The privilege of choice
I’m really appreciating the conversations that the NYT series on class has helped put into motion.
Dawn wrote at This Woman’s Work:
"It’s a privilege to choose to have less without feeling completely freaked out by it…. neither of us have ever seriously worried about not having enough money to feed our kids (we both know that our parents will help us if things got dire)."
And today’s Times had an article about Della Mae Justice, a woman from East Kentucky, who grew up poor but was taken in as a teenager by middle-class cousins, and is a lawyer today. One quote from her emphasizes that class is about more than income:
"When you’re poor and from a low socioeconomic group, you don’t have a lot of choices in life. To me, being from an upper class is all about confidence. It’s knowing you have choices, knowing you set the standards, knowing you have connections."
So, I don’t think we act rich. We buy clothes for the boys off of ebay, and have small, at-home birthday parties. We have a 12-year-old television and a 9-year-old car. (Last month we were quite amused that someone stuck a flyer under its windshield reassuring us that "bad credit is no obstacle!" to getting a new used car). We take books out of the library rather than buying them.
But we don’t have to. We do it because we’d rather spend the money on other things (travel is my one big expensive taste). And we value the freedom to earn less than our maximum potential, whether in order to spend more time with the kids, or to work at underpaid do-good jobs. We have the privilege of choice.
May 19th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
We don’t act very rich either–we have one nine-year-old car and a relatively new minivan. The older car is a Ford Explorer. It’s not even 4WD because I told Rick we didn’t need to waste our money on that. I shop for clothes at Old Navy and KMart.
I guess the fact that I have live-in help and don’t work kind of gives it away though. But I think people that didn’t know that about our household wouldn’t suspect our socioeconomic class based on our cars or our clothes or how we act.
You are right–it’s great to have choices. And so easy to take them for granted.
May 20th, 2005 at 2:26 am
Only if you haven’t been poor, Anne. Taste it once and you don’t forget.
May 20th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
I was lower middle class for the first 18 years of my life. My parents are now solidly middle class, mostly because us three kids are grown and are no longer a financial burden (mostly). It was heart wrenching for me as a child who loved to get bags and bags of books from the library to find that I had forgotten to return one on time and that my parents would have to use their hard earned money on my late fees. I was so ashamed that I’d return the book but not check out any new ones until I could find enough change on the sidewalk or in the washing machine to pay my fine. You don’t forget stuff like that. Even though my husband and I both have very generous incomes now, it still makes me twinge sometimes when I pay a late fee at the library.
May 24th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
When I was a child, there were days we didn’t eat, and other days when all us kids ate was the free school lunch. When I was a teen, I babysat for food money so I could feed my younger sibs; later a part-time job at minimum wage made sure the electricity stayed on. Now I’m in my mid-40s, I own a home, and my children (teenage boys) never went hungry.
Sometimes I wonder if I robbed them of the lessons I learned by being that poor.