to eat. I was lucky that my mother beleived in reading and museums and PBS specials. Unfortunately neither of her 2 husbands beleived in those things, so it was a fight. My brother, for example, ws told from when we were children that th eminute he turned 18 he had to get a job to pay back all the money my stepfather had spent on his food, clothes and upkeep (I was exempt from that bc it was beleived I would marry and have kids, not have a job). Having parents with that sense of idealism is a class marker as well, no matter how much cash you have onhand.
I watched the movie "North Country" last night -- that reminded me a great deal of my childhood.