Class and Friendship
I was reading this entry at Pendagon on class and marriage, which made me think about how class differences impact my friendships.
This is tough because I’m loathe to try and shove any of my friends into class slots since I don’t know how they would label themselves. Mostly I’m going to try to talk about money and expectations and how these can play out in friendships.
As one of my friends says, “It sucks that money matters in a friendship, but it does.”
It does in obvious practical ways, like when a friend says, “Hey, you want to go grab lunch with the kids after we leave here?” And you have to say no because it’s the end of the pay period and the bills are due. This can be awkward and if too much of that happens and the asking friend remains oblivious, it can get in the way of things.
But money matters in more subtle, conversation-stopping ways. Like there are assumptions that people can make that can be divisive.
I remember one time where a group of us were talking about how to make ends meet. (Again, to set the picture, most of us are from middle to upper-middle class families and are now middle-class women who have given up an income to be home so we’re struggling but we’re struggling, I think, in part because we have expectations. Like we all own our own homes but sometimes we’re bitching because our homes aren’t in the neighborhoods like the ones we grew up in, basically.
And we were discussing who, in our marriages, handled the money and how it was divided, etc. The one friend said her husband handled the money but they discussed the big things like buying investment property and managing trusts so she had a hand in that, too.
It was very awkward.
I mean, we went from saying, “Yeah, I hate it when he eats lunch out and forgets to record it in the check book because then I can’t fill the car up at the end of the month” and even at least one “And then he never paid the phone bill so we lost service for a week while that got straightened out” and this one stand-out was talking about investment properties. Kinda stopped the conversation and I wasn’t sure whether to feel bad for her — for stepping in it, shall we say — or bad for the rest of us for not owning vacation homes on the beach.
The bigger things for me is that I feel — as many people feel — like I’m faking it sometimes. Or passing when I shouldn’t. I still don’t know where I fit in although I don’t know if it’s really that important to figure out. I certainly don’t think on it except when I come across blog posts and things. But you know that post below about sometimes not wanting to confront assumptions?
When Noah was going to preschool, we went to one in a high-priced neighborhood. The preschool was this great play-based, low-key place affiliated (loosely) with a very, very liberal church. It was, I think, about $800 a year and we got a lot of financial aid so it was about $200 and the first year, my mom paid for it. (The second year, I paid for it out of writing money.) I was driving an ‘83 Monte Carlo we got for four hundred bucks from friends and I would park in the middle of all of these shiny SUVs with leather seats.
The other moms were wonderfully nice and friendly but I could see them trying to figure us out. We were renting, hmmmm. Wrinkled-brows. And the car. Well, more than once another mom would stop and stare, surprised, as we pulled away. But the worst were playdates where I would drop Noah off at these three story, 1/2 block, stone mansions with additions because 5-bedrooms just weren’t enough for a family of four and I was always too ashamed to invite them to our run-down 2-bedroom townhouse with the broken window air conditioner.
So this led me to decide that while their assumptions were not quite ok (”Are you renting, then, while you build a house?” said with a puzzled but friendly air) and some of them were downright rude (”Why on earth would you buy a house in that school district?” asked one mom when she heard me giving the teachers our new address), that I didn’t have to internalize them. And — bigger — I didn’t have to assume the worst when someone thought I had more than I had or had experiences similar to their experiences.
I haven’t gone to Europe. I didn’t go to a good college. I am mired in student loan debt that terrifies me in the deep dark night. The kids have college funds that might buy them books for a quarter or two.
But see, we’re mostly ok and I think that money is a necessary thing and enough is a blessing and more than enough is a lot of good fun so I don’t feel bad unless I let myself feel bad.
(Yesterday a friend told me that they have enough money put aside for the kids that each will be able to get several graduate degrees from good schools should they want to and I had a blinding moment of envy and fear but then it passed.)
Sometimes I think, “Why is she telling me this? Doesn’t she have any idea what my bank account looks like?” No, of course she doesn’t besides which we all make assumptions. Like I assume everyone loves chocolate and showtunes, right? But not everybody does. (Shocking, I know, but heck more Godiva for the rest of us! And there’s no accounting for musical taste.)
I think that the money differences among us will become more divisive as the kids get bigger. As some children end up traveling and others stay home, as people jet out for better schools and hobbies get more expensive. Especially as the disparity in our college funds becomes apparent. I feel sad about that but it’s the way things go.
We encountered that this past Spring Break when Natalie came home saying EVERYONE was going on vacation but us. I really fell prey to it. I’ll be honest, I even cried (not in her presence). Then I got my wits about me and you know what? ONE of her friend’s family went on a true vacation and another went to visit relatives for 2 days out of the 5. Everyone else stayed home like us (I took the week off and we had a blast!). Turns out EVERYONE actually didn’t go on vacation.
I always tell her, “There will always be people that have more than you and there will always be people that have less.”
We’re fortunate. We’ve seen good times. We’ve taken several expensive vacations. We have a boat (that we’re now getting rid of). We’ve done a lot of fun things that a lot of kids her age haven’t yet experienced. So we can reference that and say “we’ve had all this and we may have it again someday and we may not but it’s a lot more than most people in the world have and so we’re very, very lucky.”
We’re also lucky because she goes to a very good school that is rich in diversity and so she sees that she has it darned good compared to some. Of course, she’s just a kid and heck, even I covet other people’s lives sometimes. But I’m always mindful of the fact that although the grass is greener, it still has to be mowed.
We always say “We’re rich in love, baby!” And, indeed, that we are.
Great post, Dawn, as always!
You forgive the class pangs by writing them off as naive assumptions. But, baby, if you ain’t never had the lights turned off and don’t know the fear of keeping a fridge-full of spoiling until you can get it worked out, then you’re living in a foreign territory. Oh, wait, maybe I’m the foreign one on their territory. Oh yes, that’s your point exactly.
Well, at least we have each other, like members of the secret club, who have had phones and lights turned off. Ain’t we lucky we got ‘em, good times.
My friend Nancy and I used to joke about playing upper-middle class. She had a cell phone (years ago before it was so common) and a I had a Dooney Bourke purse that my mom had picked up at a thrift store. Someone in a store could make assumptions til they saw us in get in our beat up mini-vans or followed us home to our small houses.
This stuff used to bother me more, I have a very similar pre-school situation to yours with Aubree and Linley. Upper middle class kids in McMansion would invite us to play dates and I would have to remind my children to not stand there gaping at the size of the homes.
Now we still don’t have the prestigous address, but we have decent house with some personality. Our children only have college funds because of my well off in-laws. Right now they would fully cover one year. Frankly that is more than we could offer. I am stunned how much it costs for 6 of us to live.
In terms of class we travel with among a bunch of over-educated underpaid liberal economically middle to lower class by intellectually probably upper middle class. We read the New York Review of Books, but can’t buy any of the books and have to get them from the library.
Last summer we had the cable cut off and the newspaper. July is the worst month for us always.
This is a very nicely written post Dawn.
I wanted to say that it’s also quite topical in light of the NYTimes article about class and their interactive graph. You put in your data and find out where you stand.
I am in a sort of strange place myself. I have a law degree from a very impressive law school (I mean seriously Dawn, you would be blown away,
) and my undergrad degree is from an equally high-end university — yet younger, more *new money*
But, when you are a public defender, your clients sure don’t know how *special* you are. Instead you are probably working as a PD because you couldn’t get any other job.
My childhood was so frought with money issues — being both very rich and very broke and then middle class and then upper class again in 16 years — that I really just hope we will always be middle class.
My parents paid $34k out of pocket for 4 years. We will never be able to do that for our children. But, we will hopefully have raised children who don’t expect that either.
Oh, but Noah and Madison. They are so, so blessed.
Best!
Margaret
This is interesting to read about. I really haven’t dealt with this much myself, maybe because I’m in my 20s and *most* people I socialize with are still just making their way in the world. There’s a variety of economic levels among my friends but it’s almost like it’s understood that a few of us are still on the way up while others have peaked, ya know?
I don’t have a lot of older, more established friends, and the ones I do I usually know from someplace else first so there’s already some understanding of each other’s reality before we get to the point of checking out each other’s bathrooms. My kids went to a Montessori school for a while on scholarship–it was the same one the governor’s children went to–but there were also lots of lower-middle class families there, by the looks of the cars in the parking lot. I will say that I didn’t feel a connection with many of the moms there but that had mostly to do with age, I think. I was 24 and most of them appeared to be in their late 30s to early 40s–I am much more likely to be intimidated by a big age difference than a perceived wealth difference.
I don’t have too many friends whose homes are palatial, but it doesn’t bother me when they are (I love to look at beautiful homes!) I will say that I’ve never had any *clueless* well-off friends who couldn’t understand that I wasn’t able to drop money all over the place for dinner. Then again, I don’t have tons of well-off friends.
For the first five years of my life, my family was very middle-class, for the next eight years my mother and I were dirt poor (no car, no phone, no new clothes EVER), and then my high school years went back to being pretty solidly middle-class again. I’ve lived pretty much in squalor and I’ve lived in very nice homes and everything in between.
I have worked in food service and at artsy nonprofits and have had no trouble making connections with people in both scenarios. Sure, there were people at the arts nonprofit that I found stuffy and pretentious and there were people at the restaurant that I thought were stubbornly ignorant and a little too ‘hood for my liking. But I was equally at home in both places.
I don’t know…class issues like you describe just don’t happen in my world very often. Or maybe I’ve just learned over time that I’m a bit of an anomaly in every situation (I don’t meet too many 27-year-old moms of three who homeschool, drive a newer minivan but rent, who are fiscally conservative and socially liberal and refuse to align themselves with either major political party, who are religiously nonspecific though with Christian tendencies, and whose income has fluctuated from under 12k a year to a solid upper-middle-class level over the past four years) so those differences don’t bother me. I think I’m a bit of a chameleon due to my chaotic upbringing, too–I learned early how to fit in anywhere, observe, and figure people out. And after growing up as poor as I did, well, I just don’t see the differences between myself now and my more well-off friends as being that drastic. I mean, they might have nicer stuff and better vacations, but we both have the lights on and we both watch movies for entertainment. Or whatever.
Maybe a lot of this has to do with my age? I guess because I’m still young, and my education isn’t done yet, and I’ve only really been working in my career for about two years now, I just think of myself as not quite there yet. So, say, if I was talking to a more well-off friend and she mentioned investments I’d probably think not “man, I wish I could afford investments,” I’d think “this is interesting, I should listen up because some day I’ll have investments to worry about too.” now that could be totally unrealistic–I mean for me this might be as good as the money’s gonna get–but I still have that optimism that the future is going to hold more material wealth than my current reality. Though if it doesn’t, that’s OK too.
I would probably have it way harder if I met somebody my own age who was really well-off but so far that just hasn’t happened.
It might sound terribly naive of me but this stuff has just not been a issue for me yet in my adult life.
I have been thinking a ton about this since the NY Times thing too. I grew up pretty poor. Lived in a tiny apartment with my parents in totally urban not great area, while friends lived in beautiful suburban houses in lovely upscale San Francisco. It was hard growing up like that and I was often worried about money. But I never lacked in love or fun or friends, much as I imagine that Madison and Noah won’t lack in those things either.
Now though, I worry because I remember what it was like to be afraid about money and I am terrified about that for my (future) kids.
I DO believe and know that in the end money doesn’t matter, and my parents didn’t pay one cent in college or law school tuition. I went on scholarships or I took out loans, and it was totally doable. I have loads of loans now, but I also feel really proud that I put myself through college and law school.
My husband grew up in a totally different lifestyle. Went skiing in Switzerland, summers in Paris, never had to worry about college. Have I ever felt a twinge of jealousy? Sure! He had been everywhere! But do I ever think that he had a better life than I did? Absolutely not. My mom took me to the library, played with play-doh, took me to the beach, went on walks, and loved me to death. I didn’t miss out at all.
I guess we’ll just have to see if our kids care, but I think that they have plenty of blessings in their life. Money would just be one.
Dawn, I wonder if you are more sensitive to these types of situations having grown up with money and now not having that same lifestyle for your children?
Intersting in my life is that I always feel like we are rich. I could buy myself almost anything that I want. My children are going to have to contribute to their college education. Compared to most of the people I am friends with we are better off. My husband, otoh, always feels like we are one step away from a shelter. But most of the people who he works with have wives who work, less children, had their fewer children later in life, and have houses that look like they came from an Ethan Allen catalogue.
I live in a town with extremely rich people who go out of their way to act like they don’t have money. I can’t quite get a handle on why it is. Most are also highly educated. So, to me, the fact that my house looks like a crack house really isn’t a big deal
We bought the proverbial worst house in the best neghborhood and we are restoring it. Thanks to a booming housing market we should make enough off of the eventual sale of this house to offset the fact I have never had job.
I have had this comment box open for an hour now, I keep getting distracted! I love reading your blog because it always makes me think.
What was the question again?
Am I the only one who finds it really sad to think of someone not reciprocating an invitation because they were too ashamed of their house? Personally, if I was one of the mothers who’d invited Noah over for a playdate, I can see myself feeling pretty insulted by that.
Ok, for the record it is weird for me to be answering this because I know you IRL and I am pretty sure which end of the conversations you described I probably fall on, but anyway…
Our income falls in the middle range for our friends. We have some friends who make much less and some who make MUCH more. Some times I am embarrassed by how little we have (or earn or spend) and other times I am appalled that we have so much.
Finances (and being in control of them) are a big issue for me because it was a huge issue for my parents. My mom was especially concerned about appearances and raised us to be both secretive and kind of freaked out about money. As a kind of self-therapy, I tend to force myself to talk about our finances when it comes up with friends.
If someone is talking about their debt, I give myself permission to talk about our bajillion dollars of school loans because they are a huge part of our reality. With one friend, the conversation started when he was talking about his loan for his new porche convertible, with another it was when she was fesssing up to about $15k in credit card debt when she earns about $25k a year. Depending on who you are, we sound like we are a mess or like we have no problems in the world.
With the people I consider to be my close friends, I am a lay it all on the table kind of girl. I don’t want to keep secrets about my family or myself. I don’t know if that kind of honesty makes them uncomfortable or not, but it is what I have to do for my own peace of mind. I don’t have a problem when a friend says “I can’t go out because I am broke, do you want to come watch a video over here?” or when we have to tell other people that we can’t go out for fancy sushi because we are saving up to have our furnace repaired. I think it is probably easier for us because we are in the middle of the range.
I hear you about the house shame too. My mother was always afraid that people would judge us based on our houses’ cleanliness, location, etc. I have internalized some of that and I fight it all the time. I LIKE having people over, but that little voice in the back of my head is always screaming about how we will be judged. I am currently forcing myself to stop apologizing for the imperfections. We just are who we are, take it or leave it.