4 ms·

> An (increasingly rare) person from a single-kid middle class home is not only a social minority, but has to create more of their own opportunities because the

> An (increasingly rare) person from a single-kid middle class home is not only a social minority, but has to create more of their own opportunities because they are an outsider to both societies. I don't follow: is a single kid from a middle class family an outsider to kids from other middle class families where they have 2 or 3 kids? I mean, I understand that middle class is neither rich nor poor, but what's the difference for a unique child compared to middle class families with serveral kids? Do the siblings typically provide opportunities for their brothers/sisters? (I'm personally launching atm a new endeavor with my brother but I don't see that as particularly common).

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
I'm also not sure what they're getting at but here's my anecdote FWIW. I never fit in well with the other welfare kids that came from families with many kids. Nor did I fit in with the middle class and up kids always flexing their Nikes, vacations, cars, and other vapid things I could never dream of getting. My circumstance did allow me to mingle with the various classes and see how they live and succeed. The poor families rapidly introduce the kids to low pay manual labor jobs in grocery stores, farms and the like. The better off families got their kids fun summer jobs near their summer homes working banana stands or giving guided tours. The differences become even more stark in college, for those who went that is. The relationships gained from introductions made by the well offs family and friends pay massive dividends immediately if you speak the right language. By which I mean one doesn't speak like a poor person. Between private job offers, highly paid internships, and favor trading the poor kids don't just have the deck stacked against them, they're playing with the cards and chips that've fallen off the table, but only against the other poors. The one constant between classes is drug use. There's a lot of drug use in all these groups, even the DARE/ROTC/AP kids. The difference is that the poor kids self medicating away their shit hand, while the rich kids are rebelling against their parents, self medicating their home problems like abuse and emotional neglect, or trying to get an edge in classes/work. Rarely do well off kids fall into hardcore addiction. I've seen a lot of kids taken to very expensive rehab clinics multiple times. Poor kids don't get these vacations and access to world class shrinks. Siblings tend to follow the familial mean. Sure sometimes a rich family has a complete failure of a child, but most of the time they're mediocre middle management coasting through life on their laurels continuing the time honored tradition of trading favors with and smoothing over the rough patches for their kids and siblings. Siblings in poor families do the same things, but with limited means comes limited success.
motohagiography 6y ago
To clarify, if you are a 3+ kid poor person, you will come from a family that is likely very poor. If you are a 3+ kid rich person, your parents are probably 95th percentile. If you aren't from the neighbourhood for the first group, you're not trusted, and if you don't just know certain things, you aren't trusted by the second, because each group quietly assumes you're really part of the other. It's what we used to call class, and that's what I meant by being alien to each other. There are exceptions. The most interesting ones are religious communities. Few people who belong to a church would accept being called poor no matter what their income was, and religious people with middle class jobs have lots of kids as well. The other anomaly is the new institutional who have the iron stability of things like academic tenure, teachers unions, municipal and state employees, who only receive that stability at an age just as their fertility starts to wane, and usually after sacrificing it to get there. It would be hard to argue that public policy has been anything but anti-natal for the last 50 years.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago

I'm also not sure what they're getting at but here's my anecdote FWIW. I never fit in well with the other welfare kids that came from families with many kids. Nor did I fit in with the middle class and up kids always flexing their Nikes, vacations, cars, and other vapid things I could never dream of getting. My circumstance did allow me to mingle with the various classes and see how they live and succeed. The poor families rapidly introduce the kids to low pay manual labor jobs in grocery stores, farms and the like. The better off families got their kids fun summer jobs near their summer homes working banana stands or giving guided tours. The differences become even more stark in college, for those who went that is. The relationships gained from introductions made by the well offs family and friends pay massive dividends immediately if you speak the right language. By which I mean one doesn't speak like a poor person. Between private job offers, highly paid internships, and favor trading the poor kids don't just have the deck stacked against them, they're playing with the cards and chips that've fallen off the table, but only against the other poors. The one constant between classes is drug use. There's a lot of drug use in all these groups, even the DARE/ROTC/AP kids. The difference is that the poor kids self medicating away their shit hand, while the rich kids are rebelling against their parents, self medicating their home problems like abuse and emotional neglect, or trying to get an edge in classes/work. Rarely do well off kids fall into hardcore addiction. I've seen a lot of kids taken to very expensive rehab clinics multiple times. Poor kids don't get these vacations and access to world class shrinks. Siblings tend to follow the familial mean. Sure sometimes a rich family has a complete failure of a child, but most of the time they're mediocre middle management coasting through life on their laurels continuing the time honored tradition of trading favors with and smoothing over the rough patches for their kids and siblings. Siblings in poor families do the same things, but with limited means comes limited success.

motohagiography 6y ago

To clarify, if you are a 3+ kid poor person, you will come from a family that is likely very poor. If you are a 3+ kid rich person, your parents are probably 95th percentile. If you aren't from the neighbourhood for the first group, you're not trusted, and if you don't just know certain things, you aren't trusted by the second, because each group quietly assumes you're really part of the other. It's what we used to call class, and that's what I meant by being alien to each other. There are exceptions. The most interesting ones are religious communities. Few people who belong to a church would accept being called poor no matter what their income was, and religious people with middle class jobs have lots of kids as well. The other anomaly is the new institutional who have the iron stability of things like academic tenure, teachers unions, municipal and state employees, who only receive that stability at an age just as their fertility starts to wane, and usually after sacrificing it to get there. It would be hard to argue that public policy has been anything but anti-natal for the last 50 years.