4 ms·

It must be where i grew up but in St.Louis and Kansas city, you could give your children most of these opportunities with roughly a middle class dual parent inc

It must be where i grew up but in St.Louis and Kansas city, you could give your children most of these opportunities with roughly a middle class dual parent income. The smartest kids in my class became doctors, stanford phds, etc... None of them were what i consider upper middle class (provided they came from both parent educated households).

nostrademons 7y ago
Curious what decade? I was born in the 80s and that was the case in my Boston suburb - most people started out middle class, and where you ended up had more to with how smart & hardworking you were (and how much you took your good fortune for granted) than what your parents did. I'm not sure that holds for kids today, looking around at my Silicon Valley suburb. If you're a tech worker with a Ph.D from MIT, IIT, or Chinghua that now works for Google, married to a fund manager from Stanford, your kid is going to have dramatically different opportunities from the children of a single immigrant mother from Mexico that cleans houses for a living. You'll likely grow up in a house with a yard rather than sharing an apartment with another family. All of your parents' friends will be similarly educated, and you'll have time to see them and socialize with them regularly. You'll go to an expensive preschool where kids get individualized attention, rather than a home daycare where one caregiver is trying to manage 8 kids. You'll end up in a different school district where everybody else had similar backgrounds and the teacher can teach to that level. Your parents will be able to help you with homework and do school projects for^H^H^Hwith you, and won't be exhausted and overworked when they come home.
- strikelaserclaw 7y ago
  I grew up during the 90's and 2000's. I would hate to use Silicon Valley as an example for a normal american life. In most of America, you could give your kids pretty good opportunities without earning 500k. As for the immigrant mother struggling, this was true even 30 years ago when things were supposedly better.
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    Silicon Valley has a track record of being just like the rest of America, just 10-20 years ahead of it. My wife grew up here during the 80s and 90s; the middle-class lifestyle was very achievable then. When I compare her childhood with mine, it wasn't that different - the main differences are outdoor school hallways, bigger high schools (it was my school that was atypical here), more non-white people, and everybody liked hip-hop instead of rock music.

nostrademons 7y ago

Curious what decade? I was born in the 80s and that was the case in my Boston suburb - most people started out middle class, and where you ended up had more to with how smart & hardworking you were (and how much you took your good fortune for granted) than what your parents did. I'm not sure that holds for kids today, looking around at my Silicon Valley suburb. If you're a tech worker with a Ph.D from MIT, IIT, or Chinghua that now works for Google, married to a fund manager from Stanford, your kid is going to have dramatically different opportunities from the children of a single immigrant mother from Mexico that cleans houses for a living. You'll likely grow up in a house with a yard rather than sharing an apartment with another family. All of your parents' friends will be similarly educated, and you'll have time to see them and socialize with them regularly. You'll go to an expensive preschool where kids get individualized attention, rather than a home daycare where one caregiver is trying to manage 8 kids. You'll end up in a different school district where everybody else had similar backgrounds and the teacher can teach to that level. Your parents will be able to help you with homework and do school projects for^H^H^Hwith you, and won't be exhausted and overworked when they come home.

strikelaserclaw 7y ago
I grew up during the 90's and 2000's. I would hate to use Silicon Valley as an example for a normal american life. In most of America, you could give your kids pretty good opportunities without earning 500k. As for the immigrant mother struggling, this was true even 30 years ago when things were supposedly better.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  Silicon Valley has a track record of being just like the rest of America, just 10-20 years ahead of it. My wife grew up here during the 80s and 90s; the middle-class lifestyle was very achievable then. When I compare her childhood with mine, it wasn't that different - the main differences are outdoor school hallways, bigger high schools (it was my school that was atypical here), more non-white people, and everybody liked hip-hop instead of rock music.