Love conquers money: a first world privilage?

[pixydust]

Do you think your husband is typical (or even not unusual) among blue collar workers from hick towns in NC?

I get there are individuals who could have surprised me. But looking for love among blue collar workers from rural southern towns seems a less fruitful enterprise for me than looking among fellow professionals living in big cities.

I'm not saying that you are wrong, people should marry who they love and that means having things in common with the other person. It worked out for you to fall in love with and marry someone who is professional, that's great.

As for my husband? There is nothing typical about him, at all....to be honest, when I first met him, one of his groups of friends (he went to high school with these guys) were your typical red neck kind of guys....republican (but probably don't vote), love their Mama, beer, and working on cars. They didn't care about poetry and wouldn't be caught dead at a Broadway show. They thought it was odd that he was dating, then married, a Jew. He has another group of friends, from the same high school, who drink wine (and I mean we can talk wine for an hour) and talk politics and enjoy traveling and learning about different cultures, and they completely accept my socialist politics (they can also rebuild an engine.....I think it's in the water there!). So I guess that I see both sides....most of the people in that little town are hicks, but they all don't have to be, and some of them aren't. I guess it's not all black and white.

[ThatSnark]

Could you define blue collar please? Just because I'm not familiar with what it consists of in the US. And surely even blue-collar people would get exposure to poetry and classical music in school? And there are plenty of interests that transcend class.

In my experience as a native US citizen, blue collar translates to occupations that do not require university training. That can be anywhere from the McDonald's cashier to the highly-paid auto technician. Some blue collar workers get a two-year associates' degree from a trade program, to learn plumbing or heating/air conditioning, or auto mechanic technology, but because they do not have a "professional" degree, they're loosely considered blue collar. Even if the successful plumber makes much more than the struggling lawyer down the block. First responders here are considered blue collar: police, fire fighters, ambulance EMTs-- they are highly, HIGHLY skilled and trained, but they are almost in a class to themselves and have a great deal of respect in communities, almost as does the military.

White collar professions most often require at least a four-year university degree, if not a master's or PhD. Those are the business people, marketers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, social workers (me), most nurses, engineers, scientists, teachers and so on. I'm sure I've left out significant fields! It takes some time and some money to make it through a full university course, and many of these professions require one to keep up licensure in the field, which keeps knowledge current and the riffraff out.

Hope that helps explain the US breakdown of things, and I hope other FJers chime in to refine this if anything is unclear!

[crawfishgirl]

I'm not sure you can generalize that to less class mobility as a whole (but I didn't look at the underlying studies). It certainly supports the point that the very poorest and the very richest classes tend to remain stagnant. I still believe that class mobility between lower-middle to upper-middle classes (which is a pretty darn big difference in lifestyle) is very possible with education, hard work, and good fortune.

I agree. I see this within my own family. My grandparents' generation was lower-middle class. My father was the first person among his relatives to receive a degree, and he financed it through joining the ROTC and then having to serve in the military during the Korean conflict. He became middle-middle class (sorta sounds redundant, but I'm trying to make a distinction) as a result. I received my undergrad degree while living with my parents (fortunately we lived in the same city as my state's flagship university) and working two jobs, and later received my grad degree while working full-time - this was before online educational degrees were available. My brother and I, along with a few other cousins, are living a comfortable lifestyle - bordering on upper-middle class, depending on the definition - due to educational opportunities and hard work (and probably a few lucky breaks), while the cousins that did not pursue education continue to be in the lower-middle economic class. Some have even been offered family help towards tuition, but have chosen not to take advantage of it. My husband's family's background story is very similar to mine.

[Mama Mia]

One thing I think is interesting is the impact that more women and less men attending college will have on these patterns. I don't have the article handy but I have read that there is a much larger percentage of women who graduate college now than men. I don't know if this holds true everywhere - in my own personal network, and that of my grown children - there are many women who have either a 2 or 4 year degree, a few with graduate degrees, and only a handful of men with a 4 year degree, a few more who attended vocational school and I can't think of any men that I grew up with that have a Master's degree or higher -with my children's peers this pattern is even more pronounced.

I haven't found this always translates into making more money though. A teacher will make about the same as a car mechanic - but with a boat load of student loan debt on top of it.

That's something else that I think people don't account for very often - the difference in living standards if you have a ton of student loans. I think of two of my adult children and their spouses. In one couple the wife is a stay at home mom while the husband works full-time in a technical career with no college background and 0 debt. The other couple the wife and husband both work full-time to have the same standard of living because they both have massive student loan debt. Both families pay about the same in rent. If we lived somewhere cheaper they would probably both be able to afford the mortgage on a small home.

In my area it is also very common for young people to live with their parents through their early 20's, due to costs. Most move out when they have a partner to move in with, and even then their first place is usually a room with boyfriend/girlfriend in a house with roommates.

[MandyLaLa]

I'll just be honest, when it came to dating for "real" as in I was old enough that I was done just dating for fun and was looking to settle down I had I guess you could say attributes in mind of what I wanted in a guy. Mostly just a list of things in common, interest, activities etc...

But if I were to list out what those interest and activities were the list would lead to the conclusion that I'm looking for an upper middle class man. Simply because a lot of things I enjoy are things that typically require wealth or privilege for access.

I wanted someone who had an upbringing similar to mine and I don't think theirs anything wrong with that.

[Anise]

My husband is Chinese, and I never noticed any such attitudes in my in-laws; although, there might be a difference between a son versus a daughter marrying (marrying in versus marrying out). Then again, as my husband and I met in college, that guarantees some level of similarity of class, plus class transfers differently across cultures (I didn't have to worry about which fork to use, lol).

I think it's a problem most people don't have to worry about as the places where people meet their significant other tend to be exclusionary- colleges, place of work, even neighborhoods.

[treehugger]

Honestly - I think that classifying all blue-collar workers as a lump group of ignorant rednecks is insulting. I went to college. My husband did not. He worked in construction (believe it or not, in Canada you can make pretty good money doing that) before starting aviation. I guess being a commercial pilot is also a blue collar job. It has the potential to make a very salary when he is done, though - more so than the average university graduate. He didn't go to university because that isn't his thing - he loves flying, and I would rather he do something he loves in life. I don't have a problem with that. He is intelligent and fun, and we have no problem discussing political issues, global issues, music, books, etc. We love travelling and have been to several countries. I guess maybe I'm lucky in that I have found someone I can relate to so well - even though we come from vastly different backgrounds and education. I guess I am also lucky that we are not poor and struggling, and that I never had to choose between money and love.

ETA my in-laws are not well off, although my father-in-law has a Master's degree. My family is well off. That had nothing to do with our relationship though, since both sets of parents are of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps mentality - and we would not expect any financial aid from them (bar some horrific disaster).

[jenny_islander]

Another rough definition of blue collar and white collar: Blue-collar jobs are non-military jobs for which you must either put on a uniform including a shirt or keep a special stock of sturdy shirts just for the wear and tear of work. Workshirts used to be made mostly from a tough cloth that was generally dyed light blue even when the shirts were not made to be part of a uniform, hence "blue collar." White-collar jobs are jobs that required, or used to require, suits. The standard shirt to wear with a suit was a white dress shirt, hence "white collar." Women with office jobs often wear/wore a white dress blouse with a tailored skirt, also

"white collar."

Note that both terms date to the first quarter of the 20th century, when clothing options at work were much narrower.

[lilith]

I agree that blue/white collar is not always a good indicator of earning capacity.

My first husband (a barrister) and I (a legal secretary) lived next door to a plumber who ran his own business, employing a teenage son and a son in his early twenties. They had a way way nicer house than us, newer cars, a boat, went on overseas vacations etc. We (and they) used to joke about it.

[Itsnotaclowncar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-collar_worker

We get less exposure to poetry and classical music in primary/secondary school than you might think.

And of course there are things that transcend class -- but when you are looking for a spouse among the general population, and you want *a lot* of things in common, including worldview, people who have similar educational backgrounds will typically be a better bet. Maybe I overemphasize this because of feeling so different from those in my hometown. Maybe I'm conflating regional differences with class. Maybe if I were from the northeast I'd feel differently. But I look at all of the blue collar fundie lites still in my hometown and know I could never ever have married any of them.

I'm from NJ and I agree with you 100%. There's a segment of the blue collar/working poor population that is very disdainful of anything that could be considered part of a higher class (most people weren't religious either). My upbringing and peers at school were very anti-intellectual. At best I was weird for reading books and liking art, at worst that I was getting above my raising. I dated because that is what you do, I just dated guys who were not really good for me. I would have settled because getting married and making babies is just the expectation. Had I not had some very supportive teachers I wouldn't have been able to get into a good college.

I'm marrying up, by a lot. I didn't know how wealthy my fiance's family was when we met and pretty much had no clue for the first few years we were dating. My fiance doesn't like to read and tolerates art museums for my sake but I'm not made fun of for liking them. My college experience was the first time I wasn't looked down on for being smart.

[Mouser]

A lot of people I know personally believe in "soul mates" and so I doubt looking into someone's finances would have been an option for them. Unless they felt that rush of feeling in the first few meetings or dates, they would drop the person they were seeing and move on to someone new, over and over until they found someone who made them believe it was "true love" or got pregnant and had no choice but to marry.

I'm from a highly conservative part of America, though.