Social Class and Life Expectations - Essay Example

Prof’s Social and Life Expectations: an Analysis of the ways in which My Has Affected my Life Social class has long been an aspect of sociological analysis, and even before that it has been an important part of group understandings in society. Groups have a tendency to stratify, and for power to be unduly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged class. In the developed world today, privilege is highly tied with economic status, but unlike previous times, there is a large and prosperous, and incredibly privileged class that makes up the majority of the population: the middle class. I would define myself and my upbringing as middle class, which has had a massive impact on the way I perceive the world, and the way that the world perceives me. This essay will attempt to enumerate the ways my class has functioned in my life, and shaped the path of it through my society. To start with, it is important to recognize that a middle class lifestyle can, by its very nature, be perceived as both privileged and unprivileged – it is the middle stratification of society, and thus earns more, garners more respect and so on than the lower classes, while having somewhat less luxury than the super-rich. It is also important to note that it includes a system of values, which I believe stem from a middle class life, but may also be present in upper or lower classes. That is to say that, if, in this essay I argue that my class has produced some type of effect in my life, that is not to say that that effect might not have been had by a person of another class, or if I say that I possess a value associated with my class, that is not to say that it is not present in other classes. In the Middle Ages, for instance, one could say that piety was a characteristic of the religious class of priests, monks and bishops, but this does not mean that all priests were pious, nor that there was no such thing as a pious peasant. Thus, everything I say about my class experience will be with the strong caveat that it is my lived experience, informed by an understanding of sociology from academic sources. The ways that class has impacted my life fall into a couple of general categories: perception, expectation, and values. Firstly I must describe why I have considered my upbringing and class middle class. The most fundamental reason I feel that I am middle class is, in very illogical fashion, the fact that I feel that I am middle class. This class definition is so broad that it has a wide array of people ascribing to it – people who make a massive divergence of income from the low to middle five digits to the solid six, people who had to make their own way in life and people who had a lot of things handed to them, and people from a variety of work situations, from the bluest of blue collar to the whitest of white collar. With all this, it is almost impossible to distinguish exactly what it means to be middle class, though many sociologists have tried. For me, one of the primary components, as I mentioned before, is simply identifying with the group – being middle class is an incredibly mental existence (as will be discussed below when talking about life expectations), if one thinks they are middle class, then they almost certainly are. But in thinking of my own upbringing there are some mentalities and realities that I associate with being middle class. Firstly, there is the understanding that one will have to work in order to live, rather than work to uphold a standard of life or meet other kinds of obligations. This separates the middle class from classes that are richer than it: upper class people have the funds to survive even without work, while middle class people work. The second defining attribute, economically, is a lack of reliance on many forms of social safety nets. Certainly, middle class people will sometimes rely on them temporarily, or on only a few of them, but generally a middle class identity means forgoing social safety nets to a significant degree. I believe that my upbringing fulfilled these two ideas: I never felt that I would be able to survive without hard work, but also never thought of relying on social safety nets as an option. Another aspect of middle class identity is mentality: though I knew I had to work hard, I also fundamentally believed that I would be able to uphold the lifestyle that I had always had. So, for me, my middle class identity constituted a combination of material reality and mentality, all of which combined to make me more privileged than many, and less privileged than some. I believe that one of the primary ways my socio-economic class has impacted me is through shaping the expectations of what one should or can do in life. The fact is that life expectations make a great impact on how one actually lives out one’s life. If, for instance, it is a certainty and an expectation that one attends university, one will often do so even when it would put one into debt or stretch finances significantly – with a different set of expectations and assumptions, however, such an action might never come to pass. Thus I think my expectations in terms of having a middle class life played a significant role in my path through life. The choice to go to college was possibly one of the best examples of this. I know many people of similar economic situation – but of a different class identification, who see the choice to go to college as somewhat foolish. It is seen as spending money that you do not have for an uncertain reward, which could send you spiraling down into a lifetime of poverty if it does not pay off. College education is sometimes seen as a luxury, sometimes as a bet, but either way, something that is not appropriate to spend money on. For me, however, expectations were quite different: I expected that I would be rewarded for seeking more education, and that, essentially regardless of what I did, as long as I worked hard enough, played by the rules and so on. So my decisions about going to college had very little to do with the actual cost benefit equation, or rational choices of any kind – it was something that I had to do, that my family expected me to do and so on. Furthermore, I was certain that if everything else fell apart, I had a safety net on which to fall back on – I had parents who could support me for a time, I would have a place to live and so on. Not going to college would have been a failure, and the thought that I might go and bankrupt myself through the loans never entered my mind – these expectations all had a basis in my social class. This has led me and many other middle class people to pursue education after high school, even though it is risky, when many other people of similar economic status, but different class, might not. The expectations that were a part of my class upbringing functioned as a form of privilege, allowing me to take risks that I otherwise probably might not have if I had examined the cased purely rationally – or worse, as some people must, through the lens of fear of destitution. These expectations began very early in my life, and my early experiences also certainly played a role in shaping my privilege. I grew up in a household of fairly well educated people – at least everyone could read and write well, generally thought that education was worthwhile, and could discuss the keystones of literature with me. This made my education from primary through to high school easier – I always had someone who could talk to me about the things I was trying to learn in school. I also had parents who had resources to adequately care for me, so I always had such nutritious food as I would eat, warm clothes to wear and so on. This upbringing provided me a relatively stress-free and healthy place in which to develop, which shaped both my mental state and my physical state. I imagine that, if my parents had less money, I might not have been given such nutritious foods and important parts of my development, which could have slowed or permanently harmed my physical and mental growth. Expectations certainly played a significant role in the privilege I have experienced as a member of the middle class – but these expectations were only part of the class experience I have developed. Another major feature is the way other people perceive me – my class is stamped across me in a variety of ways. One of the major ways is the clothes I wear, which are always of good quality but never designer or anything else that would cost more money than I can afford. My clothes are thus an always visible symbol of my class – someone can, simply from looking at me, understand that I have access to money, but not in massive quantities. They thus make a great deal of assumptions about me. They assume that I work, or that I am a student, because if I did not then I would presumably not be able to afford good quality clothing, but if I were wealthy enough to be able not to work then I would presumably have nicer or more expensive clothing. These kinds of assumptions about me create a tangible effect on the way other people interact with me. One instance stands out starkly in my mind. I was visiting a friend in a larger city on the east coast, and quite suddenly realized that I did not have enough money for the bus fare to return to his house at the end of the day – I had somehow ended up a dollar short. I could have gone to an ATM and gotten more money out, then tried to get change, but all of this would have been quite complicated, so I decided instead to approach a well dressed business man and tell him my situation (that I was not from the area and so on), and had ended up a dollar short for bus fare, and wondered if he could lend (the word I used, though I suppose now that it was in fact a gift) me a dollar. He smiled and said sure, and handed me a dollar. This did not strike me at the time, but my experience were I differently classed by the clothes that I had worn and my general appearance. Based on his assumptions about me, this person saw no reason not to give me the money. If I had dressed differently, they might make different, often unfair assumptions – that I was a freeloader, for instance, who was not willing to work, and may have been much less likely to give me the money. So, were I in exactly the same situation, but a different class, I might have been stranded at the bus stop for hours upon hours, having to embarrass myself by asking for money again and again. I would imagine this would be quite a humiliating and dehumanizing experience, something that I was saved from simply by wearing the clothes that I typically wear. Trying to write an essay on the way class has affected my childhood is something like trying to write an essay on how living in a capitalist world has affected me – it has touched me in so many ways that it is hard to isolate only a few. My middle class upbringing was certainly a state of privilege – it made people view me more positively than they might have otherwise, and led to very real physical benefits such as good nutrition and clothing. Yet it also led to a mentality that might have been even more of a privilege – the fundamental assumption, for instance, that I would get schooling after high-school, or the knowledge that I would likely be safe from destitution even if some kind of financial crisis did befall me, and the fact that I grew up in a household of people who shared values that made my accessing further education easy and encouraged. This mentality is, I believe, a defining feature of middle class upbringing, and ultimately might be more important than actual economic status in granting me a set of class privileges. Read More