TBR: (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents
This week’s book is (Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class, by Nan Mooney. In many ways, it covers the same ground as The Trap, Strapped, and The Two-Income Trap— how families today are squeezed by the high costs of housing, child care, health care, and college loans.
The only problem is that — as we’ve gone over here before — there’s not actually a lot of evidence that this generation is overall worse off than their parents were, and if their parents weren’t college graduates, they’re probably earning a lot more. Mooney deals with this by narrowing her subjects down to what she calls "the professional middle class" — those with college degrees, but excluding doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, and anyone else who is actually making decent money. She focuses on teachers, social workers, journalists, artists, workers for non-profit organizations, etc.
I wanted to like this book, but I found myself muttering that the subjects seemed to believe in Marjorie Williams‘ "no fault fairy." I’m not sure who they think promised them that there would be no tradeoffs between interesting work, living in expensive vibrant urban areas, and living a middle class life with homeownership and a secure retirement. Easy credit may make it possible to postpone these tradeoffs (and may even make things worse by thus increasing the supply of people who are willing to take interesting jobs at non-sustainable wages), but the existence of these tradeoffs isn’t something new.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:15 am
I am one of those people who got an excellent Ivy League education and then went on later to get an M.A…. in education. It’s hard to make a lot in education unless you’re a ladder climber! So I’m still taking handouts from my mother from time to time and wonder when I’ll experience her financial peace. But I’m not complaining that I didn’t know what I was getting into. I fully remember graduating from an Ivy League school and working for Head Start. I didn’t think I’d become rich. I thought my mother was going to split a vein. My father, who did not complete college but who worked as an engineer, was more understanding. But I love teaching and I’m okay with the trade-off for now. (That said, I can’t hit “Post” without adding that I do think teachers who work in poorer areas should make as much as teachers in wealthier areas!)
July 16th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I find myself wondering if the publication of this book was more of a marketing decision than something based upon the merits of its content. It reminds me of all the documentaries being produced that don’t really cover any new ground, but do make us feel better about ourselves. (Let’s talk once again about how the civil rights movement overcame!) In this case it’s providing air cover for all the annoyance we feel when our parents once again berate us about our bad financial decisions. (And, for the record, I am roundly sick of my own parents talking ad nauseum about people overbuying houses. They’ve been doing that their entire lives — the only difference is the economy just never caught them out.)
As an aside, I wonder when past generations stopped getting handouts from their parents? Even as I’ve accepted the gifts in the past I’ve always thought of it as parental welfare, something I should be (and am) embarrassed about. But as I listen carefully I find that going several generations back people in my family continued to give money to their children even when the kids are adults. Money for down payments, for example, was a common one. More recently I’ve seen quite a few friends whose parents are covering the cost of their grandkids’ schooling. Maybe it’s my expectation of total self-reliance that’s unreasonable?
July 16th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Sorry, this is totally unrelated to your post (although the book sounds intriguing) — but I wanted to let you know about a rally that’s happening tomorrow here in DC in support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
It’s going to be held at the U.S. Capitol at 10am, and speakers will include Lilly Ledbetter, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barbara Mikulski, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. The details are up on the National Women’s Law Center’s website: http://action.nwlc.org/fairpayrally
Thanks!
July 16th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
“As an aside, I wonder when past generations stopped getting handouts from their parents? Even as I’ve accepted the gifts in the past I’ve always thought of it as parental welfare, something I should be (and am) embarrassed about. But as I listen carefully I find that going several generations back people in my family continued to give money to their children even when the kids are adults. Money for down payments, for example, was a common one. More recently I’ve seen quite a few friends whose parents are covering the cost of their grandkids’ schooling. Maybe it’s my expectation of total self-reliance that’s unreasonable?”
My in-laws gave us a chunk of cash for our first car a year ago and underwrite our travel expenses for when we visit the West Coast. I’m not as proud as I used to be, and these days I’ve got lots of ideas for what to do with windfalls (pay off car, finish emergency fund, crank up downpayment savings, retirement, college, etc.). We could be self-reliant, but that would mean not visiting.
My feeling is that there are a lot of different types of parental aid, other than cash infusions, and a true picture of parental giving needs to include cash equivalents. In my family the list has included grandma’s babysitting, Easter dresses, school clothes, vacations, birthday and Christmas checks, dinners out, hosting large family dinners, loan of a car, moving in with family when times are rough, free carpentry and handyman help, and jobs (especially for those in their teens and twenties). Since we are a farming family, tradition is to give (or sell at favorable prices) land to descendants who want to continue farming. With regard to farming, there tends to be a lot of fluid quid pro quo–my dad, his father, and a cousin all raise cattle and they often help with each others’ large projects and share equipment. It’s really hard to pull this delicate balancing act off–on the wheat-farming side of my family, some adult children worked like dogs well into middle age without having having anything of their own, all land being under the control of the patriarch of the family.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Lynnie, I agree that most teachers are underpaid. What frustrated me about this book is that I *agree* with many of Mooney’s criticisms of society, but her presentation made me less sympathetic rather than more.
Jen, I think cash transfers between parents and adult children are more common now than in the past, but it was more common to share living expenses. It’s a relatively new phenomenon for people to expect to live alone either as young adults or as widows.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:27 am
I am recently retired and therefore appear to be older than many of your readers. When I grew up I neither expected nor received cash gifts from my relatives after graduating college. My parents did help with babysitting and gave me gifts which helped furnish my home – ‘hand-me-downs’. Their parents helped them with skills they had like hanging wall paper and painting as well as hosting family meals on Sunday. None of us expected to have the same things our parents had before we were our parents age. It seems to me that young adults today want all their parents have now. They think they are entitled to have computers, flat screen tvs, new cars, home ownership, smart clothes, going out to eat, etc. Those extras are benefits of saving over a lifetime and I am only now getting some of them. I still have some of the hand-me-down furniture in my home. I think many people are living a fantasy about how a home should look, what kind of car you should have and how often you can afford to have salon treatments. I believe this fantasy is fed by the media and people have lost the ability to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I have lived a good life on a teachers salary and raised two children on my own. They went to colleges they could afford. We have often taken jobs we didn’t love but which provided for our needs and wants. The idea that you can have it all without any sacrifice is foolish and immature. And the sacrifice shouldn’t be that our parents subsidize the lifestyle we want to live.
May 12th, 2009 at 6:27 am
The no fault fairy has been known to push to increase the minimum wage, too: “Adding to teens’ work woes, hiring managers — especially those at mom-and-pop shops — are expected to gravitate toward adults as the federal minimum wage increases from $6.55 per hour to $7.25 per hour in late July” http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-05-05-teens-job-market-unemployed-adults_N.htm